A local corn maze is bringing a taste of Paris to the harvest and Halloween seasons.

The North Star Corn Maze, located a mile north of Northwood, is featuring a Paris theme this year, said Bryn Pangburn who has owned and operated the corn maze with her husband Donnie for eight years.

This year the maze is open until Nov. 1 from noon to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, Sundays noon to 10 p.m. and weekdays by appointment.

The site is a popular destination for youth groups and school trips. However, Pangburn said they no longer offer group discounts. Everyone pays the same admission of $5.

A picnic table and refreshments are available at the site, and Pangburn said catered meals have been held at the site. Hayrides are also offered for an additional expense.

Reaching the end of the 12-acre maze takes some about an hour to an hour and a half. Participants receive a map to navigate the three to five miles of trails. The trails lead to 15 stations; there’s a paper punch at each station.

People can leave the maze after eight stations if they’re tired or don’t choose to go on.

One of the most popular times to navigate the maze is at night.

Even with the map, people can have a hard time navigating the map and finding their way around dead ends.

“It is meant to cause you some challenge,” Pangburn said.

People of all ages have braved the maze. Pangburn said an 86-year-old woman went through the maze at night a few years ago, and she enjoyed the maze. People have taken strollers, wagons and wheel chairs through the maze.

Each station includes trivia and a dummy made to look like a person relating to Paris, like the Claude Monet, Leonardo da Vinci, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Nostradamus and Gigi from the novel and film “Gigi.”

Pangburn said one of the most popular times to experience the maze is after dark.

“I think with my little characters it puts maybe a little bit of an edginess to it. All of a sudden there’s somebody there, or you think there’s somebody there,” Pangburn said.

In past years, Pangburn’s dummies have posed as people like Gunslinger Ben Thompson when there was a wild west theme, pirate Blackbeard when there was a pirate theme, a mermaid when there was a under the deep blue sea theme and Robert E. Lee last year when the theme was based around the Civil War.

Pangburn said her father was a history teacher and that inspired the historic themes. An area resident held a Civil War reenactment near the site last year.

A deer stand is in the center of the field for employees to supervise and help people if they get lost. Pangburn said she’s tried to design the lights of the stand to look like the Eiffel Tower.

On Oct. 30 and 31, the maze holds a special haunted Halloween maze from 7 p.m. until midnight. Cost is $8, and participants must bring a flashlight. No maps are given out those nights, and people follow arrows and meet “ghouls and goblins” along the way.

“They help guide you through,” Panburn said. “I should say scare you through.”

Pangburn said the idea for the maze originally came from the television show “Sunday Morning” and a segment about small New England farms that came up with ideas to generate alternative revenue for family farms. She then attended a three-day corn maze seminar in Madison, Wis.

Researching the theme isn’t the only preparation that goes into making the corn maze. The field is cross planted to make it denser. To make the trail, Pangburn said she makes her pattern into a grid and separates the field into 60-foot squares. She then uses PVC pipe to mark the trail and she mows the trail three to four times to stop growing. Once the corn is thick enough, the leaves need be cut from the corn stalks along the trails to make the paths clear.

After all that work, Pangburn said it can be hard to harvest the corn at the end of the season, but she said she’s had to adapt to that and to people damaging the maze.

“I used to get very attached to the maze, because you spend time designing it, cutting it – just the feel of going through that maze cutting it, the different trails. You get a sense of how it flows. It becomes very sentimental, and then people are going in and they’re wrecking it,” she said.

Vandalism has been the biggest challenge of operating the maze, Pangburn said. People have damaged the dummies, cut alternate holes in the maze, and people wrecked solar lights at the site.