I’ve been sitting on this information for a long time, and I am so excited to share it with you now: This fall, in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bath/Brunswick, our Bath-Brunswick-Topsham Regional Chamber of Commerce is proud to present the 1st Annual Haunted Hayrides! The event will be this fall, Oct. 24-25 and we need your help spreading the word, signing up to volunteer and giving us your spookiest, creepiest scene ideas (for a really good fundraiser).

First, a little background on this partnership. Our good friends over at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bath/Brunswick invited me for a coffee for a brainstorming session this past winter. They were trying to decide on a new fundraising idea to help replace the significant loss of Bowl for Kids’ Sake which was their best annual fundraiser when we still had a bowling alley in the area. I spitballed a few ideas I had done in my past chamber work when I was the executive director of the Skowhegan Area Chamber a decade ago, and one of the ideas they loved was the haunted hayrides.

For the uninitiated, what is a haunted hayride?

A haunted hayride is an event where families pay for a ticket to ride on a hay wagon pulled by a truck through the crisp evening autumn air, and for 10-15 minutes they get their wits scared out of them from scary scenes that volunteers put on. It’s an unbelievably fun experience for both the attendees and the performers.

Here’s some things to know about our haunted hayrides:

• The wagons do not go fast and will ride through some scenes and stop at others. However, for anyone concerned about a speeding wagon, that is not something that we will be doing.

• The rides are after dark, so dress appropriately, and it is rain or shine (or snow — kidding, but then again, who knows).

• I cannot stress this enough: This is designed to be scary. Not just scary for kids but scary for all. Will everything be scary? Nope, some of it will be creepy. Much like when you watch a comedy film, there are humorous parts and there are laugh-out-loud parts. Well, some things will chill you to your bones or make you uneasy, while other parts will be scream-out-loud scary.

• This is a two-night event, on a Friday and Saturday, and annually, we will try to always hold this on the Friday and Saturday closest to Halloween without interfering with Halloween directly.

• On the Saturday of the event, we will be offering toned-down rides at dusk for special needs adults and for younger children who might not be ready for the full experience (or adults who may not be ready for the full experience, for that matter). During these rides, we ask the performers to pull it back on the size of the scare to half-speed or less.

There are a few pieces still being finalized, but we didn’t want to wait any longer to make this announcement. The biggest of these pieces is the location. Not to get weighed down in the details, but you can imagine that the insurance required for an event like this is important, and we have a few venues we are working with on that insurance piece as they would be listed as additional insured. Sometimes these insurance pieces can take a little extra time. We are hoping to release the locations in early September.

Another big piece to decide is the exact times of the hayrides (6 p.m. is about the time it gets dark, so likely that will be the start time, or shortly thereafter) and lasting until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. (again, the final location will have a say in this). Also, there is a question on the pricing for each ride. We have looked at similar events in Maine and will be keeping our pricing in that range, but we won’t announce that quite yet (we may new pre-sales, too). Finally, we are still deciding if we want to have a concessions stand or if we want to have food truck spaces — both would be awesome.

Those pieces are important, but that will get worked out, so the focus for this very moment is to get you excited about the haunted hayrides. In my nearly 20 years of chamber work, I can say, no event grew their volunteers as much as we did with the haunted hayrides. The first year I did it, we had 17 volunteers, and the last year, we had 94. People love volunteering for this event and there are a ton of ways you can do it.

If you want to be a performer and do some scaring, there are two ways to participate: either by creating your own scary scene with friends, fellow students, colleagues and co-workers, or you can sign up to be a general scarer, where we put you in scene the chamber runs. Typically, businesses, groups of friends, project graduation groups or sports booster clubs will do scenes to compete for the cash prize for best scene, but honestly most choose to do it because it’s just really fun.

If you’re not a performer, there is plenty more to do. Ticket sales are important, but so is helping people on and off rides. Each wagon needs a supervisor to watch to be sure no one has a panic attack and that riders and performers behave themselves (honestly, you get to watch people get scared all night — the best!). There are also security people we need to check on performers, concession volunteers if we do the food and even non-performing scene partners who trigger fog machines and light machines, etc.

If you’re interested in learning more about this, volunteering, sponsoring or more, please email me at cory@midcoastmaine.com. More info next week!

Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick-Topsham Regional Chamber of Commerce.