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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - Queen Mary's Dark Harbor

10/22/2016

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

The Queen Mary in Long Beach is a must see tourist attraction pretty much any time of year, hearkening back to a day when massive ocean liners were king and a vital form of transportation instead of floating cities rife with crime and various stomach diseases. Of course, in addition to the opulence, the ship has its dark sides. It was called into service to ferry soldiers during World War II, and like any hotel, it lost a handful of guests and crew over the years. The ship has a reputation for being one of America’s most haunted places, and while we’ve never actually seen anything to confirm or deny this reputation (despite having taken its ghost tour that you can attend any time of year), I have an easy time seeing the ship as a creepy place. There’s something about the 1940’s aesthetics combined with the complete and utter blackness that you can only really find in the deep, iron hulk of a ship that just makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
 
So, naturally, this is the perfect place for a haunt.
 
Dark Harbor is one of the standout haunts in Southern California, and one of the main reasons for it is how little they half-ass the experience. They could have just put one haunted house in (or by) the ship, vaguely themed it to something retro or ship-based and called it a day, enjoying the extra money they make on top of being a tourist destination and active hotel, but no. Dark Harbor sets itself up as an event to rival even the theme park attractions nearby, with six mazes, a carnival of terrors atmosphere, and numerous other attractions. Now I’ll admit, they clearly don’t have the room or budget to pull off a lot of what the major theme parks do, you won’t find makeup and sets on the level of what you’ll find at Universal Studios or Knott’s Berry Farm, but what you will find is enthusiasm. Year in and out the scareactors here are arguably the scariest I’ve seen at any Halloween event, charging, following, taking advantage of the darkness and coaxing out any screams you might be hiding away.
 
So, did this year live up to the high bar set by past years? Well, Fiona and I with our dear friend Ashley got a few front of the line tickets and went to find out.

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It's Dark Harbor time!
THE MAZES
As per usual in Dark Harbor, there are three shipboard mazes and three landlocked mazes. Having learned from previous years, we decided to do all the shipboard mazes first. This has several benefits, as the shipboard mazes get incredibly hot (especially given Southern California’s tenuous understanding of the concept of fall), and the more crowded they get, the more of a conga line of people they become, cutting down on the scares.
 
As well, and I cannot stress this enough, front of the line passes are essential. With lines that can get up to 2 or 3 hours long, the front of the line passes are the only way to see every maze.
 
Soulmate
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The first shipboard maze, Soulmate, was the tale of ship ghost Graceful Gale and her search for the perfect man. The perfect man, of course, being one she makes from chopping up various suitors. Naturally, because of this, this is a maze full of beautiful women, body parts, and sheets of flayed skin all over the place. While not necessarily the scariest maze, it was a great way to begin the night.
 
Lullaby
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Creepy little girls are a horror staple for a reason, and Lullaby, the story of ship ghost Scary Mary, allegedly a little girl who drowned in the ship’s pool, really milks this concept and makes this easily the scariest maze of the night. Going deep into the ship’s bowels, we enter Scary Mary’s playground, a mix of toys and dead bodies, and unrelenting jump scares from Scary Mary around every corner. Every person at one time or another in our group burst out screaming, and I cannot stress enough how much the maze’s talent elevates this one. The actresses playing Scary Mary were equal parts terrifying and funny, often following us around for a while and bantering, only to lead us into another scareactor and even more screams. The fact that part of this maze actually takes us over the ship’s pool, where several kids actually did drown in real life, adds the extra spook factor here.
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Scary Mary didn't want to let us go, clearly.
B340
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Like a lot of Halloween attractions, Dark Harbor often creates character icons to add personality and backstory. Some of them, like Graceful Gale and Scary Mary, work well and organically with the theme of their maze, while others just feel a bit tacked on. Samuel the Savage, of the maze B340, is one of the latter. The maze is allegedly a trip through one man’s madness as he was locked up on the ship, but the maze itself is more just a semi-random collection of weird imagery taking us through the Queen Mary’s old engine rooms. It’s alright, but nothing to write home about.
 
