The fastest growing industry in America is the Halloween industry. We’ve seen it grow over the last ten years from a 1-billion dollar industry to a near 11-billion dollar industry. Halloween has grown to levels no one ever expected. Today, we see millions of home owners decorating their houses, turning their garages into haunted houses, changing their backyards into cemeteries and inviting people from around the neighborhood into their own personal HAUNTED HOUSE! Today tens of thousands of home owners buy zombies, monsters, tombstones, and crypts and even use specialized lighting to display and showcase their masterpiece. Many even create CGI FX in their windows. The days of Halloween being a kid’s holiday all about trick-or-treating are OVER! Even moms are getting into the act buying Halloween themed decorations to make the interior of the house Halloween themed as well.
Halloween is not an official holiday. They don’t call off school and work for Halloween. You don’t have to buy anyone a gift or cook a turkey or take your spouse to dinner with cards & chocolates. Halloween is a holiday that millions upon millions of Americans CHOOSE to celebrate and everyone celebrates in different ways. Some take their kids to pumpkin patches and Fall Festivals. Many enjoy decorating their house and yard. Others become obsessed with the haunting of the holiday. Some even build their own haunted house experience right in their own home. And millions visit America’s best and scariest haunted houses to celebrate the holiday! In fact, haunted houses and Halloween attractions now make up more than 1 billion dollars of the ever growing Halloween industry.
Every year in March, haunted house owners and operators across America converge in St Louis, Missouri for the National Halloween and Haunted Attractions tradeshow produced by Transworld Exhibits, where these haunt owners can view and purchase new products, monsters, animations, special FX, and more. Additionally, there are numerous educational seminars and round-table discussions with other haunted house owners to plot and plan how to make America scream even more than the previous year! So what do haunted houses across America have planned for you this year? How are haunted attractions planning to keep up with movies, videos games and other interactive events? Do video games and movies even compare now to the live and very interactive experience of a haunted house?
Haunted Houses are going over-the-top bigger, better, and scarier than ever. In fact, haunted houses no longer just compete with other local haunts in their area, but haunted houses across the country. Visiting, attending and traveling to haunted houses is now an America phenomenon as people are using sites like www.hauntworld.com to find the best haunted attractions in the World to travel to attend. America has spoken, and they want HAUNTED HOUSES in the Fall not horror movies and not videos games. They want live, in-your-face scares combined with high tech scares for the utmost in lifelike scares. They want what a roller coaster can’t deliver no matter how high or fast they’re built. It really is strange how big the haunted house industry has become because only a few short years ago the Halloween retail industry wanted the haunt industry removed from their show now they want them back… too late!
We are now also seeing film makers creating horror movies inspired by haunted houses, or film makers utilizing haunts in the off season as film sets for horror movies. Films such as Zombieland rented haunted houses to utilize their unreal sets to film their movies. SYFY Channel recently rented out 13th Gate to film an entire movie. It wasn’t that long ago that horror movies where the staple thing to do during the weeks of October but now the biggest horror films open during other parts of the year. We live in a day and age where content for a digital World is sought and the haunt industry provide the richest forms of drama, colorful characters, and exciting backgrounds for reality television to tv specials. Lastly we are seeing the haunt industry splinter off into all different types of attractions from EXTREME to ESCAPE puzzle solving attractions to Zombie Hunts. Last season we saw haunts promoting the concept of going thru naked to another haunt that wanted customers to wear bags over their head and travel thru in the dark to zombie runs to everything between. The bottom line is no matter what someone dreams up the concept of scream based attractions are here to stay and who knows where it leads us to next. No matter what gimmick someone dreams up you can always count on the tried and true haunted attraction who’s focus is sending guests in naked but rather MAKING YOU SCREAM LIKE A BABY! This is what haunted houses do this is our passion and we present to you a list of can’t miss haunts.
Now that Halloween 2014 is here it’s time to find the best, the scariest, and the biggest over the top haunted houses and Halloween attractions in America. Prepare yourself for the biggest screaming season in Haunted history.
Haunted House owners and operators have created attractions that are so detailed they remove you from the realm of reality and plunge you into a haunted World you never knew you could experience. So finally, we present you some of the best traditional haunted houses, real haunted houses, haunted hayrides, corn mazes and more. If it’s an attraction opening during the Halloween season, you’ll find it here on www.hauntworld.com. Now sit back for the best haunted houses in America 2014.
