East Coast Haunt Diary 2024

While Philadelphia doesn’t carry the notoriety of the LA haunt scene, the city is centrally located among some of the oddest, most charming, and often incredibly innovative haunts in the USA. East Coast Curator Blake Weil presents a tour of some of more of the obscure offerings.

Gravestone Manor
Plains, PA; $12

When thinking back to your first haunted house, most people think back to local fundraisers. For me, there was the terrifying haunted firehouse I’d go through as a child, the home haunt/can drives one neighborhood over who’s Dracula seemed to get tipsier every time you went through, and of course, the comically inept “Haunting of Cub Scout Pack 773” I performed in as a middle schooler. Gravestone Manor has the local charm and spirit of these, but paired with an absurd ambition. It is the skeleton of the most immersive, elaborate, theatrical haunt, but executed with the sensibilities and resources of some creative dads

Special applause has to go to the way Gravestone Manor crafts a unique narrative every year. This year, in a take-off on Midsommar, guests are led to a town harvest festival with the same dark secret as every other small town harvest festival in a horror scenario. Nonetheless, the scares are innovative and elaborate. The fact that on a limited budget, Gravestone Manor manages to make large-scale contraptions and set pieces is doubly impressive. Yes, the occasional actor would flub a line, or a set not quite gel due to the way it stretched a reused prop from a prior year, but overall, it was a near-professional production that provided a unique local charm that professional shows can’t reproduce.

While I understand convincing urban readers from relatively theatre dense regions to take a two hour drive to the boonies for a charity haunted house is a big ask, Gravestone Manor is a highlight of my annual pilgrimages deep into the Pocono’s to check out hand-crafted haunts, and deserves to be celebrated in the utmost.

Horror Hall
Nanticoke, PA; $25

If every local haunt is the shadow version of a larger corporate haunt, the spectacular scale of Horror Hall (20,000 sq. feet!) makes it comparable to something like Halloween Horror Nights. Still, its local roots and whimsical tone set it apart from so many more staid and corporate haunts.

Every element that feels like it could have been standard is instead whimsical. Audiences start in an enormous auditorium watching Young Frankenstein and other such goofy Halloween content before being ushered up, taking a posed souvenir photo that firmly cemented me in the theme park mindset. Once in the house itself though, the odd twists and turns the local venue can accommodate start to shine.

Take the classic spinning tunnel gag. While most houses would have you go through alone, Horror Hall puts a clown perched on the railing, whom makes you crawl through her legs to get through the spinning vortex. Every trick and trope is reinvented in ways I dare not spoil. It’s a true treasure trove, each room eliciting as much delight and surprise as it can out of what’s expected to be well-worn territory.

It reminds me of a good magic show. While everyone has seen the standard tricks, in this case the effects available at haunted house conventions, it’s the patter and framing that really makes them shine. Horror Hall is a spectacular performer that elevates these standards while maintaining local charm.

Halls of Horror
Palmerton, PA; $27, $47 for enhanced Blood Experience with T-Shirt

Yes, you read that right, there is a Halls of Horror in addition to the Horror Hall. Say it with me folks, Halls of Horror is not Horror Hall. Write it 10 times on the chalkboard.

Halls of Horror has some spectacular rooms. The intro, descending into the spooky dungeon of the set, sets a spectacular tone. Certain scenes, like being trapped in a cage by a mad miner, or interrogated for your sins by overzealous and violent nuns, are inventive and make good use of an intricate mechanical set. Despite what I’m about to say, I admittedly spent most of Halls of Horror laughing and smiling and shrieking as I was supposed to.

The pacing problems are what starts to do Halls of Horror in. Unfortunately, the “Blood Experience”, adding assorted blood, viscera, and sexual fluid (SO much sexual fluid) simulated with pudding, takes significantly longer than the standard adventure. This creates large back ups, forcing actors to stall for time in scenes that have not enough horror content or patter to fill the space. The Blood Experience also leaves dripping, staining fluids in tight spaces that less enthusiastic for the mess standard participants are forced to squeeze through. These issues culminate in an anticlimactic finale we waited a fair amount for while being physically pressed into a wall coated in fluids by the last group.

This would all be quibbles if multiple rooms didn’t also make most of their hay out of calling me gay. Yes, I’m gay, surprise surprise! I realize we’re out of the city and the social mores are different, but being called a fairy boy by Beetlejuice, having the mad doctor say he can see “the fresh swimmers” in my mouth, a parody of the rape scene from Deliverance I was called “overeager” for, and so forth would be dully repetitive even if in good taste. At first, I felt ready to disregard and play along believing it to be a fly ball failed attempt at humor, but after so many repeated scenes, I’m forced to assume someone thought that audiences might find the constant insinuations on their sexuality truly frightening.