Circus
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For a maze that really doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the Queen Mary in any way, the Circus maze has always been rather entertaining. Taking full advantage of this year’s creepy clown craze (a stupid craze I refuse to acknowledge beyond a reference), the creepy clowns in this maze were on the hunt, confusing and scaring and just generally having a blast messing with us. Arguably more of a funhouse than a maze, Circus had a lot of classic funhouse sorts of gags, like shifting floors, spinning tunnels, mirror mazes and an honest to god ball pit we had to walk through that made this maze a scary blast.
 
Intrepid
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Oh man, if this wasn’t the disappointment of the night. Based on the premise of being the haunted shipyard where the Queen Mary was built, the Intrepid maze got off to a good start as we walk through a train carriage, and falls apart after that. What could have been a creepy, loud, industrial themed maze lacked traditional maze walls, instead making up much of its run with chain link fence. When so much of what makes mazes scary is controlling the attendees line of sight, so they can’t see what’s coming next, the fencing completely took away any potential scares this maze had, and made it the weakest maze of the night.
 
Deadrise
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An old standard of Dark Harbor, the Deadrise maze takes a walk through the ship (actually a series of interconnected shipping containers) that brings it back to its ghostly World War II days. As ever, this maze is a creepy highlight of Dark Harbor, with numerous phantom sailors hiding around every corner just waiting to terrify (and the one great jump scare at the end that I’ll refuse to divulge, but it works EVERY TIME). If I were to have a complaint, it’s that this year’s attraction relies too much on water effects, splashing the ground and making it slippery. While they do add a nice spark to the event, they also make you lose focus of the scares and focus on not falling down, which is an unneeded distraction when you’re trying to get in the haunt mood.
OTHER ATTRACTIONS
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Cheers from the Dark Harbor Freak Show!
Dark Harbor has a number of other upcharge attractions, including a paintball gallery, a “freak show”, and the Panic 4-D experience. While we didn’t have the time to partake in them all, I will say that the Freak Show and Panic 4-D are well worth their $5 tickets. The Freak Show is a mini-maze unto itself, taking you through shipping containers where you get to banter with the ghostly skeleton Sparky and his terrible jokes, and a maze of pure white theatrical fog, where ghostly beings haunt you with every step. Once you get to the freak show stage and bar, you can sit down, have a couple drinks, and watch a stage performance. While this year’s Freak Show lacked a lot of last year’s spark, namely the actual freak performers, the fiddler and fire dancer we got to watch this year were still quite entertaining.
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Plus you get to take pictures sticking your heads through things, and that’s never a bad thing.
The Panic 4-D experience is even more fun. A short, 3 or 4 minute 3-D animated movie taking you through the haunted ship while being chased by monsters, the cheesy 4-D effects that simulate being poked in the back, or having insects run over your feet, or getting blasted with foam, add a delightfully cheesy element to an otherwise straight terrifying event.
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In conclusion, Dark Harbor is one helluva time, and a must see of Halloween events in Southern California.
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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - CreepLA

10/17/2016

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CreepLA is another entry into LA’s expanding list of interactive, theatrical haunts, and though last year’s event wasn’t particularly stellar (though it was still entertaining), we were still quite excited to add it to our 2016 Long Halloween.
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Excitement!
The premise of this event involved dropping us into the art world. We’ve been invited to attend an exhibition based on the works of controversial 70’s artist Erebus Burwyck, whose works exploring human darkness and sexuality brought him equal parts acclaim and scorn. During his final performance, he mysteriously disappeared, and only recently his cult-like following has found the audio tape of this last performance and invited us to take part in listening to it for the very first time.
 
Now, while this premise sounded intriguing, I was still a bit on the hesitant side. A lot of haunts promise similarly in depth stories and kind of forget about them after a scene or two, and with CreepLA’s previous, inaugural, year being mostly a collection of dreamlike scenes, I was skeptical that they’d be able to pull off something with a story. While the first few scenes are promising and work along those lines, it does unfortunately fall into a trap of random and surreal horrorish scenes, which was disappointing. Combine that with an abrupt ending and, well, the experience was much more imperfect than I think they meant it to be.
 
Nitpicking on such things aside, however, the event is still a fun, interactive haunt. While the scenes in “the darkness” are a semi-random collection of dreamlike horror standards, they still manage to pull a lot of the standard gags that make interactive haunts great. At various points, the group is split up with people taking their own individual little adventures through nightmares. The performers are intense and good at throwing us around, both mentally and physically, making you feel uncomfortable in nearly every way you could be uncomfortable without ever trying to fully push you over the edge. There was running, and crawling, and hiding, and maybe even a little semi-inappropriate touching (always be sure to read the waivers at the beginning, ladies and gents), or as we call it in LA, a pretty okay Friday night.
 
