As they sip drinks before enjoying the Maria Bay Fall Festival, Laura is amazed to learn that in the interval since they both broke into the O’Bannon mansion, Daniel has been back more than once to search it on his own. She is also mystified that Daniel seems to be entertaining the possibility of living in the house once he has officially taken possession of it.

At the festival, Laura bites into a rotten candied apple while Daniel thinks he sees an eyeball in a jar of homemade spaghetti sauce, which brings back his nightmare about being in the cellar with his father.

When a fortune teller becomes suddenly ill after Daniel and Laura approach her for a reading, the two move on in their desperate quest for fun to a shooting gallery where Daniel attempts to win a prize for Laura. One of the balloons he bursts explodes in a spray of blood, which the attendant seems not to see.

The couple decide they’ll end their night out by following a Thompson tradition of riding in the annual hayride, a haunted fund-raising event in which Daniel had acted as a teenager. What starts out as fun turns into a series of horribly frightening acts performed by characters who are far worse than anything a haunted attraction might employ.