Wicked World keeps it spooky while remembering one of their own

JESSAMINE COUNTY, Ky. (LEX NEWS) — Screams have echoed through Wicked World ScareGrounds for more than two decades, but behind the masks and haunted attractions is a story about keeping the memory of one of their own alive.

What began as a small backyard haunt has grown into an attraction featuring three different haunts in Jessamine County.

“We are a haunted attraction. We’ve been around for 21 years. We have three different haunts,” Wicked World General Manager Dr. Drizz said.

Those attractions include Nightmare, which Dr. Drizz describes as “Sarah’s twisted reality of her town,” along with The Haunted, where visitors use laser guns to shoot at zombies, and Valley of the Dead, an attraction built around the idea that the line between the living and the dead has become blurred.

For those working behind the scenes, creating the perfect scare is part of the fun.

“That’s a lot of fun, just being able to figure out what would scare someone, mess with them, and then even the ones that don’t get scared, you’re still entertaining them,” Dr. Drizz said.

But the people behind Wicked World are also continuing the tradition in memory of a former member of their haunted family: Jekyll.

Jekyll, whose real name was James Edward Reed Jr., was 38 when he died in a motorcycle crash on Versailles Road in October 2024.

His presence can still be felt at Wicked World.

“We still have pictures up of him and stuff around,” Dr. Drizz said. “We still remember him every day, but, yeah, the show must go on.”

As another Halloween season brings screams back to Jessamine County, those who knew Jekyll say lessons they learned from him remain part of what they do.

“You always remember them, the ones that we’ve lost, just as we’re out here scaring and remembering how they would have done things and taking lessons from them,” Dr. Drizz said.

That can mean incorporating something Jekyll once did into their own performances, allowing pieces of his approach to live on through the scares they create each October.

And for visitors who think they can make it through without flinching, Dr. Drizz has one piece of advice: Don’t let the actors know you’re afraid.

“My biggest key, especially for the scaredy-cats, is to try not to act afraid because we can suss it out if you are,” he said. “We know who’s afraid and who’s not.”

At Wicked World, the goal is to make sure visitors leave with a memory. For the people behind the masks, some of those memories also belong to Jekyll.

Wicked World is open on Thursdays from 8-10 p.m., and on Friday and Halloween night from 8 p.m. to midnight.

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