“Literally, the cast of ‘Glee’ is all like, ‘Let’s go.’ And I started to cry,” he said.

How Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson got ‘really traumatized’ during Halloween hayride with full Glee cast

"Literally, the cast of 'Glee' is all like, 'Let's go.' And I started to cry," he said.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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April 21, 2026 8:21 p.m. ET

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Jesse Tyler Ferguson in 'Modern Family' season 8's Halloween episode in 2016. Credit:

- Jesse Tyler Ferguson is looking back on a memorable night with the *Glee *cast on a haunted hayride in Los Angeles.

- Ferguson admitted to being "really traumatized" by the Halloween attraction on his *Dinner's On Me *podcast, recalling he "started to cry" when the *Glee*-sters next suggested a corn maze.

- "Amber Riley was like, 'Jesus Christ,'" he joked to guest Jeff Hiller.

When you think *Glee** *and* **Modern Family*, you probably don't think horror. Jesse Tyler Ferguson wants to keep it that way

The cast of the jukebox musical pushed him way too far outside his comfort zone, where spookiness is concerned, the star behind *Modern Family*'s beloved Mitchell Pritchett recently reminisced.

"One year when *Modern Family* had just started, [for] some reason, I got invited with the whole cast of *Glee*, we were on a haunted hayride," he told *Somebody Somewhere *star Jeff Hiller on Tuesday's episode of his *Dinner's On Me** *podcast. "I was really traumatized, and they all wanted to do the corn maze after that," Ferguson shared. "The haunted hayride was enough, but you're in a vessel that moves. So I felt protected and I stayed in the center of the hayride. People come out from the field with chains. I was really traumatized."

The annual Haunted Hayride is a Los Angeles institution, an open-air, Halloween-season bazaar of themed attractions and events. But the central draw is the titular hayride — a slow, slalom in the flatbed of a hay truck through a succession of classic horror zones, from a carnival to an asylum to a graveyard. Actors in gruesome costumes, wielding horrifying implements, and shouting terrifying curses, charge the hay truck to scare passengers.

After all that, the young cast of *Glee *still wanted to push their luck in the corn maze.

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"You're not protected. They give you a lantern, and they're like, 'go,'" Ferguson explained. "I was like, 'I can't do it. I can't do it.' And [Justin Mikita, Ferguson's husband] was like, 'Just come on, it's fine.' Literally, the cast of *Glee* is all like, 'Let's go.' And I started to cry."

Ferguson said there were "tears in my eyes" as he walked back to his car. From the safe distance of 2026 (*Modern Family *and* Glee *both premiered in 2009), he and Hiller both were able to laugh about the experience now.

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"Amber Riley was like, 'Jesus Christ,'" Ferguson joked. Hiller imagined *Glee *star Lea Michele shouting for Ferguson to "grow a pair." Ferguson redoubled the call: "'Grab a lantern, grow a pair!'" he imagined Michele taunting. "I refused. I refused."

Amber Riley and Lea Michele in 2009's 'Glee' pilot.

Carin Baer/Fox Television/Courtesy Everett Collection

*Glee *ended its run on Fox in 2015, while *Modern Family *wrapped up on ABC in 2020. Through Ferguson has never stepped foot on a traditional horror set, he did appear in Elizabeth Banks' horror-pitched survival comedy *Cocaine Bear *in 2023.

Though Ferguson doesn't recall Michele and Riley being uncomfortable with the fear factor, they have similarly stayed largely out of the horror realm, aside from Michele's role on the horror-comedy series *Scream Queens *from 2015 to 2016 and Riley's turn in the Lifetime thriller *Single Black Female *in 2022.

You can listen to Jeff Hiller and Jesse Tyler Ferguson's full conversation on the *Dinner's On Me *podcast above.

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