Here in Kansas City down at the west bottoms area their are some big, fancy haunted houses. The biggest being The Edge of Hell. it cost about $45 and thousands of people go thru it.
It’s quite a show with professional actors and special effects. It makes enough money even though they are only open about 2 months of the year to own the building. Some other groups like say the YMCA will maybe turn a gym into a haunted house and charge $5-$10 to go thru it.
Maybe I need to go to one of the more adult oriented haunted houses rather than the local amusement park, but I found that I’m never able to really “get into it”, and scareactors jumping out and screaming into my ear is annoying rather than thrilling and frightening. It is highly amusing to watch a killer clown chase down a teenage girl though.
I had a good time at Darkside out on the east end of Long Island.
I went to Markoff’s Haunted Forest last year, it was a blast. They can touch you, but usually don’t. In The Town they will talk to you and interact with you. I’m going back this year as well.
I also go to amusement parks, though I don’t always buy the haunted houses parts. I do like to watch the other people get scared.
I used to go to an art event at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn (along with Mt Auburn in Boston and Mt Laurel in Philadelphia, one of the three great garden graveyards in the US) called “Angels and Accordians” whenever it was put on.
Not gory, and no one was allowed to touch you, but still one of the eeriest events I’ve ever attended.
The one at the historic Queen Mary in Long Beach, Ca is excellent. It also is alleged to have a few real ghosts.
There is a living history museum in central Indiana, near me, that has a Headless Horseman hayride weekends in October; we go most years. They have a lot of games and activities, interpreters telling ghost stories, pumpkin carving, and such. The hayride itself takes you through a forest with various people in luminescent ghost costumes jumping out at you, culminating in being chased by the Headless Horseman himself. It’s pretty fun, if you like that sort of thing.
I don’t go to them; I’m one of the people making them.
Well, I used to. I haven’t lit or built one in decades now; I moved on to lighting other things.
There’s one here called Fear Asylum that I’ve been told is pretty good. I’ve never been in it though.
I’ve been to the Sloss Fright Furnace in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s a haunted house in an abandoned steel mill. It’s an excellent haunted location.
Sure, usually more than one a year. One of my two favorites even won The Great Halloween Fright Fight. Strictly speaking, though, most of the ones I’ve been to haven’t been just a haunted house, but several attractions together.
One (Castle Blood) I attend every year; have for more than 20 years and have gone so far as to be a sponsor. There are a lot of others that are more “one and done”. These are the more the seasonal kind although I do visit quite a few year-round-ers in our journeys to different amusement parks to see their dark rides.
I love them, but money prevents me from doing them as often as I’d like.
I’ve been to a few low-rent ones here and there, like at Six Flags or some guy’s corn maze, but the only large-scale professional one I’ve been to is Creepyworld in the St. Louis suburbs.*
If I had more money I’d love to do these things more often. One of my life goals is to someday make it to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando.
*Unlike me, Mrs. Homie does not see value or amusement in those things. She sees only terror, and not in a fun way. We made it about a hundred yards into Creepyworld before she was done. I had to get a scare actor to break character and take her backstage so she could go back to the car.
Hey, I went there last year, too! And my friend had a hookup, so we got to skip the line and free tickets and everything.
In general, I adore haunted houses, haunted hay rides, haunted corn mazes, haunted whatever. But I think my husband and I are going to skip out on them this year. You spend so much time standing in line to see them, and you’re usually standing in the cold surrounded by screeching teenagers. Then when you finally go through the haunted whatever-it-is, you’re with a group of people, and so only the first person is really scared by anything (and if they send the groups in too close together then no one in the group gets surprised).
One time I was in Key West for Halloween, and they had a haunted house at Fort Zachary. It had shorter lines than you have in the DC area, and my husband and I got to go through as our own group of 2, far enough behind the previous group that everything scared us. That was the best haunted house ever. So maybe if I lived somewhere else in the country, I’d still be going to haunted houses this year.