BAZETTA TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WKBN) — A haunted trail that has become a community staple over the last several years will not return for the 2024 season after a cease and desist was issued to the hosting organization.
Read Next: Will there be record heat for the Canfield Fair? Maniacs in the Woods began haunting the Valley in 2017 as a fundraising effort for Venture Crew 4054, a subgroup of Scouts of America. The Venture Crew was established in 2014 and chartered with the Bazetta Cortland Optimist Club.
Per the charter agreement, the club is financially responsible for the chartered organization, but they act independently, with the scout organization operating its own bank account under the Optimist Club’s EIN, according to Jeffrey Jiang, spokesperson for Venture Crew.
That account has been on hold as a result of a cease and desist order issued against the Venture Crew on behalf of the Optimist Club.
Jiang said it came without prior discussion when it arrived in the mail Saturday, but Bazetta Cortland Optimist Club President Worthy Cottrill Jr. says this is not at all the case.
Cottrill said for the last year and a half, the club has requested its treasurer to be added to the Venture Club’s separate account, which he says has been repeatedly denied.
“They opened a bank with our name and EIN number and won’t give us access,” Cottrill said. “We don’t want money, we just want to know how much it is so we can pay our taxes.”
During an interview with WKBN 27 First News, Jiang said, “At one point or another they had requested that their treasurer be put on our bank account, but that again wasn’t past precedent. Past precedent was that one member from the Optimist Club was put on the bank account for supervision, and typically it was the chartered rep which was the liaison between the scouts and the Optimist Club themselves.”
Read next: Fall and Halloween events 2024 When asked if that liaison was still in place, Cottrill said he believed they were not.
The Maniacs team says it is troubled by the lack of dialogue from the Optimist Club, and stated that this action “ultimately punishes the youth of Venture Crew 4054.”
Cottrill said all the Optimist Club wants is open communication.
“We just wanted to open the means of talking and they just started badmouthing us,” Cottrill said. “They decided to shut it all down, we didn’t. All we wanted to do was sit down and talk, they decided to go this route.”
In addition to the cancelation of their major fundraiser, Jiang says members and volunteers are unable to retrieve personal items along with equipment.
“The thing we are deeply saddened and disturbed by is, in the cease and desist order that was established and sent to us, we’ve only [been] given one day but we weren’t allowed much room, and some of our volunteers are storing their own personal items with the equipment.”
Cottrill said members are welcome to come and get their possessions.
Jiang said to the group’s knowledge, they have not broken any rules.
“We are 100% welcoming mutual and collaborative conversation,” Jiang said. “We just want to find agreeable terms. Without any formal documentation or proposals or anything, there is nothing for our committee or our team on our end to do but just comply with what we have so far.”
Monday would’ve marked four weeks from the opening of Maniacs in the Woods, and preparation was slated to begin this evening.
“To get this two days before we were going to start the prep work is kind of shocking to us,” Jiang said. He later added, “If this is the end of Maniacs in the Woods, it has been an absolutely great seven years.”
“I feel sad about all this, I didn’t want this to happen,” Cottrill said.
Venture Crew 4054 would not exist without a charter organization, and Jiang said they are working with Scouts of America to determine how to move forward.
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