Out past the last streetlight on Mayne Road, where the pasture gives way to a stand of trees and the only illumination is whatever the moon offers, something has been waiting since 2022. It started with bad news and a pair of sisters who refused to let it end there.
That September, the Westman Halloween community got word that Grim Acres Scare Away Cancer — the beloved Brandon yard haunt run by Brian and Amber Sutherland — was closing for good. After twelve years, the Sutherlands announced they could no longer shoulder "the financial burden, mental, physical and health requirements" of the event, which had raised more than $130,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society. The sisters, who had grown up loving Halloween, started talking about what it would take to fill that void. What they landed on was a haunted forest.
The timing was absurd. It was already September, only weeks from Halloween. Undeterred, they took the idea to the Rivers and District Chamber of Commerce to get the wider community behind it. The community answered. Volunteers, sponsors, and neighbors pulled together a walk-through haunt in the trees at Lucky Break Ranch, just off Highway 250 outside the community of Rivers, and by the end of October the first Haunted Forest had come to life. According to the ranch, it "put together an event that still has people talking today."
The vision was explicit from the start: bring the community together to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society, Manitoba, to help people touched by cancer, and to keep the spirit of Grim Acres alive in the Westman region. Each year since, the forest has raised money for the Cancer Society and a local organization chosen for that season. By the fourth annual event in 2025, the organizing committee was setting a fundraising goal of more than $10,000, split among CancerCare Manitoba, the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba, and the Riverdale Harvest Food Bank — a widening circle of beneficiaries that reflects how the event has grown.
The ranch itself is not a haunted-house set but a working equine facility. Lucky Break Ranch and Tack, listed with the Rivers Chamber of Commerce under contact Kim Richardson, is a certified Equine Assisted Learning and CHA riding-instruction operation that runs trail rides, youth summer camps, and women's and men's workshops through the year. When October comes, its pastures and forest trails become the haunt. The trail is a wide, packed-down path worn by the horses, which is part of why the event has been able to welcome visitors of all ages and mobilities. On the official site, the organizers warn that the moonlight is your street light, the howling of coyotes and wolves is the real deal, and the glowing eyes moving through the trees belong to actual night creatures — a reminder that the setting does much of the scaring on its own.
The structure of the evening is deliberately two-faced. No-scare hours run from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., when families can walk the trail and younger kids can take in carnival games, pumpkin carving, a concession stand, and an outdoor movie without being chased by anything. Then, from 7:30 to 10 p.m., the scare hours begin and the forest becomes something else entirely. The event's own copy puts it bluntly: "Pull up your big kid britches, and bring a few extra changes." Alongside the trail, there are kids' carnival games with prizes, food and hot drinks, and a range of seasonal activities. Sponsors are recognized on-site in the haunted forest cemetery, their names carved into a hierarchy of tombstones, crosses, family plots, and crypts depending on their donation — a fittingly macabre thank-you for the businesses and individuals who underwrite the props, generators, lights, porta-potties, and pumpkins.
What makes the Haunted Forest unusual is how thoroughly it belongs to its community rather than to a single operator. The committee recruits scare actors, carnival workers, canteen staff, security, and setup and takedown crews, plus "creative souls" to build props and help plan the whole thing. The result is a haunt staffed largely by neighbors, staged on a ranch that spends most of the year teaching people to ride, and pointed at a cause that has touched nearly every family in the region. It is, in that sense, a direct descendant of Grim Acres — the same impulse to turn a front yard or a pasture into something frightening in order to do something good.
For 2026, Travel Manitoba lists the Haunted Forest presented by Lucky Break Ranch as the 5th Annual Haunted Forest, running across two weekends, with the listing dated October 15. The ranch's own materials have historically announced the exact dates and hours closer to the season — the 2025 event ran October 16 to 19, from 4:30 to 10 p.m. daily — and the event operates as a walk-through trail rather than a fixed-seat show, so visitors come and go through the evening rather than sitting for a performance. Because the 2026 dates and ticket details have not been independently confirmed beyond the provincial listing, anyone planning to make the drive out to Rivers should check the ranch's Haunted Forest page or its Facebook page before heading out. Admission is by ticket.
What is certain is the shape of the thing: a rural ranch at the end of a gravel road, a trail through real woods, a community that shows up to staff it, and a take that goes to cancer care and local causes. Five years after two sisters decided a shutdown wasn't the end of the story, the forest is still open — and still asking whether you have what it takes to get through it.