![\"Actors](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788576369_25_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nMany might think Knott\u2019s Scary Farm activities only happen in October. But for Halloween and horror fans in the know, Knott\u2019s Berry Farm starts turning scary much earlier in the year.<\/p>\n
And even the late summer heat couldn\u2019t stop the hordes of fans gathered at the annual Knott\u2019s Scary Farm: Nightmares Revealed event on Aug. 18, when the Buena Park theme park announced all its new and returning shows, mazes, scare zones, food and more. <\/p>\n
The sold-out event also included a creator\u2019s panel with details about the new mazes from designers at the recently revamped Bird Cage Theatre, lights-on tours of some mazes, makeup and wardrobe demos, an appearance by drag artists the Boulet Brothers and plenty of scare actors ready to go for the Halloween season. Knott\u2019s Scary Farm opens Sept. 17 and runs select nights through Oct. 31.<\/p>\n
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Actors work the \u201cGore-ing \u201820s scare zone during the Nightmares Revealed preview of this year\u2019s Knott\u2019s Scary Farm.<\/p>\n
(Jessica Peralta)<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you ready for some scare fog in the summer?\u201d master of ceremonies Jeff Tucker said as he got the crowd going at the start of the presentation. \u201cWe\u2019ve only been waiting almost a year for that Scary Farm goodness to come rolling in.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s lineup includes 10 mazes, five scare zones and three shows. Two new mazes were announced: \u201cInked\u201d and \u201cUnearthed.\u201d The former features Mortimer Morbid, a washed-up 1930s cartoonist and former head of Morbid Studios, who brings his cartoon characters to life with blood and ends up unleashing a legion of murderous toons who want to pull viewers into their world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been two years in the making,\u201d said Scary Farm art director Daniel Miller, who also created last year\u2019s then-new, military-experiment-gone-wrong maze called \u201cthe Zoo.\u201d \u201cIn fact, we pitched Inked before we pitched \u2018Zoo.\u2019 They realized that \u2018Inked\u2019 needed time because we had to do all original animation for it. So we took our time to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the \u201cUnearthed\u201d maze features guests as part of a search-and-rescue team that arrives at a ravaged base at an excavation site days after receiving a distress signal \u2014 where the discovery of ancient tablets has awakened a malevolent force from a forgotten age.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs they begin to read it, they notice that these ghastly creatures and something strange begins to happen in the caverns, which leads to what we call the smoking gun of the existence of the Anunnaki,\u201d said art director Jon Asperin, who led the maze\u2019s design. \u201cAnunnaki is this ancient Mesopotamian deity that have roots all the way from the Syrian times, Mesopotamian times, Sumerian times. It\u2019s crazy. It\u2019s wild.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Guests](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788576370_953_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Guests are given a taste of the new \u201cVoodoo: Bayou\u2019s Edge\u201d during Nightmares Revealed, a preview event held last month for this year\u2019s Knott\u2019s Scary Farm.<\/p>\n
(Jessica Peralta)<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Scary Farm also launches two new shows, \u201cVoodoo: Bayou\u2019s Edge\u201d and \u201cOccultum Curated by Magic Castle.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cVoodoo: Bayou\u2019s Edge,\u201d showing at Calico Mine Stage, is a musical journey with Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, who heads into the court of Baron Samedi, Lwa of the dead, with dancers drifting through the mist as the New Orleans cemetery awakens.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually inspired by the F\u00e8t Gede, it\u2019s a celebration of voodoo and heritage. It\u2019s celebrated in Haiti, actually celebrated in New Orleans as well,\u201d said art director Gus Krueger, who led the scenic design for the show. \u201cIt\u2019s really just that New Orleans voodoo style. It\u2019s a musical celebration \u2026 it\u2019s percussive, it sort of gets in you, it\u2019s very beat-driven. It\u2019s more party than show, if you will. But it does have a great dance crew, it has aerialists, it has fire performers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOccultum Curated by Magic Castle\u201d takes place at the Bird Cage Theatre and will feature an array of magicians from the Los Angeles-based, private club Magic Castle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThirty-five years ago, I actually worked at Knott\u2019s Scary Farm. And then a couple years after that, I actually got TV specials from being here at Knott\u2019s Scary Farm. So it really means a lot to me,\u201d said comedic magician Rudy Coby, who describes himself as \u201cthe coolest magician on planet Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long-running, Boardwalk-area scare zone CarnEVIL returns this year but has been reimagined from \u201cMesmer: Sideshow of the Mind,\u201d a Scary Farm maze that ended its run last year. The backstory is that under the watchful eye of the hypnotist Mesmer, the circus has evolved into a more sinister spectacle with the sideshow as the main event, along with countless evil clowns and other curiosities.<\/p>\n
![\"Some](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788576372_625_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Some of the costumes that will be worn by actors during the upcoming Knott\u2019s Scary Farm were on display in the wardrobe department during the Aug. 18 preview event.<\/p>\n
(Jessica Peralta)<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I wanted to do was really put the evil back in CarnEVIL,\u201d said Krueger, who led the reimagining of the scare zone. \u201cWith the retirement of Mesmer as a maze, it was a great opportunity for us to bring the sideshow back and actually incorporate Mesmer as a character into CarnEVIL. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo that was a great kind of starting point to get this idea I have running again. And it was from there, I knew we wanted to have Mesmer sort of being this shadowy person behind the scenes running the show. It\u2019s a continuation of the story from the maze, but it also gives us an opportunity to bring Mesmer\u2019s sideshow back, also bring a new character, the Clown Maker, who is the queen of the clown \u2026 And it gives a chance to really create sort of a new palette using our old palette.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many might think Knott\u2019s Scary Farm activities only happen in October. But for Halloween and horror fans in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,78109,102146,67454,19416,43648,96680,179349,179347,179351,179348,1860,59706,315,179350,72],"class_list":["post-454027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-bayou","tag-bird-cage-theatre","tag-edge","tag-horror-fan","tag-knott","tag-magic-castle","tag-mesmer","tag-new-maze","tag-scare-zone","tag-scary-farm","tag-show","tag-sideshow","tag-time","tag-voodoo","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}