Frontier City’s Fright Fest Is Happening Now Through Halloween

Every year when Frontier City announces its Fright Fest, I get a rush of nostalgic emotions rolling back to me from childhood. Being from a small nothing Northern Oklahoma town, Frontier City was where we all went to feel the frights of Spooktober.

A little backstory... My sister and I share a mother that lives for scaring the kiddos. Even to this day, she'll load up the nephews and hop off to some random abandoned house telling them tall tales about it being where the Texas Chainsaw Massacre happened and junk. Yeah, she gets way into the season of spookiness.

After scarring us for life, she found a happy medium between fun and fright when Frontier City started doing their Fright Fest in our childhood. At dark, the park would get foggy and the lights would get pulled down to barely on, it really set the tone for what was to come.

I can't remember all the details, it was some 25 years ago, but I remember walking through one of the water rides. Being that it was too cold to do log flumes and whitewater stuff anyway, they drained the canal and put a haunted house thing together full of performers and really creepy stuff. Faux graveyards, zombies walking around, all that jazz. The one thing that really stuck with me was the body bags.

If you've ever been on a theme park whitewater ride, there's almost always some sort of a tunnel to go through. Frontier City is no different... but instead of making the tunnel section spooky, they made it full of horror. They hung body bags in a grid throughout the entire thing and left it surprisingly well lit to see everything. Off-white canvas bags stained with blood hanging from the ceiling, obvious human beings props inside the bags.

It was super creepy walking through the maze of death, but you'd find relief in seeing the exit. It was about that time that the real people inside those hanging bags would start reaching out and grabbing your shoulders and stuff. I'm pretty sure even our mom screamed bloody murder at that one.

The rest of the Fright Night experience ended with my sister freaking out to the point her future-husband spent most of his time threatening to open his can of whoop-*** on the performers that were taking their performances to eleven. We still laugh about that first trip to Fright Night.

If you find yourself in OKC and down to feel alive again, you might mosey up to North OKC and experience it for yourself. It was always a lot of fun. It's open now through Halloween night, odds are it'll only get busier each night until then. Good luck.