3 Creepy Corn Maze Horror Stories Animated

Have you ever walked into a corn maze and realised, halfway through, that someone had been walking behind you the whole time — and that they knew every turn before you did?

Chapters:
0:00 The Question in the Dark
3:01 Not on the Map
5:55 Already Known to Police
9:04 Open Gate
12:04 Halloween Special
15:13 Scene 66
18:02 Forty-Seven at the Pump
20:46 What The Coordinates Meant

Written and narrated by Alice Kettleby.
Original fiction — names, places and events are invented.

Read the story

Have you ever walked into a corn maze and realised, halfway through, that someone had been walking behind you the whole time — and that they knew every turn before you did? My name is Mark. I'm a freelance graphic designer, thirty years old. A client cancelled on a Saturday in October, so I drove out to Harrow Hill corn maze alone.

One entrance, one exit, a central clearing with a hay-bale throne, and twelve full acres of eight-foot cornstalks. I paid eight pounds at the gate and pocketed the paper map. I've never needed a map to crack a maze. It's a quiet thing I'm proud of. So I folded the paper without looking and pressed it flat against my thigh.

There was a man just inside the entrance. Standing still, facing the first junction. Worn brown coat, muddy boots, a knitted hat pulled low. He wasn't looking at the path — he was listening. I took the first left, then a sharp right — confident. Behind me, footsteps crunched on dry stalks.

Were they matching my pace exactly? I slowed down to test it. They slowed too. At the second junction I paused to listen. The footsteps stopped at exactly the same moment — but so did the wind. There was no wind. I moved on. They resumed before I did. The central clearing opened up around me — hay-bale throne, a carved pumpkin, one flickering lantern.

I was alone. I sat down, ate a cereal bar, and noticed my hands were slightly shaking. I took the exit corridor from the clearing — long and straight — and glanced back. The man in the brown coat was standing at the far end, watching me. I raised a hand. Nothing. I hit a dead end, reversed.

The man was now at the junction I'd just come from. Ten feet away. Silent. I said I was trying to get through. He stepped aside without a word. It was 3:29. Same route, wrong turn. I heard him round the corner before I saw him — coat rustling, boots deliberate. I counted six seconds between each footfall and kept moving.

Then I found it: two stalks bent and tied with orange baler twine, forming a crude gap. Not official. Someone had made this deliberately. Who, and when, and were they expecting someone to use it? I heard footsteps rounding the corner behind me. Instinct took over — I stepped through the gap.

On the other side was a narrower, darker passage between two rows, unmarked on any map. I pulled out the map for the first time. The passage wasn't on it — not even close. I photographed the gap. The image came back blurred, dark, and the corner behind me was empty. I tried the ticket booth number.

It rang eight times. Nothing. So I texted my flatmate Gus a pin drop and the words: still in maze, back by four. It was 3:22 p.m. The passage opened into a second clearing — smaller, no lantern. A child's red wellington boot stood upright in the mud. Just one. It looked new. I did not pick it up.

Then a girl's voice called 'over here!' — off to my left. I moved toward it. I told myself I was being helpful. I ignored the fact I'd seen no children at the entrance. I found nothing. An empty junction. When I turned around, the red wellington boot had moved — six feet closer. No footprints near it in the mud.

None. The corn on both sides was still. I found the exit signs, followed every green arrow, and stepped out at 3:41. The staff member in the hi-vis vest was already watching the car park. Why was she watching the car park? I was halfway across the car park when I saw him — the man in the brown coat, arms folded, leaning against my passenger door, watching me walk toward him.

It's 3:44. He says it quietly, flatly: 'You took the wrong turn, Mark.' I paid cash. I never gave my name. No one here knew it. So how did he? I kept walking — not toward the car, toward the ticket booth. I pulled out my phone and made a loud fake call, naming the location clearly, describing the man as I walked.

The man didn't follow. When the staff member came out with me, the car park was empty. Car untouched. Then she said, quietly: 'He asked the booth earlier what name was on the booking.' Police took a statement — no threat, no law broken. They noted the name detail and suggested I might have mentioned it without realising.

I know I didn't. I hadn't spoken to anyone. I still have that paper map. When I got home and unfolded it properly for the first time, there it was — in the margin, in small neat pencil. My name. The map was brand new. Do you know what it's like to hide in a corn maze for four hours, listening to someone methodically walk every single path trying to find you?

I do. I know exactly. I survived. My shoes are still in a bin bag because I can't look at them. The person the farm reported was already known to police. But let me start at the beginning. I'm Dara — second-year geography student, Fenwick University. I took a Halloween job at Blackthorn Farm corn maze for £9.

20 an hour. I needed the field-trip deposit. I didn't know what else I'd get. Main barn, refreshment trailer, maze entrance fifty metres out, and a staff-only shed at the northern edge where I kept my key. I memorised that layout on day one. It mattered later. Perimeter patrol every ninety minutes, litter pick, re-spray the path arrows, radio base if anyone was still inside at closing.

Routine. Except on the third day something made the routine feel wrong. Day three, 4:45 p.m. A man appeared at the hatch — mid-forties, grey waterproof jacket, no one with him. He waved off the map. 'Done this one before,' he said. Why did that feel wrong? I opened my notebook and logged his entry time.

