Happy birthday from creepy corn maze

Fall in the middle of America is all about the harvest, of which corn is a big part. It’s also a time when horror fans get hyped for Halloween. My two oldest kids, women who are now ages 26 and 24, are both fall babies who love a good scary movie. When they were younger, I always looked for ways to combine their birthday parties in the most interesting but cost-effective ways. The best party, the one my girls still talk about today, was the corn maze party. We are a family of horror movie buffs, so it only made sense that we took a bunch of Black kids to a corn maze in October 2009.

The idea might have formed out of a little desperation. The girls were getting older and harder to impress when their birthdays rolled around. The regular cake-and-games repertoire had become too boring and predictable. The girls were turning 11 and 13 that year — ages that are notoriously tough because of puberty, peer pressure and a girl’s natural urge at that age, which is simply to hate everything that her mom does. I needed something to overcome all that. Earlier in the season, I won tickets to a corn maze on an orchard in the Indiana backcountry. Our whole family went and enjoyed the day.

While venturing through the corn maze on that initial trip, I discovered that the venue hosted parties. The venue also offered other activities that the kids could enjoy in addition to navigating the corn maze, including a hayride at dusk that goes into creepy, strategically lit woods and a corn crib that was there for the younger kids. The birthday package included the use of a picnic area at the edge of the woods and a bonfire tended by the staff. They offered to cater the event, but at a rate that was much more than I could afford at the time. What we did manage, though, was much more than the girls expected, despite having visited the corn maze already.

One of the first things that I loved about the corn maze birthday (as did the kids) were those additional activities. The corn crib was most popular among the partygoers. It was an oversized sand box, but instead of having sand, the orchard owners filled it with dried corn. Now, maybe that doesn’t sound appealing, but it was. Those kids swam, burrowed, dived, dug and threw corn everywhere. The kids occupied the corn crib before and after we took the group into the maze. I spent the next few days vacuuming corn out of my car and home.

The next most popular activity didn’t seem like an activity at all. The bonfire was lit and tended to by the orchard staff, so the kids were not allowed to do much but sit back and enjoy the fire. They were drawn to the flames like the squirrel in Ice Age was to the acorn. Their eyes got big and glazed like cartoon characters. My brother Rob caught that look when I did. He stood near the fire like a bouncer, ready to act if the kids got too close. We brought “the fixings” for fire-roasted hot dogs and s’mores that I did let a few of the kids try to roast, which ended quickly because these city kids had never seen such a fire. Thanks to Rob, however, nobody got burned.

The maze itself was a hit. Despite having explored it before, my birthday girls got just as lost as everyone else. Instead of screams, there were giggles in the air, disarming a potentially scary maze atmosphere, even though it was scary. The stalks were taller than my girls’ dad, who is solidly 6-foot tall. There was no way for the adults to look over the stalks and “hack” the maze. Inside, it was a little dark despite the bright afternoon sun. A little cold too, as the temperature was already sweater-worthy. I also noticed a scent of earth mixed with dried grain and a tinge of mildew. It should have been a really scary space. The giggling and games cut through all that.

My girls split into two teams with their friends and a competition naturally began to unfold. With the competition came pranks: girls jumping out of the corn to scare their opponents while others yelled intentional misdirects to steer the other team wrong. It was playful and fun — a solid bonding experience.

And the memory stuck.

It was only after we exited the maze, stuffed the kids with cake and snacks and dropped everyone at home, that the girls talked about the scary part of the whole experience. I took a bunch of girls into a corn maze in the middle of the Indiana backcountry and everyone came out alive. Better, they all came out wanting to do it all again. To this day, my daughters talk about “the corn maze birthday” and how it was the best party I’d ever thrown. When they recount the memories 13 years later, my daughters’ eyes light up, followed by that girlish giggle that was enough to disarm an entire corn maze years ago.

Jonita Davis (jonitadavis.com) is a film critic, writer, and pop culture junkie behind the online publication The Black C.A.P.E. Magazine (theblackcape.com, @theblackcapemag). She is also a freelance writer, a published author, an English professor, and a podcaster. She has a master’s degree in English (Literary Criticism Concentration) from Purdue University and teaches writing at Waubonsee Community College. Her previous works include Michigan City’s Marinas (History Press 2009), Michigan City’s Washington Park (History Press 2011), Questioning Cultural Appropriation (Enslow Publishing 2019), and We Gon Be Black Today (Chicago Review Press, 2023).

This story was originally published October 18, 2022 at 9:00 AM.