If you’re looking for a hardcore haunt in the Ville, The Haunted Hotel is the blackest of the black!
Greetings, haunt fans, it’s the Phantom of the Ville still recovering from the shell shock of the first big haunting weekend of the 2014 Halloween season. I took my 17 year old niece with me to gauge her reaction to three very different haunts this weekend, and only one left her sobbing and incoherent with stark terror when we finally escaped the raving maniacs in the final, brutal outdoor portion of the maze.
That’s right, there is no mistaking The Haunted Hotel at 3000 S. 4th Street for a “kiddie” haunted house. It’s a full contact, down and dirty, Satanic, grungy, Black Metal infused kick in the teeth, and its fans wouldn’t want it any other way.
When they tell you up front that the actors WILL touch you, you can take them at their word. In fact, at one point during our near Midnight tour of this legendary haunt, I was chained to a steel slaughter table full of body parts by a Slipknot-esque mask wearing brute. Actually the mask, like most of the other masks in the Haunted Hotel, was likely made in house by owner/operator Kevin Stitch and manager Kristen Warf’s Sinister FX mask and monster making studio.
As the longest standing haunted attraction in the Ville, the Haunted Hotel has over 20 years of experience of scaring the piss (literally) out of its loyal fans, and that’s what their fans pay them for. No one walks out of the Haunted Hotel. They escape from the Haunted Hotel, and usually worse for wear.
If you’re looking for the most extreme and intense haunted attraction in town, look no further. This one is not for amateurs or “family night” at the haunted house. If you buy a ticket for the Haunted Hotel, you’re going to be touched, grabbed, possibly chained, probably chainsawed and shocked until you’re left a whimpering, muttering mess.
When we checked in at the front desk this year, the desk clerk gave us a full physical examination to determine what kind of meat we would make after put through the grinder in store for us.
“A little bit of age to this one,” he declared when inspecting my 1,000 year old carcass, “but still good for chili.”
Once prodded into the Haunted Hotel’s infamous “elevator to Hell,” the rough ride doesn’t stop until you’re chased out the exit by chainsaw wielding freaks. There are a few insidious new shocks added to the stable of the Marquis de Sade’s usual favorites.
For example, there is one twisting, turning maze section that takes place in complete darkness. What’s that you say? That’s nothing new. You just hold your arms out and feel your way through the maze. Well, good luck with that because the walls are electrified. You’ll get a fairly good jolt of electric juice every time you need to touch the wall to get your bearings or turn a corner.
The scares come fast and furious with very little dead space in between as you make your way through the house and eventually into the extended maze next door for an experience that will last about 20 minutes even at a pretty good pace.
All the scenes and characters are original Haunted Hotel creations. You won’t find any movie scenes or silver screen boogeymen within the seedy looking halls, and the grungy, gritty look to the sets is completely intentional. If there were a movie universe that might feel at home in the Haunted Hotel, it would probably be the sleazy, tawdry and violent cinematic world of Rob Zombie. The horrors depicted in “House of 1,000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects” would make a fitting double feature match for the kind of experience you can expect when trapped inside the walls of the Haunted Hotel.
Enter at Your Own Risk!