I couldn't explain why — just a pull in my gut. He was already inside the first corridor before I'd finished writing the four and the five. Six o'clock. One visitor still inside. I radioed Fen — he came back flat, unhurried. I heard something set down before he spoke. 'Go in and call him out,' he said.

Why wasn't he worried? I went in through the staff gate at the northern edge, called out that we were closing. Silence first — then footsteps, and they were moving away from me, deeper in. That changed things immediately. I found him at a central junction, standing still, back to me.

He turned slowly when I spoke. He was smiling. 'I know,' he said. 'I was waiting for the staff to come in.' His boots were spotless. Same path that had left mine brown to the ankle — and not a mark on his. I kept staring. He noticed me staring. He didn't offer any explanation at all.

We reached the staff gate — the short route, not the public exit. I hadn't told him where I was going. He stepped straight through without slowing, without thanking me. He already knew the layout. Back inside for a litter sweep, I found his grey jacket folded on the hay-bale throne.

He'd been wearing it when he walked out. I was certain of that. So how was it here? I tried the radio again. Still nothing — just static swallowing my voice. Dead signal inside the maze too. The equipment shed had a landline. That was the only option left. The staff gate was standing wide open.

I had locked it myself — padlock, both hands, double-checked. Someone had been through it. Something pale was pressed into the mud on the bottom rail. Inside, I pulled the cord on the single bulb. The landline receiver was already off the hook — lying face-down on the shelf. Who had touched it?

I picked it up. Dial tone. Fen answered. I told him the gate was open, the jacket was there. He said he'd drive the quad over — wait by the shed. I said okay. I did not mention the breathing outside the door. At six thirty-four the shed door handle turned — all the way down, then all the way back up.

I said loudly: 'Fen, give me a second — just grabbing the paint cans.' My voice held. Barely. The handle stopped moving. Footsteps retreated into the stalks. Sixty seconds later, Fen's quad headlights swept across the shed window. I opened the door. I was shaking. I showed him the jacket.

Fen said the grey jacket matched reports from two other farm attractions that season. The man had never been charged. I kept asking why — nobody gave me an answer I could live with. They never identified him from the jacket. The farm installed a second lock on the staff gate. I finished the season because I needed the money.

I know exactly how that sounds. I still have the notebook where I logged his entry time. Three days later I turned to the next blank page. Four words, handwriting that wasn't mine: 'good girl, stay quiet.' Have you ever been the last person responsible for a place, and realised someone has decided that makes you the perfect target?

That thought didn't occur to me until it was far too late. I managed Gallow's End Corn Maze for six seasons. That last night — the night we closed the site for good — something happened I've never fully explained. And I've spent a long time trying. Fourteen hundred pounds, six weeks, cabin included — that's why I took it every year.

What I never told the owner: by season six, the maze had started to feel like it was watching me back. Twelve acres, one padlocked gate. Ticket hut, generator shed, portaloo block, my cabin — all on one gravel track. Nearest town four miles east. No neighbours. No passing headlights after nine.

Nobody would hear anything. Three keys on hooks inside the ticket hut — Nora, Clive, the farm owner. I never could account for every copy ever cut. That thought sat badly. Last Saturday of the season — Halloween special. Fog machine, speakers on poles playing recorded screaming across the whole maze.

This year, for the first time, one of the speaker poles had been moved. I didn't move it. Last visitors left at ten. Nora and I swept the maze — twenty minutes, found a dropped umbrella and a glove, declared it clear. Clive had already driven home. I locked the main gate at ten-thirty.

At 11:02 the fog machine kicked back on — that low pressurised hiss, cold drift across my face. I'd switched it off myself. I told Nora: stay in the hut. The power switch was physically back in the ON position. I clicked it off. Stood there a moment. My torchlight hit every corner — nothing.

My hands were steadier than they should have been. Army habit. AT 11:09 p.m. the sound-track speakers activate — that recorded screaming, thin and distant, drifting from the poles inside the maze. Pete stops dead. The sound system control box is padlocked to a pole inside the maze.

Nora suggested a timer fault. I'd built the rig myself — no timer, physical switch only. I told her to lock the hut door and not open it. She said my face scared her more than the sound. I grabbed my torch and radio and headed for the maze entrance. The internal wooden gate was standing wide open.

I had latched it myself. I was absolutely certain of that. I reached the control-box pole in four minutes. Padlock closed, box locked, speakers silent. Something had triggered them with no way in. I stood very still and listened. From somewhere inside the maze, a human voice — flat, no emotion — reads out a number: 'Forty-seven.

' Pause. 'Forty-seven.' Pete's radio crackles. He keys it. Nora's voice: 'Pete, there's someone standing outside the hut.' I ran. Ninety seconds back to the hut. Nora had locked the door. A figure had passed the window — heading toward the cabin, not the gate. Taxi: six minutes. I could wait.

Or I could get my laptop — two months of site admin, no backup. I went for the laptop. I am not proud of that. Cabin door ajar. Torch swept: bed, desk, kitchen. Laptop closed, untouched. But the window above the desk — stiff latch, always kept shut — was wide open. I latched the window and turned to leave.

