The Shapiro administration is allowing children to volunteer for a popular haunted attraction in Lancaster County despite the business facing past allegations involving sexual misconduct, workplace injuries, and violations of rules meant to protect minors.
Field of Screams does not have to pay the people who staff the attraction, under federal and state exemptions for seasonal and recreational establishments. These volunteers aren’t protected by most labor laws that empower regulators to inspect businesses and issue penalties for violations.
Field of Screams does, however, have to obtain permits from the state for each volunteer under the age of 18 that it uses, and must certify that it won’t put kids in danger or force them to volunteer for an amount of time beyond what’s allowed under Pennsylvania law.
The state Department of Labor and Industry reviews permit applications, and says on its website that it won’t approve them for “performances that are potentially dangerous or hazardous to the child’s well-being.”
However, 14 current and former volunteers told Spotlight PA that actors, including minors, have been in dangerous situations at Field of Screams over the past decade. They allege there were sexual relationships between teenagers and adults, that workers were groped by customers, and that volunteers experienced respiratory issues and injuries due to workplace conditions. They also say Field of Screams pressured teenage volunteers to work long hours on school nights and to stay for shifts exceeding state rules.
Spotlight PA sent a detailed list of the newsroom’s findings to the PR firm serving as the media contact for Field of Screams. As of July 15, there was no response from the firm or the company.
A similar letter was sent to the Pennsylvania governor’s office and the state Department of Labor and Industry. Neither responded to the newsroom’s letter.
Former volunteers who spoke with Spotlight PA said the culture of Field of Screams discouraged them from speaking up.
They frequently described themselves and the other teen volunteers as “misfit kids” who either did not have a great home life, did not fit into any cliques at school, loved Halloween, or were a mixture of the three.
“They definitely take advantage of … the outcast kids in schools … the ones that don't fit in with people, the ones that are just more so loners,” said Samantha Snellbaker, who volunteered as a minor from 2013 to 2015. Snellbaker believes that kids who need a place to belong are more likely to return every night, no matter the conditions.
There’s very little oversight of the permit system, despite it being intended to protect children. The labor department told Spotlight PA that it does not do routine inspections or reviews to ensure compliance; instead, it relies on people to report violations.
But when the state found out Field of Screams had used minors without submitting permits for years, it didn’t penalize the business. Instead, it launched an education program for all haunted attractions.
Yet Field of Screams continued to break the rules.
Alleged harm to volunteers
Cecily Feliz did not plan to return to Field of Screams after her first year. An adult volunteer had sex with a teenage friend of Feliz’s, she told Spotlight PA, and her pleas to her manager, Mike King, and ownership to do something had gone unanswered, she alleged.
But when a different manager told her she should return, she agreed. A teen at the time, she loved Halloween and scare acting.
The Frightmare Asylum, the attraction to which she was assigned, was dangerously filthy, she said. Bugs, dust, and cobwebs, along with empty bottles, cigarette butts, glass, and other hazards, littered the space.
While working there, Feliz acquired bruises all over her arms, legs, and chest, she said, often from banging her legs on blocks sticking out in the dark rooms.
One night, sick from fog, strobes, loud noises, and exhaustion, Feliz became physically ill and threw up in a garbage can. Sitting in the cold, she held herself, trying not to get sick again.
When a manager finally arrived, she said she wanted to leave. But he allegedly told her the actors were responsible for putting on the show for people who traveled to Field of Screams. She kept working.
“If you had two legs, could walk, see, and could be a body in a room, you couldn’t leave,” Feliz recalled. “And if you left, you were [expletive] shamed for it.”
In 2012, then-Gov. Tom Corbett signed into law the Child Labor Act. It required businesses that use child performers to apply for a permit.
An application for a permit must be signed by each minor’s parents, a school administrator, and the business. The application requests details such as what time the minor will report for the performance and how many hours the minor will be on the property. If approved, the state sends back a permit that designates how long the minor can be on the worksite for a shift and by what time the minor must leave.
The state can deny or revoke a permit if the business does not follow the requirements.
The state also lays out broader rules, such as children must always be properly supervised and kept from harm.
But on a Field of Screams waiver that the company requires parents and children to sign, a copy of which was obtained by Spotlight PA from 2023, the business says that it can’t guarantee compliance with those rules.
Possible risks and dangers detailed in the waiver include physical, psychological, and emotional injuries; pain, suffering, illness, permanent disability, paralysis, and death. The waiver also informs parents, “There may be periods of time that your child is not directly supervised.”
A previous Spotlight PA investigation found past instances of alleged mistreatment at Field of Screams, including harassment, groping, an adult exchanging explicit photos with a teenager, and teenagers being pressured into sex. When the owners were made aware of some of the allegations, they continued to allow one of the accused individuals to stay on the property, the newsroom found.
