Things to Do in Marion

Lush green fields roll outside of Eastern Iowa Sports Complex’s titanic facility. Throughout the week, guests from all over the region sprint across the full-size indoor soccer field, practice slugging within indoor batting cages, and hone their short games on an 18-hole miniature golf course. They can also be found hooping it up in full-size basketball gym and actually braving the elements on the facility’s three outdoor athletic fields.

Throughout the year, young players can sign up for the complex’s recreational programs, and adults can work out excess competitiveness in sporting leagues and athletic tournaments. The facility also hosts dance classes, community events, hourly field rentals, and a full-service pizza restaurant.

For more than 10 years, The Heart of Darkness has elicited scares from nearly 10,000 visitors every Halloween season with one of the largest haunts in Iowa. People from across the country and ghosts studying abroad brave nine separately themed areas on the terror-infested grounds, from a haunted playground to a maniacal-clown asylum. Each section crawls with grotesque creatures. A living scarecrow swipes at guests with a rusted sickle, causing them to flee right into the padded cell of Crispy, a demented arsonist whose victims gave him a taste of his own medicine by scorching his skin.

So committed to their duty to terrify, owners Kevin and Dolly Schults are affectionately known as The Halloween Family, as detailed on a 2009 episode of ABC's Wife Swap. Outside their spooky corridors, the Schults reward survivors with concession stands, a live DJ, and a photo booth that snapped the pictures Crispy uses for his online-dating profile.