5 ‘Disturbing’ True Crime Haunts You Can Really Visit This Year
Every horror fan has dreamed of being in a horror movie of their very own for as long as they’ve been plugging in old VHS tapes of Halloween or Chopping Mall, basking in the grainy, analogue glory. This component has made games like The Quarry such a remarkable success. As media converges and shifts form, the gaming realm has allowed for more interactivity, an opportunity for horror fans to not just dream it, but also actualize it. Supplanted into a B-movie horror scenario, this media asks—would you make it? Yet, for as interactive as they are, there’s a lack of tactility to the scenario. Stretched and blown up to 4k resolution, pixels on pixels on pixels, there is still distance. A chasm between the horror and the fan’s proximal involvement. For the real, unsullied deal, there are haunts.
Haunts
Haunts, otherwise known as haunted houses, can be classified into two distinct realms—home and commercial. The likes of Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, remarkable as their scares are, are best categorized as commercial haunts. They’re sanitized and streamlined. They capitalize more on familiarity than really pushing the boundaries of what an interactive horror experience can be. Home haunts, such as the likes of Escape from Michael Myers—a new haunt opening in West Virginia this year—might similarly cull from filmic history, but there’s a more intimate, ragtag feel to the proceedings.
As a catchall for haunted houses, the community is adamant that the likes of the infamous McKamey Manor push the boundaries of what a haunt should be, often concluding that such attractions aren’t really haunts at all. If your attraction is waterboarding attendees and sending them to the hospital, there’s arguably something else motivating form and structure than the simple desire to scare. And truthfully, that’s all a haunt really wants to do. Scare the ever-living Hell out of attendees. It’s why every Halloween, horror fan or not, hordes of folk flock to cornfields and abandoned warehouses. Audiences dole out cash. Audiences desire to be chased by bladeless chainsaws and locked in the dark.
Some haunts plunder the annals of sordid, criminal history to add a prestige layer of truth to their scares. It’s a common tactic, fictionalized to grisly results in the recently released Clown in a Cornfield 2. It also skirts the line of decency, at times culling exploitation from the bowels of tragic pasts better left undisturbed. While several such haunts exist all over the country, here are five of the most infamous. All open. All accessible. And all with an aura of truth to their most frightening scares.
Frightmare Manor – Talbott, TN
Frightmare Manor argues it’s Tennessee’s “real” scream park. All those other parks are fake, spinning fictional tales from garish, cliché cloth. Not Frightmare Manor. Under their history tab, they document the extensive history of the property where their haunt currently is. There have been deaths, murders (different than deaths, of course), and unexplained, supernatural phenomenon. The most infamous, of course, is the case of Jeremiah Lexer.
Absent contemporary mental health care, forensic experts largely agree Lexer suffered from acute schizophrenic bouts. These went undiagnosed and, resultantly, untreated. In the summer of 1902, Lexer brutally murdered his entire family. He dismembered them with a wood axe before throwing himself from the window to his death. From defenestration came a lucrative haunt. The ethics are unclear. The creators sutured the deaths of real people with dime-store Halloween decorations, gauzy webs and glimmery confetti. Yet, for those curious about the veracity of the reported 30 bodies later discovered on the property, Frightmare Manor just might yield the answer.
Eastern State Penitentiary – Philadelphia, PA
Every year, those responsible for the preservation of the Eastern State Penitentiary, a National Historic Landmark, host Halloween Nights. In their own words, the event is “an immersive experience featuring five thrilling haunted houses — plus historic tours, themed bars, live entertainment, and more — inside the massive, abandoned complex of Eastern State Penitentiary.” For those unfamiliar, the Eastern State Penitentiary operated from 1829 to 1971. Famously known for revolutionizing the separate incarceration tactic, otherwise known as solitary confinement, the prison had a sordid, tragic history of abuse and exploitation. Petty criminals endured the worst of it. Prisoners entered their cells through self-described portals, small holes with access to an exercise yard. Cells had single skylights, referred to as “the eye of God.” This tactic suggested prisoners always had God watching over them (in a sinister, punitive way, not anything remotely resembling salvation).