Hauntworld.com was the first website and publication to produce a Top 10, Top 13 or Top 31 haunted house list to help America find attractions. Now many websites and publications produce such lists, but there is only ONE website that helps you find every haunted attraction in the nation... www.hauntworld.com. We invite you to find a haunted house near you and subscribe to our printed Haunted House Magazine www.HauntedHouseMagazine.com, plus join our Facebook Page or join our Haunted House Forums at forum.hauntworld.com/. Have the scariest Halloween ever with the help from your friends at www.hauntworld.com
1. Pennhurst Asylum - Spring City Pennsylvania - www.pennhurstasylum.com: Pennhurst Asylum, located in Spring City, Pennsylvania, is housed in the original 1908 Administrative building of the old State Mental Institution. Boasting four major attractions, Pennhurst Asylum was rated as the scariest Haunted Attraction in America by USA Today and Hauntworld magazine. The Asylum is a hospital themed walk through haunted attraction with high-tech animatronics, seasoned actors, and digital sound that’ guaranteed to scare. Wind through the labyrinth of old cells, dank damp halls and see the human experimentation that went wrong in The Dungeon of Lost Souls. Details and special effects add to the incredible illusions that will leave you repulsed and in awe. The Tunnel Terror, located underneath the grounds of the facility originally named Pennhurst Home for the Feeble Minded and Epileptic, is a 900 foot-long gauntlet filled with catacombs, swamps and monsters. The fourth attraction, Ghost Hunt, is a self-guided tour of the Mayflower Dormitory, reportedly the most active building for paranormal investigations. Featured on Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters, only the most courageous enter, only the living are allowed leaving. Don’t let the name fool you; we give you a flashlight and you’re on your own.
2. The 13th Gate - Baton Rouge Louisiana - www.13thgate.com: The owners of the 13th Gate have taken advantage of the booming film industry in Louisiana, recruiting the top special effects artists around, and in turn, creating one of the most realistically themed haunted houses in the country. This extreme detail includes amazing movie-quality set design, animations and special FX with over-the-top makeup artists and over 200 professional actors. The attraction features a 30 minute walk through 13 differently themed areas from the fog-filled streets of London to the lost underwater city of Atlantis and a claustrophobic cave system infested with hundreds of live snakes.
If that wasn’t enough, next door is the sister attraction, Necropolis 13. Necropolis is an outdoor replica of a New Orleans Cemetery featuring a 40,000 sq ft labyrinth of over 400 zombie-infested crypts, underground catacombs, and a nightly voodoo fire show that literally will have the dead crawling right out of the ground in front of you.
The 13th Gate is celebrating our 13th year so the scares will be over the top for 2014! New areas include an abandoned Haunted Lair of a serial killer clown called “The House” and major new scares and effects added to our infamous Hellvators, London, Haunted Forest, and Swamp scenes!
3. Netherworld - Atlanta, Georgia - www.fearworld.com: Netherworld Haunted House is known for its over-the-top special effects, intense make-up, elaborate costuming, skilled stunt actors, unique monsters, unusual themes and chilling detail. To put it simply Netherworld is the total package - an extremely high quality immersive event that merges scary, fun and cool into a safe environment. More importantly Netherworld is ever changing - coming up with new effects, scares, characters and storylines every Halloween season, while still retaining the Halloween feel that brings back guests year after year. In 2014 Netherworld is presenting Season Of The Witch, a classic extremely scary haunt brimming with the supernatural, and Spliced, a Science fiction/Medical gory mash up with tons of unique monsters!
4. House of Torment - Austin, Texas - www.thehouseoftorment.com: The scare specialists at House of Torment–Austin’s oldest and most spine-tingling haunted house–are launching an all-out horror assault on Central Texas as they open up for their most hair-raising year yet. Continually recognized as one of America’s top haunts, House of Torment is striking fear into the hearts, minds and guts of those brave enough to face the gore. Fear fans will meet their match with the new storylines and unimaginable monstrosities that await them at 3 separate haunts: Blackthorne District: Realms Collide, Cursed: The Coven, and Slaughterhouse: The Feeding.
5. The Darkness - St. Louis, Missouri - www.scarefest.com: The Darkness is considered by many the single best haunted house in the entire haunt industry because of its amazing set design, detail, and over the top animations. One of the things we can say without a doubt is Darkness has the best 3D haunted house in America called Terror Visions. The Darkness has three attractions in one location for one price including the two floors of Darkness, Terror Visions in 3D and the Monster Museum. Each year The Darkness is renovated to open in March during the annual Transworld Haunted House Tradeshow. The Darkness is critiqued by the entire haunt industry so each year it’s renovated prior to March with spectacular special fx and one of kind sets. The one thing which makes Darkness different is over the top massive effects which scare large groups at one time such as the falling barrel wall, moving swamp house, and many more. The Darkness is totally renovated each year with new animations, computer animations, set and more… put The Darkness on your must see haunts this Halloween.
