When Danica Gabrielson’s 31-year-old manager started texting her, she was surprised.
It was 2011, the 16-year-old’s first season as a volunteer actor at Field of Screams, a haunted attraction in Lancaster County that has grown from a modest spooky hayride into a destination touted as one of the best in the country.
Gabrielson remembers texting her friends to see if they had also heard from him, and when they said no, she was excited. His attention felt special.
She said she had heard him make sexual comments, and seen him groping other volunteers as he passed them on the property or in the makeup room. But as a teenager, she said, she didn’t question the behavior. She thought it was normal.
When Mike King grabbed her butt for the first time, she said, she thought she was fitting in.
The extra attention continued, she said. He drove her around the company property on an ATV. He kissed her in his car. More comments. More touching. It was all new to Gabrielson.
After picking her up on a four-wheeler at the end of one night in 2012, King stopped on the hayride path near Corn Cob Acres, a fall family-themed attraction on the property. Gabrielson said he told her to stand up, and he stood behind her. King spoke into her ear.
She didn’t understand him at first.
“I was like ‘What?’” she said in an interview with Spotlight PA. “And he said it again, ‘Do you want it?’ And before I responded, he was pushing me down and I was bent over and that was that.”
At 17, Gabrielson was a virgin. King was 32.
As a teenager and now as an adult, Gabrielson views the moment as consensual. But she’s come to see their relationship as shaped by unequal power and enabled by a toxic workplace.
Every year, Field of Screams serves up scares to paying visitors from throughout the mid-Atlantic. But a Spotlight PA investigation found a pattern of allegations that the true horrors occurred behind the scenes, and accusations that management failed to adequately respond.
Interviews with 18 current and former volunteers who worked at Field of Screams from 2006 through 2024 described a hostile environment where some unpaid adult staff sexually harassed, forcibly grabbed, and groped young volunteers, and pressured teenagers into sex.
In response to Spotlight PA questions, the company issued a statement saying it is “committed to its mission of providing a safe, professional and enjoyable entertainment experience for the whole family.” “We are aware of unsubstantiated claims made against Field of Screams by a small handful of former volunteers,” the company said. “To be clear, there have been no criminal allegations made against Field of Screams at any time.” The statement also said Field of Screams takes these claims seriously and encourages anyone to report potential criminal behavior to the police. “The company also takes seriously its responsibility to report abuse of any kind against a minor to the legal authorities.” Several volunteers said they brought allegations of abuse directly to the brothers in charge — Jim and Gene Schopf — and while they were assured they would be investigated, the accused continued in supervisory positions. Frustrated by the lack of action, volunteers in 2020 began posting about their experiences on Facebook. But local law enforcement officials and the county district attorney said they could not respond to the posts without directly receiving reports of crime. And when asked by a reporter at the time, they declined to comment on the status or existence of any investigation. To date, no legal action has been brought against any of the accused. One volunteer interviewed by Spotlight PA said they worry the Schopf brothers’ prominence in Mountville Borough, a community of just 3,000 residents, has insulated them from accountability.
