Melrose is home to a new Halloween attraction this year: Nightmare Oaks, a haunted trail that snakes through approximately 3 acres of pine trees. After inclement weather twice postponed the opening of the attraction, the trail is scheduled to open Fridays and Saturdays from 7 to 11 p.m. for the month of October only.
Nightmare Oaks’ grand opening was scheduled for Friday, Oct. 2, but it was canceled due to thunderstorms. Around 7 p.m. Oct. 3, scare actors were in place and food trucks were ready for customers when rain began dousing the haunt, forcing it to cancel its second attempt at opening.
In a Facebook post Thursday, Oct. 8, Nightmare Oaks announced the second scheduled weekend would also be canceled due to storms. The attraction will now only be open for the next two weekends.
The haunted attraction is centered around the character Elias Crowe, an axe-wielding lumberjack who wanders the woods of Melrose. Guests will spot Crowe on the trail along with a swamp hag, Bigfoot and other fear-inducing characters. It takes around 20 minutes for guests to shuffle down the trail while bracing for strategically planned jump scares.
Jeff Strout, also known as “The Spookmeister,” is the designer and builder of Nightmare Oaks. He said the first haunt he developed was at a farm about 35 years ago using his background in audio engineering. From there, he created various other haunts in the New England area. Ten years ago, he created Nightmare on the Ridge, a highly rated haunted walk in Auburn, Maine.
“I don’t make haunts to scare people,” Strout said. “I make haunts to entertain you.”
Strout began building Nightmare Oaks this spring. He worked through the hottest months of the year to build the biggest parts of the attraction. Then, during the weeks leading up to the scheduled grand opening, he said he was focused on the small details, such as the placement of more than 75 floodlights.
The idea of starting a haunted trail in Florida was first pitched to Strout by Wayne Gray, one of five owners of Nightmare Oaks, while Strout was preparing his haunt in Maine. Gray was visiting Wallingford’s Orchard, which is also the site of Nightmare on the Ridge, during his annual summer trip to Maine.
Gray said he’s had an affinity for haunts since he was 7 years old and spent years visiting the orchard and wishing he could return in the fall to visit the haunted walk. On a visit to the orchard in the summer of 2019, Gray decided he would explore the haunt before returning to Florida. As he was about to let himself into the building labeled “Insane Asylum,” out walked Strout to let him know he wasn’t supposed to be there.
Gray said he explained himself, then Strout gave him and his family an hour-long backstage tour of his haunt.
“My kids were impressed and I was in awe,” Gray wrote in an email. “This man built by hand nearly everything on that trail.”
Gray said he built small haunted trails for his kids’ Halloween parties and desired for a long time to do a haunt in the woods on a larger scale. Three years after he met Strout, he said he and his family finally traveled to Maine in October to experience Strout’s Nightmare on the Ridge.
“I walked out of that, and I was like, ‘Oh, my word,’” Gray said. “Other than Universal and Busch Gardens, I haven’t seen anything of that caliber.”
He said he saw Strout there and asked him if he would build a haunt in Florida. In 2024, Gray flew him and his wife, Christine Strout, to the property that is now Nightmare Oaks. The Strouts committed to Nightmare Oaks and moved to the Melrose property.
Gray and Strout are two of Nightmare Oaks’ owners. The others are Gray’s nephews, Travis Hudson and Luke Brown, and his brother-in-law Mike Bliss.
Gray said the partners have invested more than $125,000 into Nightmare Oaks.
“You wouldn’t believe how expensive animatronics are,” Gray said. “And we’re putting everybody on payroll.”
Most of the scare actors were hired at casting calls, although some are volunteers, Gray said.
His sister, Dawn Bliss, plays the swamp hag. She stands in a swamp cabin surrounded by fog and guarded by an animatronic snake and alligator. When she hears a train whistle, she knows it’s time to begin heckling guests.
She said she hasn’t told most of her family and friends about her role in the haunted attraction because many of them are planning to visit.
“I want it to be incognito,” Bliss said, “and I’m going to heckle them really bad.”
She said she’s channeling Glenn Close’s depiction of Mamaw from “Hillbilly Elegy” while embodying the swamp hag. The gray, wrinkly mask she wears costs around $900, she said. When she wears it, she said her eyes look like they’re going in different directions.
“When you have a mask on, you can be a totally different person,” Bliss said.
The partners are renting land for the attraction from a property maintained by Mike Bliss. He said the goal is for the haunt to grow every year. Mike Bliss emphasized that Nightmare Oaks is designed to be scary but still family friendly.
“We hope that this is a great gathering place for this part of the state,” Mike Bliss said, “‘cause there’s nothing quite like this around us.”
Guests can reserve time slots when they purchase tickets online. That way, they don’t have to wait in a line for hours to walk through the haunt, he said. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the ticket gate.
The Nightmare Oaks website lists general admission tickets at $30. If guests want to reserve a private campfire, seating and unlimited trips through the haunt, they can purchase VIP tickets for $50.
Assuming the weather cooperates, Nightmare Oaks, located at 7980 County Line Road, Melrose, will open for the first time Friday, Oct. 16.