6. Erebus - Pontiac, Michigan - www.hauntedpontiac.com: Erebus is the result of Dr. Colber who worked for the government to build a time machine. After leaving the government, he worked on the time machine on his own. Successful at sending people back into time, with only one glitch, the time period looked at the people as a virus and wiped them out. Determined to over come this glitch he sent in group after group of his own personnel. Unsuccessful, he ended up broke and lacking the proper personnel to run his machine. Dr. Colber came up with a brilliant idea to disguise his time machine as a haunted house and have the general public help fund his project and use the people going through as human guinea pigs.
Michigan is the haunted attraction capital of the world with more then 70 haunts in a 50 mile radius. Because of that fact we can't buy the standard props from the trade show because 25 other haunts will have it in this market. We pride ourselves as one of the most unique haunts in the country by designing and building almost all of our own props in house. You will see things here that were born from the imaginations of a couple of guys that have been thinking about scaring people for over 34 years! If you can conceive it, believe it, you can achieve it! That is a motto of success, we just applied it to scaring people!
7. The Dent Schoolhouse - Cincinnati, Ohio - www.frightsite.com: The Dent Schoolhouse changes over a third of the attraction every year. New for 2014: a body filled cafeteria, an auditorium that is frozen in time with a live prom dance, life size dolls have taken over the school’s nursery, the boy’s shower is molding over and the water won’t stop running, wind through the cafeteria line to grab something rotten, and see the ghosts of Dent past on monitors in the a/v storage of Dent. Also, every ticket includes the Queen City Slaughter Yard. This open air attraction has been fully renovated for 2014. More blood, more bodies, and more intensity! Let the butchers of Queen City show you how to properly bleed a pig… or maybe become the main course! The Dent Schoolhouse is one of the most tightly themed and detailed attractions in the U.S. and the theme revolves around the legend of a murderous janitor that started killed the student body in the 1950’s. Going through The Dent Schoolhouse is like reliving a horror movie.
8. Kersey Valley Spookywoods - Greensboro, North Carolina - www.spookywoods.com: Kersey Valley Spookywoods is a haunted attraction by night each Halloween Season and a full-scale Scream Park year-round. Entering its 29th season, Spookywoods utilizes natural outdoor environments to play on every fear. Originally a Christmas tree farm, Spookywoods offers guests a multi-feature haunted attraction that is certain to scare the most stoic guests. Scares lurk around every corner from the moment customers arrive. Kersey Valley offers a Halloween Zip Combo ticket which allows guests to enjoy a VIP Fast Pass admission to the haunt and a Coach Tour on the zip line attraction. The property offers two year-round attractions; Kersey Valley Zipline and Kersey Valley Laser Tag. Kersey Valley Zipline is North Carolina’s premier zip line attraction boasting 1.5 miles of cable across 14 lines of zipping fun. Set your sites on fun at Kersey Valley Laser Tag which offers outdoor laser tag fields with the most advanced taggers in the industry. Each fall, Kersey Valley’s Maize Adventure offers fun for the whole family. Treasure hunt through the amazing corn maze, ride the cow train, jump on the giant jumping pillows, pick out the perfect pumpkin and take home a bag of kettle corn. What’s the next big thing? Spring 2015 Kersey Valley will open a ropes course perfect for daytime fun, corporate outings and team building activities! Live Your Adventure at Kersey Valley!
9. Headless Horseman’s Hayrides and Haunted Houses - Ulster Park, New York - www.headlesshorseman.com: Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses gallops into its 22nd year with 10 Attractions - presenting "The Witching Hour" for the 2014 season.
Dare to discover a dark and supernatural world of the Coven of Witches that exist in Crow Hollow as you travel a one mile theatrical hayride journey. Expose their secrets and hidden desire to achieve the power to control the Horseman. Additional attractions include: Lunar Motel, Glutton's Diner and Slaughter House, Slither's Pet Shop, Dr. Dark's Side Show, Dark Harvest Corn Maze, Night Shade Greenhouse, The Feeding, Dahlia Blood's Manor and Illusion and Magic Stage Show. In addition, there are 4 eateries and Magic Moon Gift Shop, Scareware, Fear Gear and Witchy Women Gift Shops. Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses is located on a historic 45 acre farm in Ulster Park, New York.
