“Alexa, I’m literally going to curl up in a ball on the floor in front of everyone and cry.” My arm was secured around my friend’s neck like a boa constrictor as we opened the door to the Bates Motel.

If you’ve never watched Psycho, you shouldn’t.  But if you have, you know that the movie’s setting is the Bates Motel. (Spoiler) In the movie, a young woman is on the run after stealing $40,000, and she spends a night at the Bates Motel. After taking a shower, she is beheaded and her murder is investigated (end spoiler). While this terrifying plot line doesn’t have anything to do with the three-part haunted attraction in Glen Mills, it definitely sets the tone for what is about to come.

The site offers three attractions: the Motel, the Haunted Hayride, and the Corn Maze. The Motel and Corn Maze take around ten to fifteen minutes on foot, while the Hayride takes about twenty minutes, in a tractor-trailer heaped with straw.

Only seven people are allowed in the Motel at a time, where 30 actors, all lunatics, make your blood run cold by wailing in your face, jumping out of shadowy corners, or blocking the exit or the entrance to the next terrifying room. Among these “talented” people are a plump butcher with bug-eye glasses, a young woman dressed in a nightgown and eerie white contact lenses, and the best character of all: a man in a straitjacket who conceals himself in a hole in the ceiling, where he periodically pops out in your face and shrieks.

You may perceive The Haunted Hayride as safer, for you are amidst 30 other victims, seated in a cozy little tractor-trailer. However, once the first actor with a chainsaw jumps aboard and terrorizes you with the deafening machine, you will find that this is not at all what you had imagined. After journeying through “abandoned” campsite after campsite, the grand finale – a giant display of pyrotechnics and an actor deviously disguised as a scarecrow – ends the nightmare. My advice – the more scared you look, the better chance that the actor will come for you.

The last, and probably most exposing, attraction is the Corn Maze. In this 15-minute trek through a circus, church and zoo, the actors are allowed to touch you, which makes this a little creepier. Definitely don’t do what I did and tell your friend, “Don’t look at them [the actors], or they’ll touch you,” while walking past the 6-foot-tall mosquito!

If, like me, you have never even seen a horror movie in your life, you will still have a load of fun at the Bates Motel. In the moment, it may seem as though things could never get worse, but once you run out of the motel, screaming and breathing the fresh air, you will want to get back in line and do the whole thing again.

This thrilling attraction is only open until November 3, from 6:30 PM – 9:30 or 10:30 PM. Tickets can be purchased online or when you arrive. See www.thebatesmotel.com for tickets, directions, and important safety information.