Alayna Bell, of North Kingstown, is all set for a night of fright at Trails to Terror on Tower Hill Road in Wakefield.

The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

What is it about this time of year that makes us both terrified and terribly amused by things like skeletons shooting out of babies’ cribs or devils that can bring us to our knees and make the ground shake beneath us, as well?

Halloween seems to be the one time of year when it’s okay to be afraid — okay, petrified — and laugh about it afterwards.

And there are plenty of folks out there who want to be the ones to scare you, whether taking you on haunted hayrides or luring you into darkened corn fields to see what’s lurking among the stalks.

There are too many haunted houses, frightening fields, terrifying trails and bloodcurdling buildings to visit them all between now and Halloween.

But we again sent out a scouting party — me and two of my kids, Chris, 11, and Katie, 13 — to check out four of the most popular haunted attractions in the region. Here’s our report:

Factory of Terror

Don’t be misled by The Undertakers, a trio of animated skeletons who entertain guests at the Factory of Terror by “playing” Monster Mash and other songs of the season on guitar, keyboard and drums. That’s the end of the fun here at the factory, which is a maze of frightening scenes like a graveyard littered with caskets that have spilled open, or a morgue with body bags that appeared to have live people inside, hanging from the ceiling.

Sue and Tony Luizinho have long proven themselves to be masters of the macabre, especially when it comes to selecting props for the haunted alley and creepy courtyard at the entranceway, like the shelf full of heads that turn and bob in time to the music at the start of the show, or the 30 or so different scenes along the darkened hallways, such as the skeleton that comes shooting out of the crib in the baby’s nursery.

That’s among the $35,000 worth of new animatronics added this year to their show, which they first created in 1996.

There didn’t seem to be as many “jump out” frights as in years past, but the 30 to 35 actors who work here clearly have their roles down pat — especially folks like the doctor armed with a circular saw who’s collecting body parts for his lab, or the doll-like clown in the smoke-filled room with no escape. (Indeed there was so much smoke that most of the dozen or so people in our group were gagging as we stood there, trying to figure out where to go, before the clown said, “You better start trying some doors, or you’ll never get out of here.”)

There also seemed to be too many stretches of long dark hallways where nothing happened, aside from the “spider webs” — strands of fishing line strung from the ceiling — that got in your eyes and hair as you walked past. But Luizinho said that’s intentional. “We give people a break, so to speak … We let people’s imaginations kind of take hold.”

But the dozens of individual scenes scattered along the way had some awesome props and animatronics — from the bird room filled with birds and noises reminiscent of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Birds, or the pirate scene, with skeletons calling out, “Ahoy, maties!”

In fact, it would have been fun to check out some of the scenes more thoroughly, if not for the 13-year-old whose face was buried in my back, pushing me along, as she peeked out and screamed her way along.

And that’s a good thing, Luizinho said. “If we’re afraid, that means we’re doing the job right.”

Best part: Hands-down the best props and animatronics of all the local haunts.

Worst part(s): Long line for such a short walk-through. After waiting more than a half-hour in line, it took only 13 minutes for our group to make its way through, from start to finish. (The average guest spends about 20 minutes there, we’re told.) And there was way too much fog/smoke in the room with no escape.

Boo for the buck: B+, because it was so quick.

Factory of Terror, 33 Pearl St., Fall River, (no phone number available) open Thursdays and Sundays, 6:30 to 10 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays 6:30 to 11 p.m. through October, as well as Oct. 29, 30 and 31, 6:30 to 10 p.m. Admission is $17 for adults (except on Saturday nights, when it’s $20) and $12 for children under age 10. Cash only. See www.factoryofterror.com.

Field of Screams

Tim Leyden has been hosting the Field of Screams at his family’s Christmas tree farm in West Greenwich for the past 12 years, making it one of the longest running haunted hayrides in southern New England. And each year, he prides himself on adding new and better props and sets to attract thousands of people looking to be scared.

They won’t be disappointed.

The Field of Screams is a little more remote than some of the other popular Halloween haunts, but that adds to its creepiness — being out in the middle of nowhere, down a dark country lane. And Leyden makes it worth the trip by offering four separate haunted experiences for the price of one.

The first attraction is scariest of all — a walking tour of the Pine Grove Insane Asylum, which was supposedly deserted years ago but is still host to a variety of eerie and scary patients — from a morgue with a crazy doc coming at you with a knife in the autopsy room to a body bag room with “corpses” hanging from the ceiling in plastic bags, like a scene from the movie Coma.

Leyden employs about 70 actors for his Halloween presentation, and the best of the best are on duty inside the asylum, ready to terrify at every turn. They do much more than leap out of the shadows and yell “boo.” They were a creepy part of the scenery poised to strike like a blood-thirsty black widow. And part of the fun was not knowing when or how they would attack — only that they would. Our group screamed itself hoarse as we stumbled through.

And Freddy Krueger’s surprise appearance at the end was downright terrifying.

As Conor, in our group, put it: “Just when you thought it’s over, it’s not over.”

From there, visitors head outside to a cemetery filled with walking zombies before boarding a hay wagon for a trip through the Silver Load Ghost Town, where the Pig Man is supposedly on the loose, looking to eat people. This is nowhere near as scary as the inside of the insane asylum, but fun all the same. In fact, beware of the flame thrower out here — that’s real fire!

After rolling past a 30-foot Santa (not at all decorated for Halloween, but eerily out of place here in the fields) you enter a 4-D maze, so called because not only are the actors dressed in 3-D clothes that blend into the 3-D murals on the walls, but also because of the many 3-D items on display that make it difficult to tell what’s real and what’s not. And he’s added a new vortex, or spinning tunnel, filled with neon lights that jump out at you in 3-D, adding to the overall effect, he said.

