The first year the Haunted Mill opened many eerie things befell those who played and worked at the mill.  One of the truly disturbing things that happened involved our scarecrow.  The scarecrow used to hang in the field behind the large bonfire.  As visitors and workers would warm themselves by the fire, many claimed that the scarecrow’s eyes would reflect the light of the fire.  This was very interesting to us because the eyes were just black triangles drawn with marker on a gunny sack face.  We couldn’t see why anyone would think that they reflected the light of the fire.  Then, the reports become more distressing because people quite often reported that the scarecrow was on fire.  We would run out to put out the fire, but would find the scarecrow unharmed.  After a few times of running out to put out an imaginary fire, we decided something should be done.  So we had workers watching the scarecrow to see if we could figure out what was happening.

After the first week of watching the scarecrow, the workers would report that the scarecrow disappeared from its spot.   None of them could say how it disappeared or where it went. Upon investigating this problem, we would always find that the scarecrow was moved next to one of the bonfires, either in the front or the back of the mill.  The workers never caught who was moving the scarecrow.  Meanwhile, visitors started to claim to have seen the scarecrow inside the mill or just outside the mill warming itself by the fire.  The visitors thought the scarecrow was a person in costume.  We knew this wasn’t the case.

A couple weeks went by and the scarecrow mystery still wasn’t solved.  We started to ignore the reports, because it all seemed harmless.  Then, one night, a worker described a awful scene that we could not ignore.  He claimed as he was watching the scarecrow, he saw the eyes of the scarecrow begin to burn as if they were on fire. Thinking he was catching someone lighting the scarecrow on fire, he slowly approached the scarecrow.  He stopped in his tracks when the scarecrow turned and looked directly at him.  He then watched in horror as the scarecrow started walking towards the fire.  He claims that just before the scarecrow reached the bonfire, it burst into flames.  This sent him running to find us.  We ran out to investigate what he claimed and we saw that the scarecrow was next to the fire, but completely intact and no signs of burning anywhere.  The worker quit that night.  We knew we couldn’t afford to lose anymore help, so we took the scarecrow down and stored it in a nearby shed.  As we were cleaning the shed this year we found the scarecrow.

On our 10th anniversary we decided to throw caution to the wind.  Therefore, we have returned the scarecrow.  He no longer hangs in the field behind the bonfire, but don’t be surprised if you see him there.  For some weird reason, this scarecrow seems to like fire.