Maggie meets the Ghouls at Grassmere

Ghouls at Grassmere is an annual event at the Nashville wildlife park/zoo/etc in which there are hayrides, carnival games, magicians magishing, trick or treating, people dressed up as children’s favorite characters, and of course a haunted house that was listed as the only scary thing there. There was also a baby mosh pit.

It’s running now until October the 26th if you’re in the Nashville, TN area, and it’s going to run about $11 a person (minus little ones). It’s one of those events that I think I probably had almost my money’s worth, and probably would have had I just not been sore from moving a bunch of stuff at work that morning.

We started off with the merry-go-round. Maggie was a bit confused and wondering what was going on as this was not quite doing much other than going up and down which she could get with us playing with her.

Then the hayride. In the daylight. MMmmm, no, wait on a spooky hayride until the sun goes down. I could tell it would be fun after dark, but I think we were on tractor #2 of the day, and it just reminded me of that Jurassic Park intro where nothing quite goes right or presents the feeling it was supposed to evoke.

After that we wandered into a hay maze which Maggie decided was there exclusively for her to pull individual straws out of bales of hay. Not sure what the fun was there, but her little baby mind decided that it was fun.

After that we went into a 3D tunnel of terror, played some bag and ring toss games, played a strongman game, and some other stuff she was a little too little for but she enjoyed and she ended up “winning” every single time.

After that we went trick or treating, which mainly involved going from place to place and Maggie wondering why people kept offering her candy that we kept pulling away from her (all had wrappers, all could choke a baby).

Then it was time for the baby dance party. I think she enjoyed this most of all.

After that we wandered up to the haunted barn. We were warned that this was the only scary thing at Grassmere, warned three times on the way up. The sounds of grinding metal and chainsaws and screams did tend to indicate that it would be a scare factory.

However, Maggie loves scary stuff and really wanted to see what was going on. Since the place is very open, I decided to take her in as long as there were no people right around me that could startle and bump into me. The first part involved her looking at a pony with bones painted on it, a really neat floating skeleton, and a guy in a sheep mask working with wool and a bunch of sheep around him.

Outside the barn there was a headless horseman and horse just sort of walking around… hey guys… I got no head.

A spooky bridge spit fog out and she loved it. I knew we were getting into the area with chainsaw guy, but I did not know there was going to be a guy sharpening knives suddenly appear. Maggie loved it and wanted to go see what he was doing, she waved bye as he continued to sharpen knives.

A minute later, a chainsaw-wielding madman popped out of a barn. Maggie lit up and waved at him as he was waving the chainsaw around. Pretty sure she thought he was waving.

We walked on back to some friends, Maggie started laughing and wanting to go back to Chainsaw Madman, but we got her to drink some juice and eat some food instead.

Some other children were coming out crying. Think this entirely depends on baby temperament. Maggie loves this sort of stuff.