 Perhaps the highlight of this event was the lounge area right before the event. Lounges are something I’ve found increasingly common in haunts, as they’re often a better alternative to waiting in line, and give the haunt a chance to sell drinks and snacks (which, hey, buy a bottle of water or overpriced cup of wine; haunts are really difficult to make a profit on these days), and often are a good way to hype up the event to come. Wandering actors create a surreal experience as they would often stop to accost us, staring at us strangely or sitting at our table and randomly reading our palms.
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Clearly I made a friend. One I had to run like hell to get away from.
Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but it’s all in a day’s entertainment when you go to these.
 
So, while the CreepLA experience doesn’t live up to all its promises, it does offer a fun, moderately creepy time during a busy haunt season.
 
Event Score: 7/10
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We were creeped.
Thank you for joining us this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - Sinister Pointe: Fear the Mark

10/12/2016

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

As Halloween haunts go, you can generally rely on one of two strategies: either you will be brought the same event year after year (with perhaps a new coat of paint and a few new creepy masks for good measure), or you will get a company that constantly reinvents itself on a year-by-year basis. Both of these strategies have their pluses and minuses, and both of them have plenty of examples about how to do it right and how to do it wrong. In principle, I will always applaud places that try to do something new each year, even if they’re not entirely successful, as trying something new in haunts is generally admirable.
 
As such, we generally look forward to whatever is being held by Sinister Pointe. Over the past three years we’ve attended, we’ve traveled through high-tech houses that simulated going to the underworld and through Bloody Mary’s mirror, and took part in an innovative experience where one of us would be in a dark room populated by monsters while the other watched their partner on night vision cameras while offering instructions on how to blindly solve puzzles. It didn’t quite work, but it was fun.
 
Either way, Sinister Pointe has consistently offered interesting and interactive experiences, and with this year’s theme, Fear the Mark, promising four separate paths that we could be sent on throughout the night, we were excited.
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Unfortunately, the first thing we were greeted by was the less-than-stellar logistics of the event, which did sour a lot of the experience of the night. There were two lines, one for regular tickets, the other for front-of-the-line tickets, but to say neither line moved terribly fast was an understatement. While letting people go in at groups of 2 to 4 people at a time did make for a more intimate, scarier experience, it also created long, snaking lines. Couple that with the fact that, once you’ve gone through one of the four experiences, you have to get back in whichever line you paid for to get in the second one. All told, all four of the experiences probably take about 30-40 minutes together, and even with front of the line tickets, we were there close to two and a half hours due to the wait in line. I fear trying to do the math for how long it’d take going through all four experiences in the normal line, though I get the impression a lot of people probably skipped out on that.
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That said, long waits are a good way to make friends in line.
Now, all that out of the way, how were the four experiences themselves? Well, despite some minor technical difficulties (like a projector randomly changing from creepy imagery to the Optoma logo) and a lot of the set pieces looking rawer and more unfinished than their past experiences, this one was still a ton of fun. The four separate paths are chosen for you at the beginning by a fortune teller, who will send you into the realm of one of four separate (fake) pagan deities: Rebus, the trickster god, Arcane, the god of madness, Tormentum, a god of torture and pain, and Infernal, a fairly general death god. While the presence of the gods themselves wasn’t really much of a thing, the four realms were mostly distinct (save for a few hub areas that each of the four experiences connects to at predetermined intervals). There were trippy effects, from mirror and glass mazes in near pitch darkness, crawl tunnels, and small holes to be shoved in by various demons and damned souls. We crawled under (fake) barbed wire and dead bodies, and had a lot of fun bantering with the very talkative talent throughout the maze.
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And, admittedly, the various brands and fake tarot cards we got by the end of the night were great souvenirs.
So, I’ll admit to being torn by this. While the poor logistics of the event really took it down a notch, we still had a lot of fun. In the end, I think I would recommend this event, but I would have to advise on the issues with lines, which I’m sincerely hoping their working on improving.
 
