EUSTIS – Following the yellow-brick road on Saturday night at Cathedral Pines Campground was both frightful and fun for many of more than 300 people of all ages who participated in the Haunted Hayride.

For those trying to evoke screams or laughter, it was a hoot, said Wicked Witch of the West Deb Buschman at the “Wizard of Oz” fright site.

“We have too much fun,” she said, while waiting in the dark for the first wagon load of people to arrive. “This is the only time of the year that us adults can have fun and get away with it.”

Hosted by the Stratton Elementary School Parent-Teachers Conference, the annual event is its biggest fundraiser. Last year, more than 400 people braved chilly fall temperatures for the three-hour show.

With an hour to go by 8 p.m. on Saturday, 333 people had either ridden hay wagons around to the campground’s fright sites, munched on goodies in the Drop Dead Café or stood in line waiting for wagons to return.

“That was fun!” Don and Lisa Knight of Jay both said after stepping off the hay wagon they rode past haunted sites on a loop through the campground.

“It was scary!” Logan Knight, 7, said.

The scariest moments, Logan said, were “when (the garage ghouls) followed us and the truck, and even the witch got me with her broom.”

Earlier, behind the scenes at the Oz site, which took set designers Jeff Rackliff, Buschman, Kathy and Kate Matthews, Denise Cote, Mona Smith, and Kory Jacques a full day to set up, all but Rackliff were busy donning outfits or adjusting set lighting.

Cote was Tin Man, Jacques the Scarecrow, Smith was Linda the Good Witch, Kathy Matthews was the Cowardly Lion, and Kate Matthews shivered in her red shoes and Dorothy outfit.

“It took us a week to get everything together,” Buschman said.

Last year the group did a ship scene from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” This time they portrayed the flying monkeys scene from the movie, complete with an over-amped soundtrack booming through the woods from a car stereo.

“It gets funnier as the evening goes on,” Cote said.

“Once we get our acting down pat, it’s pretty fun,” Buschman said.

Anyone is welcome to participate in the haunting, by setting up a campsite with props and joining in. The event is held two weeks prior to Halloween, because Eustis usually has snow on the ground by then, Buschman said.

“One year we did it in the pouring rain and we had to keep picking up and moving the Drop Dead Café because of pooling water,” she said.

Among the dozen or so sites, were a ghoulish school detention setting and the Eustis Fire Department site, which featured a live fireman running at passing hay wagons only to get lifted high in the air as the night erupted in blaring sirens and deafening horn blasts.

Back at Oz land just after the hayride’s 6 p.m. start, Linda the Good Witch took her position in a lighted promenade as the others hurried to get ready.

Their pace quickened when Tin Man Cote ran up the road shouting, “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

Reaching the yellow-brick road-covered stage and its backdrop of towering scary trees, Cote donned mask and funnel hat as the others scrambled onto the stage. Taunted by Buschman’s witch, they cowered under monkeys hanging from tree limbs above them.

“Oh look! There’s Dorothy,” said more than one voice from the dark atop a hay wagon as the Oz set came to life.

Just as quickly, it was over and the Oz gang reset themselves for the next wagon.