This year The Scarehouse says that they are building their most ambitious haunt ever.

That’s a pretty grandiose claim. My ears and eyes are listening. Or rather like. OK maybe my eyes aren’t listening. For example, if…

GUYS! GUYS!!!! Your face is like a fingerprint for your head. #mindblown

— Oni Hartstein (@onezumi) August 14, 2014

Let’s just move on.

OK.

TL; DR: The Scarehouse revealed their haunts for this year so boom:

NEW: The Summoning: Our building has stood for nearly 100 years. But the secrets from October 1932 can no longer be kept.

UPDATED: Pittsburgh Zombies: Black Out! Pittsburgh Zombies is longer, darker, and scarier than ever. The lights are going out. The zombies are getting in.

Creepo’s Christmas in 3-D: He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. Put on your 3-D glasses and enter Creepo’s twisted tale of Holiday horror! It’s a eye-popping nightmare of demonic elves, killer toys, and mutant snowmen. Santa is dead, Creepo lives.

The Basement: One of America’s most intense and notorious fear experiences! You will be touched, restrained, and hooded. You will be tormented, challenged, and scared out of your mind. Separate ticket purchase required, this attraction is not included with admission into ScareHouse. Limited tickets available each night, and this attraction sells out frequently. Note: You MUST be 18 years or older to enter this attraction, and willing to sign our waiver. No exceptions. No refunds given to anyone under 18 who attempts to enter. You will be screened by security.

Final Thoughts:

These guys do a very good show so I am interested to see what they come up with for this year. I normally absolutely hate black out haunts and I am tired of Zombies. If this were anyone else I’d be zinging them about that but these guys actually did a dark section and used zombies of their haunt in past years and got it right. The Scarehouse and Eastern State Penitentiary Terror Behind the Walls are, as of this writing, the only 2 haunts that I have been to in the entire country that managed to do a dark haunt right because they kept the lights dim and did not use darkness as an excuse to save money. Yeah, I remember that one at Night of Terror in NJ that was just some dude in a dark room hitting a bucket while people tripped over each other. I do not expect that this is what will happen here.

The Scarehouse is also probably one of the few who got Zombies right. Again, that’s probably because the set was custom designed with narrative in each room and it wasn’t a costuming budget cut.

It all comes down to the fact that I believe The Scarehouse uses these concepts to create, not to save money. Too many haunts in America do these concepts as gimmicks to solely to save money and I can see through every one of them. There is nothing wrong with saving money, but if you do it past a certain threshold that impacts the detail and integrity of the attraction you have a haunt that just plain bores me more than a monkey ass. I am confident in saying that you won’t find that ballhockey at The Scarehouse.

But they do tend to make things up so I can’t promise you there will be no monkey ass. I’ve seen some weird shit in there. I can just tell you that if there was a monkey ass it would be a really well done monkey ass that entertains you.

Creepo’s Christmas is always good so having that return is pretty great. I don’t know what The Summoning is yet, but I have a feeling they’ll tell us in a handful of days. I am getting a Day of the Dead vibe off the logo. Here’s hoping.

The Basement is actually the one thing that I routinely get pulled aside to answer questions about in my travels. I can be in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, or New York City and the second people hear I am there they want to ask me about my opinion on this one. I’ll corroborate their claim of The Basement being notorious. I am almost tired of answering questions about it. Almost. Not quite yet. 🙂

Curious? Read my reviews of The Scarehouse (including The Basement) over in the Haunted Attraction Review section.