What started out as a fun-filled evening quickly turned to tragedy when a group of eager young first-year students attended their first ever haunted corn maze here in the idyllic town of Walla Walla. On a crisp fall evening, a small group of Andersonians, having heard the rumors of the great excitement the Haunted Corn Maze has brought to Whitman students for years on end, planned on a night of innocent autumnal fun last Friday, Oct. 11.

Being college students now, the students thought it would be appropriate to commemorate their practice of a Whitman tradition with a few drinks… and maybe a few more… and another few…

“I mean, hard cider and Oktoberfest right? … And besides, we were totally for real, I mean, like not that drunk at all really. Like hardly drunk at all,” said Nate Spookeder, a first-year who survived the incidents of last Friday, while hiccupping.

Having properly pre-gamed, Spookeder and first-year friends Sally Summers, Jackson Hill, Carol Smith and Jason Lee set out for the corn fields. After pinky-swearing to stick together in the corn, they headed in. What exactly happened in the maze remains unclear; however, corn maze workers and interviews with eye-witnesses reveal the following picture of events.

The first-years were horrified, and let out blood-curdling screams. They had arrived at the ticket booth. The ticket seller reported the following to the police: “I am not sure what they were screaming about –– $8 per person seems like a pretty fair rate, I think.”

The police relayed that Summers ran off into the cornfields alone, not to be found until later that evening muttering to herself  “eight dollars, eight dollars.” After having been treated in a psych ward, Summers has made a partial recovery and has spoken out about the incident.

“I regret that last four loco,” she said.

However, doctors state that any prices over $6 could send Summers into a tailspin.

But having already paid for their tickets, the four remaining members of the group entered the maze. When they had made it about 30 feet in, the first axe-wielding specter jumped out at the group. Taking defensive actions learned from two years of tae kwon do, yellow-belt Hill forcibly disarmed and assaulted the masked high school maze worker. Security was called and Hill was asked to leave the premises.

Bravely continuing on, Spookeder, Smith and Lee made it half-way through the maze without further trouble. However, while being chased by a clown with a chainsaw, Lee used Smith as a human shield and forced the clown worker to accept her as a sacrifice in exchange for his own life. After a 10 minute argument, the clown took custody of Smith while Lee and Spookeder ran away screaming. Neither the clown nor Smith really understand the exchange, and the clown just pointed Smith towards the exit. Smith returned to campus unharmed.

Two left and half a maze to go, Spookeder and Lee made for the end of the maze with much haste, but after they were separated by a malicious zombie, only Spookeder made it to the exit of the maze. After waiting two hours for Lee to exit the maze, without success, the police were called to the scene. Lee was found two days later in the heart of the maze, having survived by only eating raw corn cobs, despite being half a mile from the highway and the nearest convenience store.

All in all, the police cite extreme fall frivolity as the source of all of last Friday’s troubling events.