The website advises guests to leave sensitivities and good clothing at the door, so I can’t make claims to true offense at the language or fluids, but shock comedy this unamusing feels pointless. It’s more a question of “why” than a situation in which I’m scandalized or offended.

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Is Halls of Horror worth doing? If you’re local, or touring the houses of the region, perhaps. It has some excellent setpieces. Still, the aforementioned issues hamper it from achieving “must-see” status.

Devil’s Last Laugh
Lehighton, PA; $25

Devil’s Last Laugh is on the precipice of greatness. In its third year of operation, it’s reached a scope that’s worth a drive, and has begun to add supplemental attractions. It is, at present, in the strange valley between local curiosity and dizzying heights.

Giving a jailbreak narrative in which guests are recruited to break a killer clown out of an insane asylum, the attraction manages to string together many classic scares with moments of interactivity and intimacy. An innovative, multi-part intro sets the stage spectacularly, with a steady crescendo to the action before things really rev up.

Still, the surrounding material can be a little sparse. A promised “midway” is a bit of a letdown. On the other hand, the remote location and the fact that the venue is just someone’s house and farm means the sparseness lends a peculiar, ominous quality that enhances the evening.

I believe that next year, with the introduction of their haunted woods attraction, Devil’s Last Laugh will be first-class. Until then, it’s a wonderful diversion for both locals and true enthusiasts who want to say they were a fan before they got big.

Waldorf Estate of Fear
Lehighton, PA; $35+

Waldorf Estate of Fear straddles a line between legitimate terror (in its signature haunted hotel and cinematic reputation) and adorable local charm in every other way. The balancing act it achieves is truly insane, especially with massive haunt superfan attention on it as the filming site of the Hellhouse, LLC franchise of films.

As stated, the signature haunted house is a very frightening delight. Actor driven, it plays with the rooms of a hotel (lobby, bar, elevator, etc.) to spectacular effect. Each scene feels like a scene-stealing showcase for its actors, who gamely improv with the guests in addition to pre-prepared scares. For superfans of the film, there’s even some delightful cameos of the monstrous Hellhouse denizens.

On the other hand, their Terror in the Corn and Infection outdoor attractions are stupendously sincere and charming. Terror in the Corn was a highlight of this year’s haunt circuit, each scene a moderately scary but predominantly loving realization of a classic horror movie. There becomes a clip show delight going scene to scene hoping your favorite will show up next. Infection, meanwhile, is a mildly interactive zombie maze, with actors lunging for you as you try to collect data disks and antidotes. The whole thing mixes legitimate jump scares with the stilted Resident Evil spookiness that manages to insert delightful camp without undercutting the horror.

Honestly, Waldorf will likely become a yearly tradition for me. Miraculous in its ability to succeed on multiple tones, Waldorf is a must see haunt fans willing to make the trek. Perhaps you’d even care to stay for one of their paranormal investigations. Who knows — your grisly discovery might just inspire their next great attraction.

Jimmy Fallon’s Tonightmares
New York City; $35, 20% with promo code JFTFOMO20

I mean, are we really doing this?

I tried, I really tried to like this. I went in all smiles, and did my best to play along; Taylor, our spooky host, even commented they never saw someone as chipper as me in such a ghoulish nightmare.

Tonightmares has so much in common with Race Through New York, Fallon’s ride at Universal Orlando. Jimmy Fallon’s seeming need to insert himself into totally unrelated elements of the culture is in full swing. So is the egoism needed to believe people recall non-iconic Tonight Show bits like Hashtag the Panda, who makes a cameo in both. Both ordeals feel like stepping into another universe where market forces would drive investment at this scale, as opposed to what in reality seems to be the odd, vain caprice of a media mogul. Clearly, the empty lines seem to indicate that market forces are indeed absent from this venture.

If I seem harsh, it’s because the entire exercise seems predatory. Heavily advertised and expensively produced, the set oozes money on a surface level. However, in a year where I’ve seen three “crashing elevator” gimmicks, why is Tonightmares the only one where no moving elements were introduced to the elevator? Why am I being rushed through at a tremendous pace, premium pricing securing approximately ten minutes at most of entertainment, where I can’t even explore the admittedly sumptuous sets? Every scare feels spoiled by the omnipresent marketing, scenes feel like overbaked Fallon specifics or underbaked stock ideas, and the balance between humor and horror the haunt seeks is never achieved. Only two moments that evoked classic talk show imagery felt on-point and successful in the ten or so scenes we were marched through.

I love theme park-y kitsch as long time readers known, and the fact that that element couldn’t save Tonightmares for me makes it feel beyond saving. The venue of Rockefeller Center makes the whole exercise feel especially desperate, a plea to extend the “Christmas in New York” season of tourist milking a full month earlier. A paradoxically overproduced but cheap product sold on an increasingly diminishing brand name, may we leave Tonightmares in the past.

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