Event Score: 6.5/10
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Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t share that this event probably created my favorite picture of Fi and me ever taken.
Thank you for joining us this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - Night of the Living Dead at the Maverick Theater

10/10/2016

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

(SPOILER ALERTS FOR A 50+ YEAR OLD MOVIE; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!)
 
It is impossible to overstate how important Night of the Living Dead is to the genre of modern horror. From bringing to screen a level of violence and terror that had never been seen before (let alone on such a shoestring budget), to its subtle and not-so-subtle social commentary, and the very fact that it more or less created all the rules for zombies that films abide by to this day, it’s one hell of a movie. While certain parts of it don’t quite hold up (Barbara’s portrayal is easily one of the worst characters in any classic horror film), it’s a classic for a reason.
 
And so, in hearing that a local theatre company did a stage adaptation of Night of the Living Dead every October, we knew we had to take a look.
 
The Maverick Theater in Fullerton is a tiny theatre, (though larger, and more an actual theater than where we saw Evil Dead: The Musical), but with a lounge area featuring a bar before hitting the main stage, as well as a boarded up doorway featuring some very hands-on zombie performers…
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They quite liked Fi.
…the tone for the show is set quite well. Once the power goes out, the screaming starts, and we’re ushered into the main auditorium, through a stage that reasonably recreates the original’s 1968 farmhouse set, we know we’re in for a treat.
 
I can go into the plot, but if you know the 1968 original, you know this one. It’s 1968. Zombies are patrolling the Pennsylvania countryside. A group of disparate survivors gathers together and spends a whole lot of time arguing the virtues of boarding up windows vs. staying in a basement. Zombies attack. More boards vs. basement arguing. Something explodes. More boards vs. basement arguing. People die.
 
You get the picture.
 
The stage production trims the original film’s runtime from about 90 minutes to a lean hour, which, while sacrificing a surprisingly small bit of character development, actually works pretty well, since most of what’s cut is Barbara running barefoot across the countryside and long semi-montages of boarding up windows. Certain scenes are admittedly more perfunctory, and the characters of Tom and Judy, barely even characters in their original incarnations, are now just blank slates who fill time and die while occasionally providing some comic relief. While the comic relief is welcome in this play that adds a distinct tone of gallows humor to the original story, it only serves to highlight how borderline unnecessary the characters are in this incarnation (not to give a hard time to the actors, though, who did a fine job).
 
The acting in this play was uniformly great, and while there were some undeniable opening night jitters in play, they didn’t detract too much. The standouts were, hands down, Alexander Harris’ Ben and Briana Donze’s Barbara. Harris gives Ben a sense of power and calm strength, being eaten away by the horrific situation he’s found himself in, while Donze’s heavily rewritten Barbara changes her character from a shrill catatonic to a woman driven mad by the end of the world, but one who’s willing to do what it takes to survive. It doesn’t help her in the end, but it makes for a much more palatable show.
 
The production was top notch for the small space, with the farmhouse feeling both real and claustrophobic (which is a benefit in working with a play with a lot of zombie attacks). The zombies were, well, zombies, but there were a lot of them, and they clearly had a lot of fun plying their undead craft on stage. The fights against them were well choreographed for a local stage production, and they managed a few over the top gags that really make you take pause and say “WOW” for such a production.
For a taste of what I'm talking about.
Unfortunately, due to the truncated nature of the play, the original’s dark ending is both kept intact and still robbed of a lot of the impact. It is a shame, but relatively understandable given the small scale nature of what they have to pull off.
 
Regardless, any complaints I have are minor, and this is a production I highly recommend checking out if you get the time. They will be running from October 7-30, at the Maverick Theater in Fullerton.
Thank you for joining us this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - Reign of Terror & Los Angeles Haunted Hayride

10/8/2016

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

Today’s Long Halloween blog will be twice as nice, because I’ve got two events to talk about! Well, all right, mostly it’s because I don’t have as much to say about them despite enjoying both very much, and with the Long Halloween packed with as many events as we have scheduled (and Fi and I having been various levels of sick this past week), I’m going to have to do a little multitasking here and there to properly cover everything.
 
Sorry.
 
So, without further ado, let’s check out stops 4 and 5 of the Long Halloween!
REIGN OF TERROR
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The Reign of Terror haunted house is one of the great “don’t judge a book by its cover” houses in Southern California. Situated in a mall in Thousand Oaks (right above a Gold’s Gym if you’re really specific), you wouldn’t know that there was a haunt hiding here if it weren’t for a few signs and a line of people waiting outside.
 