Cloud Ruggiano said she wasn’t trained about safety precautions when she volunteered at Field of Screams as a 17-year-old in 2021. On her first night acting on the hayride attraction, she jumped off the wagon to scare customers and injured her knee.
Managers had a paramedic evaluate her, but her mother was never called, she said.
Isabella Hudgins, who started at Field of Screams in 2022 when she was 15, remembers being hit and threatened by customers, which she said “was kind of just part of the gig.”
Ultimately, the requirement for entertainment permits for minors is the only labor law Field of Screams must follow for child volunteers, state Department of Labor and Industry spokesperson Trevor Monk said in an email to Spotlight PA.
But the company has failed to even comply with that.
According to records from the Department of Labor and Industry, Field of Screams did not submit any applications for permits until 2021 — nearly a decade after the law’s enactment.
"Additionally, before 2020, no haunted attraction in Pennsylvania had applied for child entertainment permits with the Department," Monk wrote as part of his response to a Spotlight PA request.
The state Department of Labor and Industry told Spotlight PA that the agency didn’t even know Field of Screams, or any haunted attraction, was using volunteer child performers until 2020, when a group of volunteers went public with allegations of mistreatment.
“Enforcement efforts are generally complaint driven,” Monk explained.
Under state law, violations of the Child Labor Act can result in either administrative or criminal penalties of up to $500 for a first violation. Further violations can lead to fines of $1,500 and up to 10 days in prison per instance.
However, since the state did not determine until 2021 that this requirement applied to Field of Screams, the business was not fined, Monk wrote to Spotlight PA.
After the determination, the state launched an education campaign to inform haunted houses statewide about the requirements.
Even after the education efforts, Field of Screams has failed to send in an application for every minor performer as required by law.
Spotlight PA submitted a Right-to-Know request with the Department of Labor and Industry for applications submitted by and permits issued to Field of Screams from 2021 to 2023.
The request did not return an application for Cloud Ruggiano. She also confirmed that no permit paperwork was submitted for her.
A wide-reaching exemption
Federal and state labor laws typically protect workers from abuse by their employers or unsafe work environments. But those protections do not apply to volunteers like those who work at Field of Screams.
According to labor lawyers who spoke with Spotlight PA, the company appears to fall under the seasonal amusement and recreation exemption. That makes the business exempt from minimum wage and overtime regulations.
To qualify for the exemption, a business must operate for no more than seven months out of the year or meet the requirements of a test that compares receipts from one part of the year to the other. Labor law experts who spoke with Spotlight PA said that Field of Screams would appear to fall under the time-limit qualification.
Organizations do not need to apply to the state to qualify for the exemption. For that reason, there is no way to know how many businesses in the state claim it or use volunteers in a similar way to Field of Screams.
Outside of the Department of Labor and Industry investigating an individual business, there is no broader oversight of how the exemption is used.
Complaints are the main way the state would learn about possible issues with a child performer permit, but the department has declined to make such information available.
In response to a Spotlight PA request, a spokesperson said the department has not taken any disciplinary actions against Field of Screams.
Ultimately, state lawmakers could pass legislation removing the exemption that allows Field of Screams and businesses like it to use volunteers.
“Federal law says that states can be more restrictive than the federal law,” said Michael Foreman, a professor at Penn State Dickinson Law with a background in appellate representation in civil rights issues and employment discrimination cases.
“Some states don't allow this exemption,” he added.
Maryland and New Jersey both require amusement and recreation establishments to pay staff minimum wage, though these workers are still exempt from overtime rules.
Long hours, no consequences
Isabella Hudgins said that when she volunteered at Field of Screams, she was aware of a policy saying minors have to leave at a certain time.
But the managers on the property never enforced it, she said. Hudgins would sometimes leave as late as 2:30 a.m.
And when she needed to leave earlier, the adults in charge made it clear it was discouraged, she said.
“Leaving early often made me feel guilty because I knew people would be mad at me for doing it,” Hudgins said. Volunteers who left early, she explained, were viewed as unreliable by their peers.
Pennsylvania’s Child Labor Act limits the amount of time a minor performer can work depending on their age — from two hours within a 24-hour period for infants, to six hours for 17-year-olds.
In permit applications to the state reviewed by Spotlight PA, Field of Screams said minors report for performances between “6 p.m. and midnight” and perform for “generally 6 hours.”
However, Field of Screams volunteers who were minors when they worked there told Spotlight PA they were called to start their shifts as early as 1:30 p.m.
They also said shifts could stretch to as late as 2 a.m. on busy nights.
Former volunteer Snellbaker said after long weekend shifts, she and her friends struggled to stay awake in class.
“It's really disappointing because I know these things have been brought up to [the owners] and just nothing gets done about it.”