Step inside Kansas City’s newest haunted experience & its immersive, cult-like horrors
If you told me a week ago that I would be spending my Friday night hiking through the woods in Bonner Springs covered in fake blood and real dirt, I would have been skeptical and a little bit panicked. But by the time I emerged from the dark trees, I found myself hoping for just one more jump scare.
The afternoon’s panic — and the next day’s sore throat — were inspired by my visit to Exiled KC, a haunted-house style attraction in Bonner Springs consisting of a 1-mile hike through carefully engineered horrors.
This year’s installation, Crooked Rose Woods, also features haunted carnival attractions created by horror movie director Darren Bousman, the mind behind four movies in the “Saw” franchise. The attraction opened Sept. 13 at 12829 Loring Road, which is usually Zip KC, a zipline course and outdoor adventure park. It’s open through Nov. 3.
For Bousman and co-conspirator Morgan Rooms, fear is more powerful than most other emotions. The creators of Exiled KC believe that in the right context — like a haunted trail — surviving fear in a closed environment can actually boost visitors’ mental health.
In the end, I found the haunt cathartic, even if I left several shrieks lighter.
Some version of the Exiled KC haunted trail has existed for more than 20 years. But Bousman has expanded significantly on the narrative element of the haunt with the cultish theme of Crooked Rose Woods, designing an eerie playscape that’s half-live theater, half-escape room and all — and I mean this in the best way — nauseating. The installation revolves around the story of the Redcurve family, a clan of fictional farmers who were driven off their land by corporate greed and turned to supernatural violence to reclaim it.
The marketing around Exiled KC: Crooked Rose Woods is very cryptic, which feels intentional. I don’t consider myself someone who scares easily, but as I pulled into the gravel parking lot at sundown, my curiosity and fear had escalated into nerves and paranoia.
For KU alum Bousman, who grew up in Overland Park, turning a patch of Kansas woods into a fully immersive cult homestead was a way to honor a piece of his past and build on the haunted experiences he loves.
“A lot of people hear ‘Darren Bousman, Saw movies, it’s going to be a haunted house,’” Bousman said. “And then they come here and it’s ludicrous hillbillies and dancing and weird tasks that they put you on. And there’s an immediate disconnect, but they don’t push to find out what’s just past that.”
Bousman’s father, who passed away last year, is buried in Shawnee. Throughout Bousman’s childhood, the two often bonded over horror media, visiting haunted houses together in the West Bottoms.
“Every Halloween … it was an event,” Bousman said. “We would go to a haunted house, then we would go to Blockbuster, where we would rent a horror movie.”
Exiled KC was my first experience with immersive horror, and it made me feel instantly transported. From the minute you drive into the parking lot, every single person affiliated with the haunted attraction is completely in character. You won’t find an axe-wielding maniac snapping gum or talking on their cellphone.
No corner of the woods is left untouched by oily fog, and there’s nowhere on the premises you can go without the threat of a scare actor sneaking up on you. Even the hot dog vendors are covered in gore.
Bousman and Rooms feel the word “immersive” has been overused, they said. Still, they approached the haunt with a lofty goal: to keep guests from being jolted out of the haunted narrative.
“I’ve paid quite a lot of money to have an immersive experience, and that immersive experience was just a projector,” Rooms said. “...We don’t do that. We believe what we make is infinitely fractal.”
Into the woods
The mile-long haunted hike, dubbed “Torment,” goes in a loop and is supposed to take between half an hour and an hour, depending on how quickly you blow through each patch of psychos and corpses. My group made it through in about 45 minutes.
I definitely wouldn’t recommend Crooked Rose Woods if you can’t do inclines, stairs, crawling and tight spaces. However, as someone who does not run unless chased, I didn’t find the experience particularly strenuous outside of a few moments of uneven footing.
Although scare actors gaslight you through several false dead ends, the trail itself is clearly marked, with frequent enough interactions that I felt confident I would not be abandoned in the woods to die.
The end of the trail opens straight into Bousman’s main brainchild, the haunted carnival experience — called “Anguish,” with a VIP tent referred to as “Annihilation.”
Though both the trail and the fairgrounds were excellently blood-curdling, the two experiences did feel disjointed at times. On the trail, you spend most of your time in darkness, feeling less scared as you grow used to each miniature horror show. At the carnival, the longer you interact with an actor, the less clear you become on what they intend to do to you next.
“What you choose to say, what you choose to do … could affect everyone’s experience for the rest of the entire world,” Rooms said. “For us, that’s true immersion.”
Most notably, the carnival zeroed in on the unexplored backstory of the Redcurve family-turned-cult, whereas the haunted trail uses the cult only as an excuse to lure you into a living encyclopedia of fears and phobias. Without giving too much away, the hike hits on everything from medical nightmares to graveyard shenanigans, girlish ghosts to burly clowns, wailing children to slavering beasts.
Though some sections of the trail relied on elaborate props for fear, others used standalone structures and lighting to zero in on terrifying sensory experiences. When I wasn’t busy cringing, it was fascinating to watch the different members of my group balk at different terrors — one hiker’s strobe-lit hell was another’s playground, while my attempts to taunt a masked scare actor made another hiker beg us not to tick off the creepy man with the rusty knife.
Surviving the scare
The haunted trail is described as PG-13 and is intended for ages 16 and up. The carnival, which sells alcohol, is technically 16 and up but is described as R-rated. I found it graphic enough that it might be best kept for adults of drinking age, as with the haunt’s add-on experience, Opulence, an ultra-immersive tent with specialized scare actors and cocktails included.
Without giving too much away about the sinister rituals, displays and contests I experienced, I’d say that you will get the most out of Crooked Rose Woods’ carnival experience if you’re willing to interact at length with everyone you meet.
The scare actors initiated more physical contact than I might expect at a standard haunted house, but they’re also amazing at reading consent and body language. If you do end up doused in blood and ashes, you won’t be left wondering how you got there. If anything, my first few interactions with supposed members of the Redcurve family made me more confident walking onto the trail, as if I had stopped placing myself at odds with the haunt’s storyline.
In addition, Exiled has added two different levels of engagement, green and yellow, based on how much physical contact and interaction your party wants.
If you re-enter the carnival after surviving your hike, you may feel smug and untouchable, with the darkest woods and sharpest knives already behind you. My advice: if you lost your skepticism somewhere between the twisted clowns and the haunted dolls, leave it behind for a little while longer. Bousman’s cast of characters are far too talented to be wasted on a jaded audience.
If you would test yourself against some chainsaw noises and cotton-stuffed corpses in the woods, maybe take the same attitude toward a dose of anxiety and humiliation from a bloody butcher in overalls. The best thing about Crooked Rose Woods — as with any well-constructed haunt — is you can take as many risks as you want when you’ll know for a fact you’ll survive.
Tickets to Exiled: Crooked Rose Woods range from $49 for the trail and carnival ($59 on Fridays and Saturdays) to $199 for the Opulence Tent experence. On-site parking is free. The haunted installation is open Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 3, as well as Oct. 30, with timed entry slots ranging from 7-8 pm to 10-11:30 p.m.
This story was originally published October 11, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated with the latest changes to Exiled KC’s tickets and levels of experiences.