Okay, the fat guy wandering around outside wearing a flayed doll’s face and wielding a wrench might’ve been a clue too, but I digress.
 
Once inside, though, you’re readily transported to one of the coolest queue areas I’ve seen for a haunt. Anticipating long lines (and believe me, around this time of year, the lines get looooooooooong), they’ve transformed the interior portion of the queue line into something befitting a Disney park, walking through a haunted cemetery full of animatronic skeletons and other beasties. There are several scenes to walk through, and after getting a safety spiel from a talking skeleton, our hopes were reasonably high.
 
And, for the most part, our hopes panned out.
 
Boasting 95 rooms separated into 8 separate themes (covering classic themes, like Haunted House, Haunted Mine, Zombie Outbreak, Cannibal Hillbillies, Circus, etc.), Reign of Terror is supposedly one of the biggest haunts in the region, and on this it mostly succeeds. The sets are impressive, though the true scope of the event is easy to lose considering how claustrophobic most of them are. The sparse cast of actors, combined with a large number of animatronic effects, makes the best of a limited space, and while not the scariest event you’re going to find around here, this one does still have its fair share of spooks and screams.
 
If I were to have one complaint, it’s that the themed sections don’t break up particularly well, and sometimes run from one to another without much of a transition, which can be a bit on the disorienting side.
 
Praise, though, must go to the enthusiastic cast, and some of the trippier effects that they manage to employ in sections, especially the Circus themed area which plays with a lot of funky illusions. As well, praise has to be put toward the points in the maze where cast members will stop and slow people down, which on paper is a bit irritating, but in practice helps avoid the conga line effect that jam-packed mazes will often get.
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We clearly had fun.
So, while not the most inventive or original of haunts you’re going to find around this season, for an event with a rock-bottom ticket price that’s quite large, Reign of Terror is one of the best you’ll find.
 
Score: 6.5/10

THE LOS ANGELES HAUNTED HAYRIDE

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Well, this is going to be an odd one to write about, but I’ll do what I can. The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride has been a stalwart in our Long Halloween celebrations for five years running now, an impressive feat as it is one of the few we’ve done since the beginning, as well as for the fact that it’s actually not all that good.
 
This needs some explaining. When it comes to quality events, the Haunted Hayride is usually near the bottom. Despite attempts at making you believe there is a story, there never is one, just an assembly of scenes that are slightly horrific in nature. As well, the makeup and set pieces are limited and not terribly good, and perhaps the biggest sin of all is, well, that it’s not all that scary. Once you’re on the titular hayride itself, you get used to the typical types of scares they do in a hurry. Drive up to a location, scary people come out, come close to the hayride vehicle, make some noise, try to scare people, wash, rinse and repeat. After the first few incidents of this in the ride, screams usually get replaced by laughter, and by the end a fair bit of heckling comes in to play.
 
Top it off with hay not being terribly comfortable to sit in after a while (and still being stuck around my apartment nearly a week later) and, well, you’ve got something that might be called a not-that-great experience.
 
But, if you’re looking for some cheese in your Halloween experience, well, the Haunted Hayride is one of the best places you can go. While not scary, per se, the actors are so earnest and the experience so inherently Halloween-y that you just can’t go wrong for some good spooky fun or a good laugh. As well, for its price, with the number of attractions you have available, it’s a pretty good stop for the season.
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It's hard to go wrong with a Scary-Go-Round
There are three main attractions set around a sort of carnival boardwalk, with snacks, a “scary-go-round”, a shop, pumpkin decorating, psychics, and all other sorts of seasonal activities that almost make this seem like a family-friendly event, at least until you see the monsters wandering by and doing their best to scare the unwitting and unawares (some of which, like the pregnant zombie with the baby bursting from the stomach, do border on the tasteless).
 
Of the three main attractions, the main focus is of course the titular hayride. With a queue line that gets ridiculously long, this is a ride that’s best aimed for at the beginning of the night, unless you’re up for a crazy long wait (or unless you’ve ponied up the dough for a VIP, front of the line pass, which isn’t entirely worth it at this event). I’ve gone into some detail about this particular event earlier in the review already, so I won’t go crazy here, but I will note that this year’s prime difference from previous years’ events, where they actually force you out of the hayride vehicle for a separate walkthrough horror experience, doesn’t really add or take away from the hayride in any significant way. It just, well, kind of is.
 
