This Halloween season, I’ve come across some spooky stays, haunted attractions, and macabre museums both by accident and via people sharing with me. I decided to make a list of them, since there are a bunch I wanted to keep track of. A post is a great way. Can always refer back to it, and perhaps it’ll help anyone else who reads this.
Blackout Haunted House – I wrote about this freaky haunted house that has got to be one of the most sick, twisted, terrifying and ingenious haunted houses devised yet. You have to go through it alone, and the things they do to you inside and that you see? You’ve got to be made of some stern stuff to (a) even want to do this haunted house, and (b) be able to make it all the way through. Some deem it “extreme theater” (which it is), but for fans of movies like The Strangers, Saw, Them, and Vacancy, this is your chance to experience the action yourself. Talk about true 3D!
Haunted Hotels – Historic Hotels of America has grouped together historic hotels where some ghosts –er, I mean, guests, still have not checked out.
Haunted Inns – B&BFinder.com has collected a list of spooky stays (mostly inns and B&Bs) by state.
(We have we of course added the above two to the Sites Listing Spooky Stays section of our Haunted Places page, for handy reference.)
Haunted Highways – One of the theme vacation packages offered by The Official State of Vermont Tourism Site. It gives you a listing of Vermont’s haunted hotels, B&B’s, and inns, each with a quick teaser of what kind of activity happens at these spooky stays.
Eli Roth’s Goretorium – This haunted house is located in Vegas (on the Strip even) and will operate year-round. “Featuring a multilevel maze within a mythical hotel and casino The Delmont, the self-guided tour starts at the hotel lobby. After you take an elevator to the upper level, you’ll witness gruesome sights one after the other. The premise is based on deceased, tortured hotel guests and the serial-killing hotel owners behind it all. To add to the frightening experience, you’ll encounter live actors, animatronic frights and special effects in a spooky hotel setting.”
Frightbytes – This cool site was launched in 1998 and is home to one of the Web’s first virtual haunts. Places to explore on the site include Zombie Invasion, a Haunted Inn, and even True Ghost Stories, just to name a few. Super neat site. Fun way to get a haunted house fix any time you want.
The Myers House – Fan of Halloween the movie? (The John Carpenter version.) So is this couple. So much so they built a life-size replica of it that they call home in Hillsborough, North Carolina. They celebrate the way anyone would with such a house, with a Halloween Bash.
Toland-Herzig Famous Endings Museum – Toland-Herzif is a funeral home and crematory, but it also has a museum of items from famous people and their famous funerals. I don’t know what you call someone who loves obituaries and funerals, but this would be a neat haunt for them to jaunt to. (I’m not one, but it’s piqued my interest. If I’m ever in or near Dover, OH I will try to find this place.)
Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, and obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. (Yes, really! As explained here.) That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.
Speaking of mystical, to learn how Courtney channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.