On the Noose at Knott's Scary Farm

ABSTRACT This essay traces the evolution of Knott's Scary Farm, a popular Halloween attraction run by Knott's Berry Farm in Orange County, California. As the first large‐scale Halloween attraction in the United States, Scary Farm has been a leader in the growing commercialization of Halloween, recording the holiday's national and regional inflections over the last five decades. In examining Knott's Berry Farm's engagements with the Republican Party, Evangelical Christianity, and community policing, this essay argues that a series of mock executions that take place at Scary Farm reveal essential connections between Halloween and American conservatism.