From a Teenage Dare in a Dark Farmhouse A Team Built the Dream.

It Started With Land

The story of Spookywoods begins long before the first scream echoed through the woods. It begins with a dream.

Tony Wohlgemuth's parents immigrated to America from Zurich, Switzerland, chasing the opportunity to build a better future. Tony's father had one simple goal: to own land.

In 1979, when Tony was just nine years old, the Wohlgemuth family moved onto the farm that would one day become Kersey Valley Attractions. His father's vision for the property was to grow Christmas trees, and that same year, the family planted thousands of pine seedlings across the farm — Tony helped plant them himself, working alongside his father in the rows that would one day become the haunted forest.

At the time, nobody could have imagined those trees would eventually help inspire one of the most recognized haunted attractions in the Southeast.

Saving the Farm

Three years after the seedlings were planted, everything changed.

In 1982, Tony's father moved back to Switzerland — leaving twelve-year-old Tony, his mother, and his siblings on the farm with the mortgage payments still coming due. The land Tony's father had worked so hard to own was suddenly at risk of being sold.

From that moment forward, Tony had one goal: make the interest payment on the farm. Keep it from being sold.

He tried everything a kid could try. He sold produce at the local farmers market through the summer. He hustled whatever he could grow, build, or move. But the numbers were not adding up, and things were getting desperate.

Tony was determined to find a way. He just did not know yet what that way would look like.

A Dare That Started It All

Then, during the summer of 1985, a teenage dare changed everything.

Fifteen-year-old Tony and a group of friends were camping out in a barn beside an old farmhouse on the property when the power suddenly went out. The group dared one another to enter the dark farmhouse late at night to restore electricity to a light they were using nearby.

One of Tony's friends, Chuck Passmore, ventured upstairs into the darkness and accidentally stirred up a family of bats hiding in the attic. As Chuck began screaming, another friend, Micah Cox, rushed upstairs to help — only for the two to terrify each other in the pitch-black house. Then he said...

At 15 years old, they figured it could not be that hard.

With almost no budget, Tony and his friends scavenged materials from roadside trash piles, dumpsters, old farms, and anything else they could repurpose into props and scenery. In the summer of 1985, they opened the very first version of what they called The House of Death.

The original haunt was crude, homemade, and terrifying in all the right ways. The walls were painted white and splattered with fake blood. Guests crawled through a tunnel carefully built through Tony's mother's yarn stockroom — the only room they were forbidden to disturb because she had once used the farmhouse to teach off-campus knitting classes for GTCC.

Upstairs featured narrow hallways, low ceilings, fake snakes, live rats, and claustrophobic rooms that made the experience feel far more intense than anyone expected.

That first season, tickets were sold out of the front porch window for two dollars apiece. Two dollars per scream, per scare, per teenager who came back the next weekend with three more friends.

It was inexpensive. But it worked.

From Farmhouse to the Woods

As word spread through local schools and the surrounding community, crowds began forming outside the farmhouse. While many teenagers spent weekends cruising town or hanging out, Tony and his friends spent every spare moment building sets and searching for props.

If they passed a discarded couch, old fence, broken furniture, or construction debris sitting on the roadside, they stopped immediately and asked how it could be used in the haunt.

Very quickly, Tony realized building scares was only part of the challenge. Managing people was equally important. After noticing guests leaving because ticket lines were too long, he moved ticket sales away from the farmhouse and built the attraction's first dedicated ticket booth.

When traffic jams inside the farmhouse became another issue, the group engineered a legendary solution. Using metal siding from a scrapped tanker trailer found on a friend's farm, they built a giant slide out of the second story of the house to speed up the exit process. The slide quickly became one of the attraction's earliest signature features.

As the haunt continued growing, the experience expanded outside the farmhouse and into the surrounding woods. Then Tony rediscovered the Christmas trees his family had planted years earlier.

Walking through the dark rows of unharvested trees in the early 1990s, Tony realized how eerie and immersive the forest felt at night. He immediately knew the trees would become the perfect setting to expand the haunted trail experience.

Those Christmas trees planted by his father in 1979 became the foundation of what would eventually become Spookywoods.

The Name Spookywoods

In 1996, the attraction made another major leap forward. Guided tours were eliminated in favor of free-flowing guest experiences, creating a more immersive and unpredictable haunt.

That same year, the attraction officially adopted the name Kersey Valley Spookywoods, and Tony registered the domain name SpookyWoods.com. Kersey Valley came from Kersey Valley Road, the road that led guests to the farm and eventually became part of the attraction's identity.