On the inside of the door, black marker: a column of numbers, dozens of them. The top one read forty-seven. I photographed it. I jogged back, grabbed Nora. Taxi arrived at 11:17. I gave the driver an extra twenty to hold thirty seconds while I padlocked the hut. Then we left. On my phone: a voicemail from the farm owner, sent at 10:55 — before any of it — asking if I'd let someone in for a late booking.

I called back. No answer. Nora grabbed my arm before I could speak. I stayed in the taxi. We reached Durston at 11:44. I called the police from the pub and stayed on for eleven minutes. At 2:14 a.m. the officer called. Site undisturbed, locked, no sign of entry — then she paused.

The main gate padlock had been changed. Same chain. Different padlock. The officer reads him a number engraved on the replacement padlock. It is 47. Pete does not have that padlock. He has never seen it before. It fits the chain perfectly. Two weeks later a friend spread a printed county map on a pub table and went very quiet.

The numbers carved on my cabin door — they were grid references. All of them. Eleven coordinates. Every one a farm or rural attraction within the county. Eleven circles. Gallow's End was third from the left. What I couldn't explain were the three I'd never heard of. Three coordinates led to open fields — no planning records, no public listings, nothing.

Had he scouted them? Was he waiting for someone to turn them into something? I couldn't stop asking that. I gave the police everything — timestamps, the photograph, the fog machine log, the voice saying forty-seven in the dark. The detective's pen barely moved while I talked. That bothered me for weeks.

A former worker — dismissed from one of those coordinate sites the year before — was questioned and released. Not enough evidence, the detective said. Then he looked away from me first. A former worker, dismissed from one of those coordinate sites the year before, was questioned and released.

Not enough evidence, the detective said — then looked away from me first. The farm owner shut the site that week. The local paper ran it as operational costs. So what was he actually hiding? Pete read that line in a Durston café and couldn't finish his tea. Pete still has the photograph.

The cabin door covered in marker numbers. He hasn't deleted it — tells himself it might still be needed someday. He almost believes that. Two months later, a petrol station cashier read his total aloud unprompted — forty-seven pounds exactly. The man hadn't glanced at the display.

Pete's card was already trembling before he tapped it. He paid without looking back. Drove two miles, pulled onto a grass verge, hazard lights blinking. Sat there asking himself: was that the same man? He never went back to check. He still carries the original padlock key. The padlock's gone — the whole gate's gone.

But he found it in his coat pocket the morning after the detective interview. He never put it there. He can't explain it. He's tried. He stopped moving the key between pockets. Now he just checks it's still there — every single morning, without fail. He doesn't dream about the man.

He dreams about the gate standing open — fog machine still hissing, no one left to switch it off. No one who should be there, anyway. He spread a road atlas across the kitchen table and pencilled circles around seven sites. Two were in the same county. Both closed the following October.

No announcement. One of those sites had a worker reported missing — briefly, then quietly unfiled. Pete found that detail himself, at two in the morning, on a county council archive page. In January, a detective he'd never heard of called — different force, different county. She asked one question: had he worked at Gallow's End?

He said yes. She thanked him. She said she'd be in touch. She never called back. He tried the number twice — out of service both times. He filed a complaint. Nothing came of it. Every night since November, he checks the front door lock. Then checks it a second time. His hands still shake slightly on the second check.

He can't seem to stop. When people ask why he left seasonal work, he says it wasn't for him. Same flat pitch every time. It almost sounds like the whole truth. Last week he almost left the key on his bathroom shelf. He stood there for a full minute. Then he picked it up and put it back on the ring.

He keeps the original padlock key on his keyring — cold brass, worn smooth at the edges. The padlock itself no longer exists. Some nights he grips the key until the teeth press white marks into his palm. Every coordinate on that cabin door was a real site. Seven farms. Three mazes.

One closed after a worker vanished. Pete found that detail himself. The man they questioned had worked six of those seven sites across four consecutive seasons. The detective said that slowly, choosing her words carefully, with what sounded — honestly — like embarrassment that it had taken this long.

Not enough, she said. He was released. Pete drove home, sat in the car park outside his flat for twenty minutes, and went inside. The last message from Nora was three words: still okay here. Pete read it standing in his kitchen at seven-fifteen on a Tuesday morning. He typed a reply.

He deleted it. He has not heard from her since. He drove out once, eight weeks after closing. Padlock on the gate — different model than the one he'd fitted. Heavier. The mud around the cabin door was still fresh. Two months later, a petrol station cashier reads his total without being asked.

Forty-seven pounds exactly. Pete pays. He does not look back. Last month he found a photo on his phone he never took — his own car, shot through corn stalks, from inside the maze. Timestamped the last night he was there. He still carries the padlock key. The padlock is gone, replaced, fitted by someone else's hands.

But he keeps the key because getting rid of it feels like answering a question he can't hear yet. He says the photo is the part that breaks him. Because it was timestamped the last night. And he was certain, absolutely certain, that he'd been alone in that maze. Certain.