The final stretch is a walk through the Mystical Forest, with “talking” trees, a rather lame ending to an otherwise fun and spooky venture. But it’s also a nice way to calm the racing heart after an hour or so of frightful fun.

Best part(s): The Pine Grove Insane Asylum was definitely among the scariest of any attractions we visited, and the actors inside the asylum were without question the best anywhere.

Worst part: The scariest attraction at the field — the Pine Grove Insane Asylum — was at the beginning, instead of the end, so the other attractions at the Field of Screams seemed tame and/or lame in comparison.

Boo for the buck: A, especially since there are four frights for the price of one.

Field of Screams, 179 Plain Meeting House Rd., West Greenwich, 884-7369, open Thursdays and Sundays 6:30 to 9p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays 6:30 to 10 p.m. in October, plus Oct. 29 and 30 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults and $13 for children under 12. Visit www.field-of-screams.com.

Scary Acres

Confreda Farms is fairly new to the group of Halloween haunts, having created its haunted hayride and maze only five or six years ago. But it’s already one of the top draws in the state when it comes to seasonal scares.

It starts, like many other Halloween attractions, with a hayride — this one a 20-minute haunted hayride through the vast cornfields of Confreda Farms. Ann Sienko, a spokeswoman for the venue, said they created a variety of scary scenes along the trail to re-create “nightmares from hell … all the things people are scared of” — from asylums and evil clowns to car accidents and biohazardous accidents.

Some of these are fairly tired and lame, especially the many car accident scenes, but there are some neat twists, including a scarecrow who jumps down off his perch and onto the wagon, yelling, “Gotcha!”, or the clown with the bloody machete, imploring passersby, “Why don’t you come play with me!”

Sienko said they don’t do a specific theme for the whole hayride because they want to keep each scene different. “This way, they’re kind of surprised. They don’t know what they’re going to find.”

The hayride then ends at the haunted maze, which last year was one of the best Halloween attractions my kids and I sampled. This year, it was just okay.

There weren’t nearly as many actors hidden among the cornstalks this year. I remember Chris being so spooked last year that he fell backwards onto his butt when a security guard stepped out of the stalks. But this year, the spookers were few and far between on the particular weekend that we were there. Sienko said that was in part because it was the opening weekend and they hadn’t been able to nail down their staffing, but she said they’d be up to full strength — and full scare — by now.

But it’s still fun going through the maze with a group, getting lost in dark paths, with corn stalks towering overhead. Even without ghouls, the imagination can play tricks on you — when you’re not laughing, or screaming, with your family and friends.

Best part: The Grim Reaper’s rendition of the comedy skit, “The Evolution of Dance,” had everyone laughing between the hayride and haunted maze

Worst part: The props along the hayride aren’t as slick as some other haunted hayrides, and there weren’t many actors in the haunted corn maze, so it wasn’t as scary as in the past (at least not during its opening days).

Boo for the buck: B.

Scary Acres, 2150 Scituate Ave., Cranston, 823-3327, open Thursdays through Sundays in October, plus Oct. 29 and 30, from duck to 10 p.m. each night. Admission is $15 for adults and $13 for children under age 12. See www.confreda.net/scaryacres.

Trails to Terror

“Send in the Clowns” takes on a whole new meaning at the gory “Cirque De Slay” at Highland Farm, where owner Jack Sumner and his team of ghoul-meisters have spent months scaring up new props and themes for their haunted hayride.

“Each year, we try to pump it up,” Sumner explained.

These guys do haunted hayrides right — with four separate tractors ready to roll each night, carrying guests who sit on actual bales of hay. Each tractor is also equipped with its own sound system, so everyone can hear the narration through the 25-minute journey — when they’re not screaming loudly at the characters jumping out of the woods and onto the wagon with chain saws, machetes and evil grins.

And that’s as you drive by a variety of different scenes, from the circus magician who cuts his assistant in half with a bloody chain saw as the “blood” splatters all over the place, to the sideshow of freaks, illuminated by strobes as they burst forth from their dressing rooms on each side of the trail, unleashing chaos.

If you survive the hayride — even 5-year-old Dylon Randall of South Kingstown made it through without crying — it’s time for a walk through the Forest of Fear, with its theme of “Once Upon A Nightmare.”

Dozens more ghosts, ghouls and creeps are ready to attack as you make your way along the path, past the cemetery with headstones marking the crags of people like Notta Goodwife and Sue A Side, and into an underground tunnel covered with spiders and webs — really creepy.

Finally, you reach the devil himself, Sumner said, noting that the hour of reckoning is terrifying. “The whole scene is set so that it intimidates people.”

What an understatement that is: As you round the corner into the devil’s lair, you see him, on a 10-foot throne, like the mighty Oz towering over the cowardly lion.

“Bow before me!” the devil commands.

Beware the penalties if you dare defy him… and hopefully you’ll escape anyway.

Best part(s): The devil at the end of the Forest of Fear and the hayride, with a theme that was narrated over the sound system built into the wagon.

Worst part: None.

Boo for the buck: A.

Trails to Terror, 4235 Tower Hill Rd. (Route 1), South Kingstown, 792-8188, open Thursdays through Sundays nights in October, from 7 to 10 p.m., except on Oct. 26 and 27 when it’s open until 11 p.m. Admission $12 for Delamorte’s Haunted Hayride and $12 for the Forest of Fear walk-through, or $18 for a combo ticket providing admission to both. Check out www.trailstoterror.com .

lkirk@projo.com