For a few Octobers, if you wanted to see Cheryl Underwood's Halloween display, you drove out to Damon Road, slowed down for the line of cars idling along the shoulder, and hoped there was somewhere to park. That was the whole system: a front yard, some skeletons, and whatever goodwill the neighbors could spare. Eventually they ran out of it. A cease-and-desist letter from Williamstown Township shut the display down for most of one October over traffic and light complaints from people living nearby.
What happened next is the part almost nobody outside Williamstown Township knows, and it's the reason this year's version of the display is not a fragile, one-neighbor-away-from-ending tradition anymore. It has a permit. Not a permission slip. An actual Special Use Permit from the township board, the kind that outlives whoever happens to be running it.
From a Front Yard to a Barn
When the yard display got shut down, Underwood didn't quit. She moved the whole operation to a barn at Wamhoff Farms, the family-run Christmas tree and nursery operation on Burkley Road at the southern edge of Williamston. What started as a few hundred skeletons in a front yard became the Haunted Mermaid Barn: more than 200 skeleton figures, some dressed as mermaids, strung with well over 100,000 lights, free to walk through every evening in October.
The barn gave her room the yard never could. She could hang lights from the ceiling instead of stringing them along a fence line. She could build scenes instead of scattering props. And because Wamhoff Farms sits on agricultural land set back from the road, the parking and traffic problem that ended the Damon Road version mostly solved itself.
Underwood has said the appeal was never about being scary. It is meant to be a place families can wander through for free, something rare enough in itself that she has called it a gift.
"I love giving people an exciting free, fun place to go, a safe place to go and visit."
That sentiment carried it through a few seasons on borrowed goodwill. What carries it now is a piece of paper from the township.
The Meeting That Changed Its Future
In May 2025, Williamstown Township posted a public hearing notice for a special land use application submitted by Brian Wamhoff, proposing to formally host the Halloween and Christmas seasonal displays inside a building on the farm. The application ran through Section 8.02(OO) of the township's zoning ordinance, the provision that allows agricultural tourism uses on land zoned AG-SF, Agricultural-Small Farms.
That is a different legal category than "a nice thing a neighbor lets happen." Agricultural tourism is a recognized land use, the same category that covers corn mazes, U-pick orchards, and Christmas tree farms that add a seasonal event on top of their regular business. By filing under it, Wamhoff Farms wasn't asking for a one-time favor. It was asking the township to treat the seasonal display as a legitimate part of what the farm does, the same way the Christmas tree lot or the wagon rides are part of what the farm does.
The township board approved the Special Use Permit, with one condition attached: a six-foot vinyl fence, roughly 75 feet long, along the north property line, meant to address a neighbor's concerns about light spilling onto their land. The permit required that fence be resolved before the first event that October.
Then something practical happened that rarely gets recorded outside a township meeting packet. The house next door sold. By an October 2025 board meeting, Wamhoff and the new neighbor had already worked it out between themselves, in writing, that a fence wasn't necessary. The township removed the condition.
What's left is a permit with no strings attached, and township minutes spell out exactly what that means going forward.
"The Special Use Permit runs with the property owner and is good for as long as the events occur."
Not for one season. Not until the next set of neighbors complains. For as long as the farm keeps hosting it.
What a Permit Actually Buys
It is worth sitting with how different that is from where this started. A front yard display exists at the pleasure of whoever lives closest to it. One complaint, one new neighbor with different tolerance for headlights and idling cars, and it can be gone by the next October. That is exactly what happened on Damon Road.
A special land use permit tied to the property removes that fragility. It doesn't depend on which family happens to own the house next door, or whether this year's traffic is lighter than last year's. The zoning question got asked and answered once, in a public meeting, on the record, and now it doesn't need to be asked again unless the farm itself decides to stop.
That is a small, unglamorous kind of local governance. Nobody was filming it. But it is the difference between a tradition that might disappear and one that has, in practical terms, put down roots. For a farm that has spent decades in the choose-and-cut Christmas tree business, adding a permitted seasonal attraction is also a quiet vote of confidence in agricultural tourism as a real second line of business, not a novelty that goes away when the person running it loses patience.
If You're Looking for the Old Corn Maze, It's Not There Anymore
While the Haunted Mermaid Barn was putting down roots, another Williamston fall fixture was doing the opposite. Bestmaze, the corn maze that used to run near Williamston and Webberville, closed that location in 2023 during a pipeline project and never came back. It reopened at Cottage Gardens on the south side of Lansing instead, about twenty minutes from where it used to be.
If an old listicle or a stale directory page still sends you looking for a corn maze on the Williamston side of town, it's pointing you at a spot that has been closed for three seasons now. The fall attraction map here has shifted. The barn stayed. The maze moved on.
Visiting This Season
The Haunted Mermaid Barn has run every October since Underwood moved it to Wamhoff Farms, typically opening in early October and continuing through Halloween night, with longer hours on Fridays and Saturdays than the rest of the week. A few things worth knowing before you go:
- It's located at Wamhoff Farms on Burkley Road in Williamston, on the township's south end.
- Admission is free. There is no ticket and no reservation required.
- Evening hours run longer on Fridays and Saturdays than on weeknights, so a Saturday visit gives you the most time to walk through.
- Because the display now operates under a standing township permit rather than a year-to-year arrangement, it's reasonable to expect it back on a similar schedule in future Octobers, not just this one.
Underwood has also mentioned expanding the barn's Christmas display in years past, so the same building tends to have a second life once the skeletons come down.
Why This Kind of Story Is Worth Knowing
Most write-ups of the Haunted Mermaid Barn stop at the skeletons and the lights, which is fair, because that's the fun part. But the reason this display is still standing, in a bigger space, without the traffic problem that killed its first version, is a zoning decision that most residents never hear about unless they read a township meeting packet. Williamston is a small enough town that a single Planning Commission hearing can decide whether a beloved free tradition has a future or an expiration date. This time, it got a future.
If you're the kind of person who reads local meeting minutes for fun, or just the kind who wants to actually understand how a small town like Williamston works before you plant roots here, that's the pattern worth noticing. The town runs on decisions like this one: unglamorous, procedural, and quietly decisive.
If Williamston's mix of small-town governance and genuine community fixtures like this one has you thinking about calling it home, Shelly Hall can walk you through what that actually looks like here. Request a private consultation to start the conversation.
