Hollywood Gothique

You are browsing the archives of 2006 October.

As you don your Halloween costumes and decide which revels to enjoy on this last night of the Halloween season, make a special note of this: tonight is the final night that the wonderful Turbidite Manor will be in Los Angeles.
This haunt - a sort of electronically-guided museum tour of a haunted mansion - is [...]

Fright Fair is off my list.
Two years ago, I wrote a “Lament for Fright Fair,” when it became known that the haunt would be sitting out the 2004 Halloween season in Los Angeles. It returned in 2005 in a radically revised form (with a Halloween Harvest Festival, a corn maze, and a Creatures of the [...]

When we reviewed the debut of Old Town Haunt in 2005, it was no secret that we found it strong on atmosphere but somewhat short on scares, thanks to a minimal cast of characters. Fortunately, we set aside our disappointment from last year and gave it a second chance this weekend, finding it immensely improved [...]

Universal Studios launched its new Halloween Horror Nights yesterday, Friday the 13th. It has been several years since the famous theme park presented a Halloween attraction along the line of the Knott’s Berry Farm Halloween Haunt, so this was a major event for horror fans. Considering that Universal practically invented the horror genre (with Dracula, [...]

As I mentioned in a previous post, Haunts USA had its press night preview on Sunday. This is pretty much a new haunt; technically, the company began professional haunting back in 2002, but they sat out the last couple years while searching for a good location. This is their debut at the Northridge Fashion Mall, [...]

Haunts USA, the new Halloween haunt on the block, makes its debut with a press-invitation-only night at its location in Northridge. I’ll be checking it out this evening and reporting back tomorrow, but in the meantime, I’m posting some excerpts from an interview I conducted with the haunt’s proprietors, Laura and Harlan Freedman.
Harlan is a [...]