{"id":308365,"date":"2026-10-17T00:51:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T00:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/308365\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T00:51:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T00:51:33","slug":"totally-disappointed-lehigh-valley-locals-want-to-know-why-popular-haunted-hayride-suddenly-halted-as-officials-remain-silent-allentown-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/308365\/","title":{"rendered":"Totally disappointed&#8217;: Lehigh Valley locals want to know why popular haunted hayride suddenly halted, as officials remain silent | Allentown Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. &#8211; It&#8217;s starting to feel a little more like trick than treat in Whitehall Township.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was shocked,&#8221; Marie Shahan, from Egypt, said. &#8220;I was very shocked.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Just last week, the popular &#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share\/p\/1A6uX9uKS8\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Haunted Parkway&#8221; was sold out.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That parking lot is full,&#8221; Shahan said. &#8220;I mean, there&#8217;s people standing out there all hours.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My son is special needs,&#8221; Jayne Bartlett, from Allentown, said. &#8220;It&#8217;s his favorite thing every year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, those hayride wheels have halted to a stop.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were sitting at dinner, and he brought his phone up, and he went, &#8216; Oh, my gosh,&#8221; Bartlett said. &#8220;He was totally disappointed. Very disappointed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Whitehall Township Fire Chief Mark Bilder announced the event&#8217;s abrupt closure on Thursday, only citing &#8220;unforeseen circumstances.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share\/p\/1Fv8w8VAjG\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Several social media posts, each with many comments,<\/a> are asking the same questions as the locals 69 News spoke with on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why did they just cancel it?&#8221; Monica Barlow, from Northampton County, said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We didn&#8217;t know what happened,&#8221; Bartlett said. &#8220;We&#8217;re disappointed for the Whitehall Fire Company; that&#8217;s their big fundraiser of the year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a huge event for the community,&#8221; Shahan said. &#8220;And for it to be canceled with no notification other than, hey, it&#8217;s just canceled. We&#8217;re not discussing what happened. It&#8217;s kind of sad.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The only ghosting is coming from officials.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I tried looking up everything I could,&#8221; Shahan said, &#8220;but there&#8217;s nothing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The fire chief confirms he&#8217;s the one who shut down the event, but the fire department, police, mayor, and District Attorney all say they aren&#8217;t commenting at this time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think that was the most surprising part,&#8221; Bartlett said. &#8220;So I thought something really serious must have happened.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nobody said anything,&#8221; Barlow said. &#8220;My concern was, like, did something actually happen? Did somebody get hurt?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While the silence can seem scary, local hayriders can only hope the attraction will be brought back next spooky season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I do think it&#8217;s strange,&#8221; Shahan said. &#8220;I thought that, you know, maybe Whitehall would just give us a little bit of an idea of what&#8217;s going on, but nothing.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. &#8211; It&#8217;s starting to feel a little more like trick than treat in Whitehall Township.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232],"class_list":["post-308365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}