Our attraction is designed and built by professionals from the lighting, costume, sound, set design, special effects, and make-up industries. We employ over 350 actors and staff trained to provide a memorable and enjoyable evening for the whole family.
10. Cutting Edge Haunted House - Fort Worth, Texas - www.cuttingedgehauntedhouse.com: Cutting Edge Haunted House is a dark attraction filled with terrifying live actors, amazing special effects and incredible monsters. Celebrating its new Guinness World Record, this intense, cutting edge, multi-story, multi-themed haunted attraction is widely considered to be one of the best Haunted Houses in the nation, full of chilling detail and unbelievable scares!
Located in a 100-year-old abandoned meat packing plant in a section of Fort Worth historically dubbed as “Hell’s Half Acre,” the Cutting Edge Haunted House is built upon a foundation of fear. The meat packing equipment from the Old West is still in use, but now it is a two-story human processing area. Realistic looking human mannequins are hoisted up to the second level and brought through the entire meat packing process until the conveyor system brings the butchered corpses back to the first level. The old meat-packing plant in downtown Fort Worth is a great home for the fantastic special effects that our loyal customers have come to expect.” It takes visitors an average 55 minutes to explore Cutting Edge Haunted House. The walk-through is replete with frighteningly-realistic props.
Cutting Edge Haunted House has established a reputation for being one of the best haunted houses in the nation. The new Guinness World Record has helped to solidify Cutting Edge Haunted House’s standing as one of the country’s best and largest haunted houses. Come see what new horrors lurk in the twisting corridors of Fort Worth’s ultimate haunted house.
11. The Bates Motel - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - www.thebatesmotel.com: Located outside of Philadelphia PA, the Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride is entering its 24th season and includes three major attractions. The Haunted Hayride is a heart pounding ride through the dark forest of Arasapha Farm, and is filled with huge, detailed sets, giant monsters and more pyrotechnics than a rock concert. With new sets, and a new digital soundtrack, the Hayride is better than ever. The Haunted Corn Trail is a terrifying walk through a tall corn field that’s filled with buildings, detailed sets, tons of animatronic monsters and over 30 actors in full makeup and custom costumes. The cornerstone of this attraction is the Bates Motel. A huge, Victorian mansion that is filled with amazing detail, 25 seasoned actors and unexpected scares. The realism in the Bates Motel is astonishing, and is guaranteed to wow even the most discriminating haunted house enthusiast. The Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride have been consistently ranked as one of top Haunted Attractions in America over the past 15 years, and it only gets better.
12. Bennett's Curse - Baltimore, Maryland - www.bennettscurse.com: What makes Bennett's Curse stand amongst the top Halloween attractions in America is it's dedication to creating a totally immersive environment for it's guests. No other haunted attraction in America can match Bennett's Curse strong reputation for creative theming, and painstaking execution. While other attractions are content to follow current trends, Bennett's Curse is a trendsetter that raises the bar and sets the pace for offering premium terror for a new and demanding generation of thrill seekers! If you have visited Bennett's Curse in the past, be prepared to throw away all preconceived notions of what you can expect to experience. If this year will be your first time visiting or you've looked elsewhere for the highest quality Halloween entertainment and haven't experienced the fright of your life, then this is the year to visit! For 2014, Bennett's Curse will deliver 3 shows the likes of which you will not experience anywhere else.
13. 13th Floor - Chicago, Illinois - www.13thfloorchicago.com: In a city that sets the bar high for its entertainment options, 13th Floor fits in as it sets a new benchmark for haunted houses in the Chicago area. The 2 haunted houses you experience at the 13thFloor Chicago are built on a scale like none other and from a designer’s perspective are drop dead gorgeous and awe inspiring. From the architectural detail on the massive facades to the thoughtful set pieces in every room it’s easy to tell that the scenic work was executed by veteran set dressers and designers from Hollywood and New York sound stages. It’s easy to tell the depth of engineering and design that went into the construction of the massive environments. The lighting and sound design is spot on creating a space where the detail of the setting can be appreciated, where the mood is properly set, but the stars of the show are the performers that interact with and scare you. They reach, grab, slide, vault, and drop, in impressive performance sequences and stunts. The scares themselves are innovative, creative, and unexpected and the performance style jumps between off the charts intensity to bits of well-placed theatrical dialogue that unravel a story throughout your journey. When you are done you're out of breath and excited, thrilled and terrified. You've had a great time with your friends and you feel like you experienced not just a good haunted house but a great one.
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