With the spooky season in full swing, some of you will be getting friends together to visit a haunted house. In the spirit of Halloween, here’s a list of four terrifying houses that you may want to visit (or if you’re like me, don’t even want to look them up).
The Dent School House:
The Dent School House is an attraction that is set up in a different house every Halloween so audiences don’t know what they’re in for each time. The big catch? The house in which the haunt is set up is actually haunted. According to the fictional story, the school was built in Cincinnati in 1894 and was an excellent educational institution; this changed in 1942 when children began vanishing until the school was “shut down” in 1955 so it could be conveniently turned into an attraction for thrill-seekers. Sarcasm aside, the haunt offers a fun experience with an unsettling story for the audience to follow, allowing them to almost act as detectives, solving the mystery of the school the farther they go.
Blackout:
This haunt was opened in 2009 in New York. The haunt is a much more personal experience as the participants are asked to fill out a waiver with a questionnaire on what they fear most. The actors are also specially trained to fit these needs. Also as a slight disclaimer, you have to go in alone. That in of itself is unsettling to average thrill-seekers. This haunt is the most personal of all the mentioned haunted houses, and even a bit therapeutic, as it helps people get over their fears. A new location was opened in LA and a documentary examining the inner workings was released in 2016 titled The Blackout Experiments.
Terror Behind the Walls:
Here is yet another example of doubling down on the fright factor. Terror Behind the Walls is hosted in one of the most infamous prisons in the United States; The Eastern State Penitentiary. For context, when the prison was in use, inmates reported seeing and hearing unexplained things within the walls. The prison also housed the likes of Al Capone and Morris “The Rabbi” Bolber. The haunt offers a prison tour and a fake story about the inmates and workers being criminally insane. The actors are also incredibly well trained in order to make sure you leave truly terrified.
Fear Overload Scream Park:
Despite its goofy name and storyline, this is not a haunt to scoff at. Located in San Leandro, California, Night Terrors is set in the fictional “Hale House” where “you’re never fully awake or totally safe”. As the fictional story goes, a teeth collector, named Dr. Pearly, has created a solution that rots the teeth of his patients; in the haunt, the patients chase after you in search of a new set of teeth. It sounds goofy but those who have been will tell you otherwise.
Now that you’re in the know, would you be up to the challenge of making it all the way through any of the houses mentioned?
