Which HM items will Zak Bagans use for the Halloween Wars challenges?

The new season of Halloween Wars premieres Sunday, September 19 at 9pm ET/PT on Food Network and discovery+. Ghost Adventures star Zak Bagans will participate this season using some of the dangerous and mysterious artifacts from his Haunted Museum in Las Vegas to challenge the teams.

He’s got plenty to pick from, everything from horror and true crime memorabilia to any number of haunted or cursed objects. But which items specifically will he choose to inspire the expert cake and sugar artists to create their creepy confections?

Will any of them be the same ones that were featured on Deadly Possessions, a mini-series that featured haunted and iconic items from his museum? (Which premiered in 2016, to coincide with his museum’s opening. That Zak. He’s not only a master showman but also a brilliant PR man.)

Or will any be ones from The Haunted Museum series, a collaboration with Eli Roth that’s set to premiere on discovery+ sometime later this year?

Let’s have some fun making educated guesses about which items we might see on Halloween Wars, shall we?

Although, before we do, I’ve got a confession to make: I cheated a little bit. I went to see if Food Network had any of the Halloween Wars season 11 episodes listed yet. They do. One. So we know the theme of that episode, but it still doesn’t mention the exact item.

Possessed Toys

One of my guesses was going to be one of the haunted toys in Zak’s museum, like Peggy the doll. She’s one of the museum’s most popular attractions. Back to the Movies even listed her among its 10 creepiest picks from Zak’s museum. She was also featured on a Deadly Possessions episode.

The episode premiering on September 19 is called “Possessed Toys.” Here’s its description:

What happens when toys come alive and seek revenge? Inspired by a possessed doll at Zak Bagans’ The Haunted Museum, four teams of cake and sugar artists create spooky and delicious cakes to impress judges Eddie Jackson, Shinmin Li and Aarti Sequeira.

Could Peggy be the “possessed doll” the description is referring to?

Haunted Objects

The other mega-popular item at Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum is the Dybbuk Box. In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk is a malicious spirit that can both haunt and possess the living. A dybbuk box captures and contains such a spirit.

The dybbuk box that Zak possesses (or does it possess him?) is a wine cabinet that was at one point for sale on eBay. It came with a story about how it was believed to have belonged to a Holocaust survivor who used it to contain a dybbuk, and that people who have come into contact with the box have experienced everything from bad luck to bad dreams to witnessing a cloaked figure hovering around it.

Can you see the potential for a spirited rendition in cake form based on the Dybbuk Box? I sure can.

The other contender might be Bela Lugosi’s mirror. It’s rumored Bela Lugosi used it for occult purposes, including scrying. After Lugosi died, Frank Saletri, a criminal lawyer who also wrote the 1973 horror movie Blackenstein, rented his home.

In 1982, Saletri was murdered in the home, shot in the head in what some call a “gangland-style” execution. His murder was never solved, but allegedly it happened in the same bedroom where Bela Lugosi’s mirror still hung. If the mirror could communicate from beyond, would it reveal the killer?

I’m not sure. And I’m not sure how or if it will inspire any of the Halloween Wars challenges either, but it would make an interesting choice too.

Clowns

Thinking back to our visit to Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum, the part that terrified me the most was the clown corridor. Not that clowns scare me. Haunted houses of the Halloween variety do, though. The kind where people pop out at and/or chase you.

That’s what happened with the clowns. You had to walk the gauntlet through a hallway full of clowns. Most were mannequins but you knew not all were. When was the jump scare going to happen? Because you knew it was coming. Just not when or where. Ugh. Talk about nerve-racking!

The only problem with Zak picking anything clown-oriented from his museum is that I don’t remember anything particularly haunted associated with clowns. Although he did have some things that had once belonged to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, including a self-portrait Gacy did of himself as Pogo the clown. That could be a possibility.

Speaking of serial killers…

Murderers and Maniacs

Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and Ed Gein (just to name a few)…Zak possesses personal effects from them all. Could Ted Bundy’s glasses, Charles Manson’s ashes, or the cauldron it’s believed that Ed Gein boiled body parts in be featured in any of the Halloween Wars challenges?

Or would that be too disrespectful and glorify these madmen? They did commit some pretty gruesome and heinous crimes, after all.

Death

Zak also owns Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s VW van. Kevorkian believed elderly and terminally ill people had the right to chose the time of their death. He created a homemade suicide machine and would assist people in ending their lives.

The Kevorkian story might be a little too dark to inspire any challenges, but what about a coffin from the funeral parlor room? I don’t remember what story was connected to it specifically, but coffins are always iconic Halloween images. I can see it being incorporated into a baking challenge.

Demons

Can Zak Bagans do anything without bringing demons into it? I don’t think so. Which is why I think both the Devil’s Rocking Chair and the Demon House stairs are likely contenders for a Halloween Wars challenge.

I say the Devil’s Rocking Chair especially because The Conjuring 3 based on The Devil Made Me Do it case is still fresh on people’s minds. David Glatzel was the little boy who was allegedly possessed by a demon that later allegedly attached to David’s sister’s boyfriend, Arne Cheyenne Johnson, when Arne demanded the demon leave the boy alone and pick on him instead. Arne insists it was the Devil who made him kill Alan Bono a few months later.

However, before all of that happened, David underwent multiple exorcisms. Apparently, he sat in the rocking chair for some of them, which Zak got from Ed and Lorraine Warren. (Well, from Lorraine. Ed had already passed by then.)

And then there are the Demon House stairs, which haunted me after my visit to the museum because I wasn’t sure if I’d (a) seen a doll on them (I thought I had), (b) if it had moved (I could’ve sworn it did), and (c) if it had, was it just a baby doll or an animatronic?

I don’t know what demonic item Zak will pick for the challenge, but I’m confident he’ll choose one. We’ll find out soon enough if I’m right…

Something More Obscure

Or will Zak pull out something less known and more obscure than the better-known items in his museum that everyone always talks about? Maybe one of the other haunted dolls, or the dollhouse replica of the Westerfield House that he received after investigating the real house? Maybe one of the puppets or marionettes?

I wish I could better remember what else he had in his museum. It’s been a couple of years since we went. If you’ve visited more recently, please chime in with some of the artifacts you remember and what you think might make for good baking challenges.

Check-In

Is there any item from Zak’s museum that you’d like to see inspire a Halloween Wars challenge? (Whether it’s listed above or is another one that you know of.)