The resultant abuse included dousing prisoners in freezing water, chaining tongues to wrists, and strapping inmates into leather restraints. The most famous is “the hole.” Guards dug an underground cell deep into the earth where prisoners were kept for weeks on end, absent any light, without food or water. Fun fact—Steve Buscemi narrates self-guided audio tours during their regular, non-seasonal operation hours. While the preservation of a national landmark is a worthy cause, it’s hard to get around the century of abuse as window dressing for a haunted house.
Eloise Haunted Asylum – Westland, MI
Eloise Haunted Asylum is exactly what the name implies—it’s a haunted asylum. Grave Encounters and its sequel should have been enough to indicate why haunted asylums are bad ideas. If they weren’t, there’s always Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, one of the scariest found footage movies of the century. Horror has a way of uniquely desensitizing some audiences to real-life horrors. Yet, there’s little denying that the abuse at Eloise Psychiatric Hospital, operational from 1839 to 1982, was anything but cruel. In a sense, all past asylums were—it’s why the horror genre loves an abandoned psychiatric hospital (Session 9, eherm)—but Eloise was especially horrific.
Nolan Finley, writing for The Detroit News, remarked, “ Not to be a holiday buzzkill, but I find it disturbing the old Eloise hospital has been turned into a giant haunted house for Halloween.” Survivors of the Eloise Psychiatric Hospital still exist, and many take umbrage with the exploitative shift into Spirit Halloween showroom territory. Eloise mostly, if not exclusively, served (loosely used) the poorest, most destitute, tortured souls there were. These persons had nothing. The asylum stigmatized and abused patients. They resultantly endured painful, tragic lives. They often died in anonymity, bodies to be disposed of, lives deemed wasted. There’s an argument to be made—a strong one at that—that costuming a tragic sight as a spookshow is irresponsible at best, malicious at worst. But, hey—Eloise is proud of being what they call the “Disney” of haunted attractions.
Fear Factory – Salt Lake City, UT
Fear Factory is arguably the most tactful haunted house on the list. The haunt nestled itself on the grounds of an old Portland cement factory. Fear Factory is “made up of 6 buildings, up to 6 stories high, with 2 underground passages.” Widely awarded and seminally regarded as one of the country’s best haunted attractions, Fear Factory is almost worth the trip to Salt Lake City alone. While the haunt’s history isn’t without tragedy—George Howe, an employee there, had his arm gruesomely severed by a machine—it amounts less to abuse, and more to negligence.
Portland cement is the world’s most common cement. Portland cement makes concrete, mortar, and stucco among other building materials. Workers heat these limestone and clay minerals in a kiln and then ground them to produce a fine powder. Several workers at the antecedent Fear Factory site were killed in accidents, many of which involved shafts, grinders, and coal tanks. They were gruesome deaths. Fear Factory might be fun and frightening, but it carries with it the very real risk of bringing the incensed spirit of George Howe home with you. And honestly? Who could blame him?
Pennhurst Asylum – Spring City, PA
Pennhurst Asylum has a horrific past. Operating under “appalling” conditions, like Eloise, it exploited the most vulnerable populations imaginable. The creators have resurrected that tragedy, repurposing it with some pre-fab Amazon Halloween décor, commercialized as a premier haunt. With three haunts “THAT WILL PUSH YOU TO THE LIMITS OF YOUR SANITY,” their words, all caps, the Asylum is a staple haunt, famously one of the best around.
Yet, it trades in the very real, and very tragic, history of abuse, exploitation, and death. These real haunts nestle themselves in fictionalized ones. The augur of reality endures. Go to Pennhurst, see the state-of-the-art animatronics, and maybe take home a real ghost of your own. It’s why the true crime subgenre is so remarkably successful. It’s why a horror movie amps its fear factor by portending to be based on real events, whether that’s true or not.
Maybe it’s proximal. I don’t know. But there is something that doesn’t sit quite right. Yet, at the same time, as windows into the horrific past—opportunities to experience a history an audience might otherwise have been excluded from—it’s not to say these haunts don’t serve some ostensible humanitarian purpose. After all, fear is galvanizing and curative. The sins of the past are not beyond righting, and these collective haunts, in their own way, might do just that. Or, perhaps they simply dabble in real blood, real deaths, and real cold, hard cash.
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