Haunted houses…. A terrifying experience someone will endure at least once in their lifetime. Well unluckily for me I’ve been to three haunted houses in the past two years and who’s to say I won’t go into another before Halloween comes? 

I had never been to a haunted house before, until last year when it was brought up to me that we might go. Of course, I was nervous but part of me didn’t actually think it would really happen so I wasn’t stressing out too much about it. But as the weeks started to get closer, it was brought up more and more that this was most likely going to happen. It was a Saturday night and my boyfriend said, “Do you want to go to the haunted house with us tomorrow?” I very reluctantly said, “yes,” but part of me really didn’t think it was going to happen or I would refuse. My boyfriend, Adam, hated haunted houses as well, so he wasn’t really happy about it either. As I was talking to him that same night, he wanted us to make a pact that we would say “No” and that we weren’t going in, but as you can assume based on the title of this article, that in fact did not happen.

Frightmare: 

We got out of the car and arrived at the haunted house, Frightmare. On the car ride over, his sister mentioned how this one was super scary, so I was getting pretty nervous. While walking over in the sort of complex-like area, there was this creepy-looking building and then a super long line. We went and bought the tickets and then it was time to go get in line. There was Rob Zombie music playing in the line which really added to my nerves. Thankfully there were no scary actors hiding out in the line. As we got closer to reaching the start of the haunted house I was getting progressively more nervous to the where my stomach was starting to hurt. My stomach was feeling queasy and I was trying really hard to not focus on the fact that we were next in line. We got up to the front and we were met with a scary-looking guy telling us the rules of the house. In what seemed like seconds we were already ready to go in. Before going in I told my boyfriend that I would be hanging onto him very tightly and he said he would probably do the same thing to me as well. When we walked in, my hand was tightly gripping Adam’s arm and I was not going to let go. I don’t exactly remember the order of how things went in the house but I’ll definitely tell you the most memorable moments of the haunted house. One of the first things I remember was going into this mining area. In this area, it was really dark and a little smokey. Every once in a while a miner would pop out but nothing really too scary actually occurred. It was also during this part that my boyfriend did actually yell. To set the scene we were in the back and we were both holding onto each other. Adam and I were so focused on the front that we weren’t necessarily paying attention to the back of us. But in this situation, I happened to get extremely lucky. I just so happened to look behind my shoulder and I saw this creepy-looking man running up behind us. Luckily for me, I saw him before he yelled, but Adam on the other hand didn’t get so lucky. The man came up behind us and yelled right in his ear and Adam jumped a little. It was pretty funny. 

Another memorable moment I had was when I  had to enter the next building from outside. You had to enter this little cave, where it was so smokey you couldn’t see anything in front of you. Adam must have been a few inches in front of me and I still couldn’t see him. Not to mention we also had to go in a single file which was a little nerve-wracking but everyone was still holding onto each other doing a sort of chain method.  That was definitely the scariest moment of it all just for the sole reason of not being able to see anything. Right before we entered the building a man just out of the fog scaring Adam’s mom causing her to fall on the ground. 

Finally, another part that was actually kind of fun was going into the final house. Here, you had to walk up these tiny stairs, and once again you were forced to be single file. While walking up the stairs there were creepy photos on the wall along with cobwebs. Once you got to the top of the stairs there was this little girl on a bed depicting the same scene in the exorcist. Everyone was expecting her to jump out of the bed to scare us but surprisingly she didn’t move an inch. My boyfriend made the joke that potentially “she fell asleep.”  This part scared his little brother Jason, a ton, but I think most of us thought that was one of the least scary parts. After this part, you finally went outside again and exited the haunted house. 

Overall, this haunted house wasn’t actually that scary. I think the anticipation before going into the haunted house was the worst part. I think this would be a pretty good haunted house to start with if you’re nervous to go to one. I might be sounding like I like haunted houses now, but to be quite honest I still really don’t like them. 

Fright Fest: House #1 

Similar to how my experience at Frightmare went I was absolutely terrified to go in. Keep in mind this experience is fresh in my mind as it happened a couple of days ago. This time I will say the line wasn’t terrifying and I also had less time to worry about what was going to happen. There was no scary music playing this time so it didn’t heighten my nerve levels too much. This time the line was about 30 min long while the one last year was probably an hour so there was a lot less time to worry. But don’t get me wrong, I was still scared. At Fright Fest there are technically three haunted houses but we only went into two of them. We first started with the clown one. As we got up to the front, there was this clown that was letting people into the house. Before we went in, he told us a little song in a creepy way about the rules. Right, when you walked in there was this very trippy walkway where it was spinning and it pretty much made everyone stumble. This time my dad went too so he was in the back this time and I was the second to last in line. 

One of the coolest parts of the house was when there was a lot of smoke in the room and there was an effect that made it look like you were in a room with water. Under all of the smoke, there was a clown lady jumping out at us. This part really wasn’t that bad because if you looked close enough you could see her moving underneath the smoke. 

Another super cool part was when you had to go into this bouncy house room single file. Imagine walking into a bouncy house and you see the pillars holding the house up, that is what it was made out of. It was like 10 of those pillars put together so you had to squeeze through them. The pillars on me went above my head but my ankles were all exposed. So my thought process was that something might hit my ankles from underneath. However, the actors aren’t allowed to touch you so in hindsight this didn’t make much sense. So I decided to walk as if I was doing high knees so nothing would touch my ankles (nothing did end up touching my ankles). 

There were also a few other rooms that were pretty cool, but I can’t spoil everything. 

Fright Fest: House #2

The next house we went to was also a part of Fright Fest. We went inside the prisoner one which consisted of a bunch of deranged prisoners and guards running around scaring people. The line for this haunted house was insanely short which was kind of nice as you didn’t have enough time to worry about what was to come. Right as we got in line we were put into this holding cell type of thing while a prison guard with a fake taser scared people. The sound of the taser was actually really loud and definitely scared people who weren’t paying attention. When we first walked into the haunted house, we were greeted by a bloody prison guard who made us line up against the wall. Shortly after, we were able to truly enter the house. This one was honestly not that scary as all of the scares could be somewhat anticipated in certain locations. 

One of my favorite parts of this one was the maze you can get stuck in toward the end. Once you get through most of the haunted house, your last stop is a maze where the prisoners are hiding behind corners trying to scare you. While in the maze, I actually had a funny encounter with one of the prisoners as one of them asked me “If I was with these people.” I told him and I quote, “Yea, they are my besties.” Around 1 minute later he came and found me again in the maze and said, “There are no besties in prison.” I thought this was extremely funny since he looked so mean and scary but he used the word bestie. The first time we went through the maze we made it to the exit immediately but no one wanted to exit since it was very unclear if it was an exit or not. In a lot of the haunted houses, they have emergency exits so we just assumed that this was also an emergency exit. It also did help that two of the prisoners behind us also told us this was in fact not the exit. We turned around and started to try and find another exit, but we just ended up taking a big circle and we were back at the same place we had started. We finally decided to make our best judgment call and we just decided to leave, and we were right, that was actually the exit. Once we walked out there was a guy with a chainsaw waiting for us, but none of us got really scared by it. 

Overall, in the three haunted houses, I’ve been in I didn’t really find any to be really scary. Of course, there were parts in there that were scary but I never had a moment in any of them where I actually screamed. I think the worst part about my haunted house experiences has been the anticipation. Both of the times I’ve been in one I’ve been super scared to go in and then once I’m in there it’s really not as bad as I expected. As for if I would go in one again, I would say potentially yes if they pushed me a little bit. However, I definitely wouldn’t be the one asking to go.