Many Pelham kids and their families ski at Jiminy Peak in the winter, but in October, it is a different story. There is an absolutely terrifying horror experience at the mountain each year called Thirteen Nights At Jiminy. Each year has a theme. Each theme is based around the most popular trail at the mountain. That trail’s name is Jericho. Three years ago, the theme of this horror experience was the Haunted Jericho Valley School, two years ago it was the Haunted Jericho Hotel, last year it was the Haunted Jericho Prison, and this year it will be the Haunted Kettle Mansion. Each and every year the horror experience is supposed to get scarier and scarier.

This is the way the experience works. The employees that work at the mountain in the ski season build a maze out of props and wood in two separate locker rooms that the mountain normally uses as storage in winter. The workers also build a path about half a mile long across the top of the mountain. It usually takes two or three weeks to build everything. The whole entire experience for the visitors lasts about an hour. Instead of just fake skeletons and zombies, there are real people (the characters) in the experience. Each year there are about 25- to 30 characters in the horror experience.

Now, I will tell you what happened last year during the experience. So, as you know already, last year’s theme was the Haunted Jericho Prison. A narrator told visitors the story of the “Prison,” and he invited them to step in. Characters were popping out of corners holding knives, axes, and saws covered in fake blood, while screaming in the visitors’ faces. The characters were dressed in fake prison jumpsuits. This first part of the experience lasted for about fifteen minutes. In order to do the second part, visitors needed to take the chairlift to the top of the mountain in the pitch dark. They had to wander through the woods on a path with a flashlight. Characters were popping out of bushes and were chasing them through the woods with real chainsaws and again, knives. At one point, the visitors were wandering through a wooden maze and a blowtorch was hidden behind a metal plate, which shot a flame 20 feet in the air.

Last but not least, the third part of the experience was the absolute scariest because the characters were reaching out to grab the visitors to make sure they went home traumatized. Thirteen Nights At Jiminy is a terrific fall activity to do right before Halloween.

Update: I participated in the 2017 version of this horror event on Columbus day weekend, and it did not leave me disappointed. This year’s theme was the Haunted Kettle Mansion. It was the scariest experience out of the four years I’ve been doing it. I did the event with my two friends who are on the ski race team at Jiminy Peak, my father, and my friends’ father. There were clowns chasing us through the woods with a chainsaw in the pitch dark. There was also a point where you thought you were finished with the experience, and as I said earlier, a 20-foot flame torch shot in the air and a really loud foghorn sounded and almost blew out our eardrums. See you next year 13 Nights!