Watch out for the cursed carrots

I don't get the haunted hayride concept. Every year around this time businesses and civic groups in the Twin Cities around the country who have an interest in scaring a population primed by Halloween (and possibly campaign ads) to be frightened. Presumably this is because they lack ready access to an appropriately spooky old house.
These groups assemble scary scenes, hire local teenagers to dress in masks and face paint and load wagons with bales of hay to haul people through the woods late at night.
But a hayride is not inherently scary. Hayrides are about harvests and full moons and the bounty of the earth. Sometimes they are about moonshine, I think. They are not about demons and witches and trying to make people wet their pants with fear.
I can't imagine someone ever saying, while being pulled on a haywagon under a harvest moon, "I sure wish I could enjoy myself, but I can't shake the feeling a serial killer might come lurching out of that thicket." Sitting in hay just makes a person feel safe. And nobody makes horror movies about cursed soybean fields.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just not a haunted hayride kind of guy. Maybe the fact I haven't done much to acknowledge Halloween's existence since I was about 15 plays into the equation.
Or, maybe I just got a bum hayride. Admittedly, while the people behind this particular hayride put some work into the scenes on display -- the giant, animated demon-thing that appeared to have been inspired by the computer game Doom clearly either took a whole lot of work or cost a whole lot of money -- the hearts of the hayride haunters themselves did not seem to be into the activity.
There's nothing frightening about a teenager in a gorilla mask and a jean jacket. Not even a little. And if the costume didn't make it clear enough this particular employee was thinking more about the next day's English test or the girl he has a crush on or Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel's disturbing shaved-head look, the quiet "rawr" he gave while ambling alongside the wagon was a pretty good sign. (I'm honestly not sure what the best way is to write out a half-hearted roar. I did the best I could).
Granted, this particular hayride had some other factors working against it. It was really cold Monday night. And it was windy. And since attending was a last-minute decision the only jacket I had was a windbreaker. So it was a little uncomfortable at times.
And that doesn't even take into account the drunk girls. They seemed less bothered by the cold. Or, for that matter, by just about anything else going on around them outside of taking pictures of each other and nearly falling into my lap a few times.
Or, there was the girl who asked nearly every hayride monster for his phone number. Actually, that's not true. She only asked the ones who had face paint, not the ones with masks. She wanted to be able to see their bone structure, she said. A girl's gotta have standards.
There were distractions, is what I'm saying. So maybe under other circumstances I would have been terrified. Maybe if it had been warmer or if it had been earlier of if I had been 9 I would be afraid to go to sleep tonight because I knew I would have nightmares about the guy dressed up like Halloween serial killer Michael Meyers. Instead, I was confused why I was supposed to be scared by a character that hasn't been in a decent horror movie for about 20 years. Do kids today know who Michael Meyers is? Do they confuse him with the Austin Powers guy? I'm confused about this hayride's target market, I guess.
Like I said, though, I could be wrong. Some people on this particular hayride seemed genuinely frightened from time to time. Although the fact they were just as frightened by the same thing over and over might mean they're not entirely credible.
The only chills I got, though, were from the wind.