Wow! Maize is corn. Maize is yellow. One gets lost in a maze. Now, combine the three meanings of this homophone. Lost in a maize colored maze of maize? Surely this would not be for a claustrophobic or the directionally challenged such as myself.

First started in Philadelphia in 1993, the maze has become a popular and financially sound (hopefully, if marketed well enough) investment for the farmer. If you haven’t visited a maze yet, I hope this article encourages you to seek one out this Halloween season.

Each year around this time, the teens and young people at our church begin to talk about going to the maze. Because it has become so popular our church has now extended its yearly outing to anyone in the church that is accompanied by a parent. No one, but me, wants to miss the maze outing. I’ve never thought this was at all interesting. Why would someone want to go out into the cornfields and trample around? Having a need to be prepared and not wanting to be outdone, I began to research this new thing; the maze.

The Philadelphia maze started as a fundraiser for the victims of the flooding in that area. The maze was awarded the “World’s Largest Maze” in the Guinness Book of Records. Mazes are open from September through the Halloween season and the admitting cost is between 5 to 7 dollars per person.

Some farmers make their own maze, but the one our church group attended was professionally done by a maze designer and his trusty GPS. The design was from the Wizard of Oz and was about one acre in length. A farmers cost can be upwards from 5K depending on how big you want your maze to be.

Before we went into the maze we were given a neat picture of it taken from the sky, directions out of the maze, a flag in case you get lost in the maze and instructions to follow while in the maze (do not trample the stalks down, etc.).

Once inside the maze, you are surrounded by yellow stalks. High yellow stalks. The really neat picture in my mind became, well, a maze. Go figure. I could hear kids laughing and running and guessing which way to go. About two and a half hours later, victory sounds resounded as some people had successfully made their way out of the way. Directions – Not! It had gotten dark and no one could read their directions.

I could hear some who had conquered the maze go back in for seconds. I myself was struggling. My partner and I were lost. I’ll never know who it was I suppose, but someone decided it would be cool to grab an ankle through the corn. My ankle! Yikes! Now, it’s a haunted maze. I defied the one direction that I was given. I carefully went towards the sound of vehicles on the road. Straight! I was getting out of there. And I did.

It sounds horrifying, but really, it was like visiting a haunted house. Would I go back again? Absolutely! It was a great experience. There was a couple just entering the maze as we were leaving. It was dark and they, like us, had no flashlights. After they had just gotten a little way into the maze, I gave a blood curdling witch’s howl. I could hear them giggling with feelings I had experienced myself about the time I realized that I was in too deep to go back.