Every Knott’s Scary Farm Haunted Maze Ranked, and INKED Draws First Blood

Knott’s Scary Farm brought the monsters out in force this Halloween season, with a killer collection of haunted mazes ranging from murderous cartoons and ancient evils to spider-infested nightmares and classic slashers. There were a lot of great mazes this year, each bringing its own style, scares, creatures, and twisted ideas to the event.

I go to Knott’s Scary Farm every year and have been doing it for years, but this was my first time being invited by Knott’s to attend its Scary Farm media night and experience everything the event had to offer. Knott’s didn’t disappoint!

One of my favorite things about Knott’s Scary Farm is how much it leans into original haunted mazes that tell their own stories. Instead of relying primarily on established horror franchises, Knott’s gets inventive, creates its own monsters and mythology, and comes up with some wonderfully creepy concepts.

This year also introduced two new mazes, Inked and Unearthed, and both immediately landed at the top of my list. Inked was easily my favorite of the night, but every maze had something cool to offer.

After making my way through all of them, here’s my ranking of the Knott’s Scary Farm haunted mazes from best to worst.

1. INKED

Inked was my favorite maze at Knott’s Scary Farm this year, and its wonderfully twisted concept made it an easy number one. Mortimer Morbid is a washed-up 1930s cartoonist and former head of Morbid Studios who discovers that blood can become ink and imagination can become reality.

His attempt to create one final Halloween special brings his cartoon characters to life, unleashing murderous toons looking to drag everyone into their demented world. There’s so much going on inside this maze, and the creepy vintage animation aesthetic gives it a personality completely different from anything else at the event. It’s imaginative, wild, creepy, and ridiculously fun.

2. UNEARTHED

The other new maze, Unearthed, was also one of the best experiences of the night. You’re thrown into an excavation site as part of a search-and-rescue team arriving days after a distress signal was sent from the base.

Unfortunately, the discovery of ancient tablets has awakened something that should have stayed buried. The archaeological setting gives the maze a great adventure-horror vibe as you move farther into the excavation and discover exactly what has been unleashed. It’s an awesome concept with plenty of creepy atmosphere and some great scares along the way.

3. MARY: THE HAUNTING OF WORTH HOME

Mary: The Haunting of Worth Home takes guests into a rotting house at the end of the street where something terrible is hiding within the walls. Haunted-house mazes are a Halloween staple, but this one makes excellent use of the familiar premise by turning the Worth Home into a creepy place you really shouldn’t be wandering through.

The deteriorating environments and paranormal elements make this a great old-school haunted-house experience with plenty waiting around the corner to get you.

4. THE ZOO

Things get wonderfully insane in The Zoo, where the cages have been broken open and the experiments have taken over. What was once a zoo has become an abandoned mad-science nightmare filled with the results of experiments that have gone horribly wrong.

The concept gives Knott’s plenty of room to get creative with its creatures and environments, making this one of the more bizarre and entertaining mazes of the night. Apparently, putting mad science and a zoo together is a spectacularly bad idea for everyone involved, but a great idea for a haunted maze.

5. EIGHT FINGERS NINE: THE BOOGEYMAN

Eight Fingers Nine: The Boogeyman takes a darker fairy-tale approach to horror, dropping guests into a colonial township being terrorized by an ancient and very hungry evil. This maze has a cool folklore quality that separates it from the monsters, slashers, and supernatural horror found elsewhere at Scary Farm.

The colonial setting also gives the experience a distinctive visual identity, while the Boogeyman concept taps into one of the oldest fears around: something lurking in the darkness waiting to get you.

6. ORIGINS: THE CURSE OF CALICO

Origins: The Curse of Calico is always a good one. The maze dives into the sinister paranormal history of Calico as Sarah Marshall is put on trial for suspected witchcraft, unleashing supernatural horror across the town.

This continues to be a fun Scary Farm maze because it feels so connected to Knott’s and the mythology of the event itself. It’s creepy, atmospheric, and packed with the kind of Old West supernatural horror that fits perfectly at Knott’s.

7. CINEMA SLASHER

Cinema Slasher is made for horror movie fans. The maze traps you inside a collection of horror films where you’re forced to play the hero while trying to survive a relentless Slasher.

Moving through different movie-inspired environments gives the maze a fun cinematic quality, and the whole thing plays with the familiar experience of yelling at characters in horror movies for making terrible decisions. This time, you’re the character walking directly toward the danger. Good luck with that.

8. CHILLING CHAMBERS

Chilling Chambers is basically a horrifying trip through Knott’s Scary Farm history, celebrating more than 50 years of the event by resurrecting pieces of its past. Longtime Scary Farm fans will get an extra kick out of recognizing the characters, ideas, and nightmares pulled from decades of Knott’s horror.

Even if you don’t know all that history, it still works as a fun collection of scares that shows just how much wonderfully messed-up material Knott’s has created over the years.

9. ROOM 13

Room 13 mixes Prohibition-era style with supernatural horror as violent murders tear through the celebration at The Blind Tiger. The trail of the mysterious Devil’s Elixir eventually leads to the sinister Argive Hotel, where checking in is apparently much easier than checking out.

The period setting gives the maze a fun personality, and the hotel makes a naturally creepy playground for Scary Farm to unleash its monsters. It’s another example of Knott’s taking a familiar horror location and building its own mythology around it.

10. WIDOWS

Coming in at number 10 doesn’t mean Widows isn’t worth experiencing because I had a blast going through every maze this year. This one takes guests inside a convalescent home whose residents have become possessed by spiders and are preparing a special place for their newest visitor.

Yep, that would be you. If spiders already freak you out, Widows has plenty of nightmare fuel waiting inside. The convalescent-home environment makes the whole concept even creepier, and the spider imagery gives the maze its own gross-out flavor.

Knott’s Scary Farm delivered another fantastic Halloween lineup. Every maze had its own personality, but Inked and Unearthed were the big standouts for me, especially Inked, which took a wonderfully strange idea and turned it into something awesome! It also had the longest line at the event!

More than anything, I came away appreciating Knott’s commitment to original horror. These mazes aren’t simply places to walk through and get scared. They introduce characters, monsters, worlds, and stories specifically created for Scary Farm, and that creativity is a huge part of what makes the event so much fun.

If you hit Knott’s Scary Farm this Halloween season, what was your favorite maze? How would you rank them?