Hollywood Gothique

Yard haunts, haunted garages, walk-through mazes – all home-made and free of charge

The final installment of Hollywood Gothique’s 2012 Halloween Haunt Odyssey finds us retracing our steps over previously explored territory, as we head out on October 31, seeking those ephemeral haunts open only on All Hallow’s Eve. From Glendale to Sherman Oaks to Northridge and finally back to Woodland Hills (again!), we wander through the ghost-infested [...]

Date: November 1, 7-10pm
Location: 13420 Wentworth Street, Los Angeles, California, 91331
Link out: Click here
Description: This Halloween walk-thru diorama actually opened on Halloween, but it flew beneath our radar. Fortunately, it returns for an encore engagement on November 1. The Fall of the Pumpkin People is a self-described “experiment in storytelling,” a walk through a back [...]

Date: November 1, 6-8pm
Location: 4602 Morse Avenue Sherman Oaks, CA 91432
Link out: Click here
Description: From Boney Island’s Facebook page comes this message:
Due to the large crowds at BONEY ISLAND some were not able to see it. As an encore presentation, BONEY ISLAND will be open TONIGHT (Nov. 1) for a limited time. This WILL be [...]

It’s the morning after Halloween – but that’s no reason to be mourning. With October 31 having fallen in the middle of the week, a handful of Halloween events in Los Angeles are remaining open through the weekend. So if you feel yourself going through withdrawal pains, consider the following options. (Be careful: some of [...]

Part 3 of Hollywood Gothique’s 2012 Halloween Haunt Odyssey returns to a land we visit every October: Woodland Hills, with stops in Tarzana and Encino along the way. Since we have reviewed most of these yard haunts before, we will not delve deeply into details here; instead we will note what new tricks and treats [...]

One of the great agonies every October is that  many amateur Halloween events operate only on the last day of the month, making it truly impossible to get to all of them. A few open a day or two earlier, but often are not running at full-scale until Halloween Night; attempts to visit them beforehand [...]

This installment of the annual Halloween Haunt Odyssey is a bit of a geographical jumble, exploring the paranormal activities lurking inside two amateur Halloween events separated by miles of freeways. Divergent in location they may be, but Pumkin Jack’s Haunted House and Rotten Apple 907’s Wilsley Manor share certain salient traits: both of them are [...]

Looking for some new – or at least, lesser known – yard haunts in Los Angeles? Then you should check out this list of “Do It Yourself” haunts at deathbombarc.com. Somebody has really done his homework here: Along with well-known ones such as the Backwoods Maze and Boney Island, this list contains several obscure amateur attractions and [...]

This amateur Halloween yard haunt was scheduled to return for Halloween 2012 – if it could meet its fund-raising goal by October 22. The proprietor set up a Kickstarter campaign, seeking investors. Unfortunately, the deadline came and went, but the goal was not met. Too bad: Spydrhill had been haunting its Torrance neighborhood for ten [...]

As usual, Hollywood Gothique began its annual Halloween Haunt Odyssey a little early this year. This ritual trek began back in 2005, when we tried to hit as many Los Angeles yard haunts as possible on Halloween Night. However, as more and more of these amateur extravaganzas have appeared on our radar, October 31 no [...]

SoulPancake.com (Rainn Wilson’s website) runs a series of short videos looking at different subcultures. Since it is now October, it only makes sense that SoulPancake would turns its camera lens upon home haunters. The six-minute vid features Jeff Schiefelbein, who made the transition from amateur haunting to professional with his Sinister Pointe Haunted Attraction. Also [...]

Dates & Hours: through  October 31, 7pm to 1am
Location: 2821 S. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90018
Link out: Click here
Description: This amateur Halloween yard haunt – which has been haunting its neighborhood for several years now – features mannequins in the forms of Frankenstein, Jason Voorhees, and other famous movie monsters. There are some animatronics, [...]

Last night, Hollywood Gothique trekked out to two of its favorite Halloween treats: the Boney Island Yard Haunt in Sherman Oaks and the Theatre 68 Haunted House in Hollywood. The two attractions could not be farther apart on the spectrum: Boney Island is an amateur yard haunt that appeals to kids of all ages with [...]