Tony and Donna Build the Business

During Tony's first year of college, he met Donna, who would later become his wife and business partner. At first, Donna could not understand why Tony focused more energy on Halloween than school. But after realizing she could not change his passion, she decided to join him in building it. In 1988, Donna officially joined Tony in running Spookywoods, and the two have been partners in the haunt — and in life — ever since.

Together, Tony and Donna transformed Spookywoods from a seasonal passion project into a growing business.

One of their first major marketing victories came when they could finally afford a single billboard. They strategically placed it beside a competing haunted attraction in Greensboro, making sure thousands of potential customers would see the Spookywoods name before reaching the competition.

That year, attendance jumped from roughly 1,000 guests to over 4,000 visitors.

They knew they had something special.

Betting the Farm

As attendance grew, so did the need to spread risk beyond Halloween. In 2001, Tony and Donna launched the Maize Adventure while also operating NCIT, a computer networking support company run directly from the farm.

As the daytime attractions continued growing, they eventually sold the technology company and turned that office into the administrative headquarters for Kersey Valley Attractions.

New experiences followed, including outdoor laser tag, escape games, zipline tours, school field trips, and seasonal festivals.

Growth did not come without challenges. Over the years, Tony fought through zoning battles, permit challenges, legal hurdles, and infrastructure requirements that threatened the company's future.

At one point, Guilford County informed the business that it could not continue operating year-round without major permanent facilities. After paying off the farm in 2009, Tony and Donna made their boldest decision yet. They literally bet the farm — using the property as collateral to secure financing for permanent bathrooms, a commercial kitchen, expanded guest facilities, and the zipline tour.

Persistence paid off.

A Year-Round Destination

One of the company's defining moments came during the economic downturn of 2008. Rather than discard unsold Christmas trees, the Wohlgemuths chose to donate them to families in need, earning front-page recognition and reinforcing the values that continue to guide the business today.

Years later, after extensive planning and reinvestment, Kersey Valley Christmas was completely reimagined and relaunched in 2020. Featuring custom-built wagons, new tractors, and more than two million lights spread across the property, it has since become one of the premier holiday attractions in the region.

Four Decades. Built One Year at a Time.

From a single dare in a dark farmhouse to one of the country's most recognized haunted destinations.

The Next Chapter

Today, Kersey Valley Attractions is bigger than Tony ever imagined that night in the farmhouse — and it is still expanding into its next chapter.

Recent land acquisition and annexation into the city of Archdale have opened the door to major future developments — visible directly from Interstate 74.

But despite all the growth, the heart of the business has never changed.

Tony and Donna Wohlgemuth believe the secret to their success is constant reinvestment, innovation, attention to detail, and never becoming satisfied with good enough. Safety always comes first. Customer service comes second. Every review matters. Every guest matters.

From 10 Teenage Friends to 365 People Who Share the Dream

In 1985, ten teenagers built the original House of Death together — selling tickets out of a front porch window for two dollars apiece, scavenging props from roadsides, and sharing one wild idea between them.

Today, that team has grown to 365 people.

Most are part-time team members who help operate the year-round attractions and return season after season for the haunted woods and Kersey Valley Christmas. Seven full-time staff keep the farm running every day. And every fall, hundreds more come back to put on the show.

Many started as teenagers themselves — kids who came on a school field trip and circled back years later for their first job. They learn customer service, responsibility, teamwork, and leadership before heading off into careers and families of their own. Some come back every year. Some never leave.

It is no longer Tony's dream. It belongs to everyone who shows up to help build it each year.

A Community Tradition

Most importantly, Kersey Valley has become woven into the fabric of the community itself.

Families who once visited as children now bring their own children and grandchildren. Fourth-generation guests now walk the same property where it all began decades ago.

What began as a haunted house built by teenagers has become something far greater: a place where memories are created generation after generation.

To every guest who has celebrated birthdays, reunions, engagements, weddings, school trips, and family traditions at Kersey Valley — Tony and Donna are eternally grateful.

Every single visitor has helped turn Spookywoods into what it is today: a destination for unforgettable memories, family fun, and year-round excitement.

Built on Fear. Powered by Family.

RESERVE YOUR NIGHT

Remembered for Generations.

From a teenage dare in a dark farmhouse to a team of 365 people who keep showing up to build it bigger every year, Spookywoods has only ever grown because of the guests, families, employees, and community who choose to be part of it.

Limited capacity each night · Peak times disappear fast · Reserve early