OTHELLO — How scary can it get inside the straw maze sponsored by the Othello Rodeo Association? Rick Bougher, a longtime volunteer, said there are parents who will let their kids go through, but as for themselves – well, they’ll just wait outside.

“My daughters wouldn’t go through (the maze),” Bougher said. In fact, they still stay out of it.

The straw maze has become a Halloween tradition in Othello, dating back at least to the mid-1990s. And not even a pandemic could stop it. The maze will be open every Friday and Saturday night in October.

A less scary version is presented from 6 to 7 p.m. each night. The scary stuff is from 7 to 10 p.m. Tickets are $10 per person.

Volunteers help build the maze, and work as “scarers,” staffing the scary scenes, which are referred to as rooms. Paula Robertson, chair of the straw maze committee, said the maze has about 11 rooms for 2020.

“Every year is different,” Robertson said. Due to all the uncertainty in 2020, the volunteers decided to make it a year of greatest hits from previous years. “We’ve improved on them and made them cooler, so this is our year of best rooms,” she said.

“We have a spider room, a zombie junkyard, a corn maze within the straw maze,” Robertson said. There are not one but two rooms featuring dolls, a coffin room, and the circus room. “You’ve got to go to the pumpkin room,” said James McIndoe, as he adjusted his light-up pumpkin mask.

Aaron Stephens hangs out in the haunted forest. Without giving away the scary stuff, his costume involves stilts. He started learning how to walk on stilts in September in preparation for the straw maze, and skillfully navigated the rocky and uneven ground as he made his way into the maze Friday night.

Stephens and his brother went looking online for inspiration and found – yeah, they found something scary – for the haunted forest. They worked on the costume and getting the effect they wanted for about two months, Aaron said.

“I’m really trying to scare people as much as I can. But people that don’t scare say it (the costume) is really cool,” Stephens said.

Bougher said some scarers have attended classes in an effort to get maximum fright. “I think we might be addicted,” he said.

Most scarers come up with their own costumes, Robertson said. In the age of coronavirus masks are required for scarers too, which might have made it tougher to come up with costumes, but really didn’t. Some are wearing Halloween masks as an outer layer and a mask underneath, while others wear the mask and paint the upper half of the face.

Traditionally the straw maze is open the two weekends prior to Halloween, but organizers expanded it to the whole month. So far the response has been positive. Robertson said opening weekend was much busier than the 2019 opening weekend.

The maze project started as a fundraiser for a rodeo association member fighting cancer, Robertson said, and was continued as a cancer fundraiser for rodeo association members for a few years. But luckily it’s not needed for that anymore, and the money goes to rodeo association activities. Bougher said it’s the only income for the rodeo association this year, since the rodeo itself was canceled.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.