The two other main attractions of the Haunted Hayride experience stand out much more and are far more fun. The Trick or Treat experience is a short little walk through experience, where you walk down a small corridor of themed house facades, knocking on doors, yelling trick or treat, and then getting candy from the creepy denizens within. With the houses being surprisingly well made, and the Sour Patch candies they handed out being, well, Sour Patch candies (yum), this was a surprising highlight of the night.
 
The final, and always our favorite of the Haunted Hayride attractions, is the House of Shadows. A pitch black, dark maze, made to disorient, this one’s always a highlight mostly because it’s a lot of fun to go through with a group. Given the high chances of getting legitimately lost, it doesn’t matter that they don’t have many monsters within to scare you and are mostly relying on darkness and strobe lights for atmosphere, it’s still a ton of fun. This year’s maze was semi-themed with a cross promotion to Universal Studios’ upcoming horror film: Ouija: Origin of Evil. While the themeing was light, they did have a couple-few fun scenes, though given the fact that Universal thought this attraction was a suitable place for cross-promotion over their own Halloween Horror Nights does not give me much hope for the film’s quality.
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And still, good times were had.
All told, despite being weak in a lot of respects that make for fun Halloween haunts, the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride still makes up enough on charm and enthusiasm to be a ton of fun.
 
Score: 4.5/10
Thank you for joining us this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - Evil Dead: The Musical

10/1/2016

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

The Garage Theatre in Long Beach isn’t all that impressive from the outside; in fact, it’s barely a hole in the wall. Clearly a converted business along a street of businesses, it would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, looking almost like a dark secret. When we get inside, we see a couple rows of folding chairs, and a set of large, bloody curtains cutting off half the room. The floor is sticky, and they’re selling ponchos at the box office up front.
 
If this sounds like it’s going somewhere sleazy, relax. I’m just talking about a showing of Evil Dead: The Musical.
 
As a huge fan of the Evil Dead franchise (especially the cheesy first film, before things got all slick and quippy), this play’s been on my radar for years, but as it’s never really hit it as big as a lot of other off Broadway shows, I never thought I’d get the opportunity to see it. Thank god for the Halloween season, though, and people willing to offer entertainments beyond usual jump scare haunted houses.
 
Now, here we come to a bit of a difficult situation, as I’ve never really written a theatrical review before. So, in this case, I’m going to comment based on what I thought of the show itself, and what I thought of this particular performance I saw.
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SPOILER ALERT: These ponchos were very necessary.
The Show:
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From top to bottom, I think this show was a lot of fun. While it doesn’t have the catchiest soundtrack in the world, its songs are great and fun in the moment, with numbers such as “Cabin in the Woods”, “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed By Candarian Demons” and “Look Who’s Evil Now” being particular standouts.
 
As well, the play is a solid retelling of the first two Evil Dead movies, with a little Army of Darkness thrown in for good measure. The original trilogy of films is notorious for its poor canon and constantly retelling the same story due to various rights issues making footage from previous films difficult to get the rights to, and the play condenses them well within one, funny timeline. And yes, the tree scene is still intact (and due to the nature of this particular theatre, happened about six inches in front of us), though is way more tasteful than its usual film incarnations.
 
As well, how can you not love a play with a major part for a singing, wall-mounted moose head?
 
The Performance:
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I haven’t seen this show performed by anyone else, so I have no idea how to compare it, but as a semi-regular musical watcher I think this show knocked it out of the park. There wasn’t a weak spot among the seven member strong main cast, though there were a few certain standouts. Steven G. Frankenfield was amazing as Ash, getting a lot of the cocky swagger of Bruce Campbell, while still being likeably vulnerable during some of Ash’s lower moments. And much like Bruce Campbell, he’s quite accomplished at being splashed with gallons of fake blood. Nori Tecosky plays the dual role of ditzy Shelly and brave archeologist Annie so well it took a while for me to figure out it was only one actress, and she knocks her big musical number (“All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed By Candarian Demons”) out of the park. However, for the life of me, the best of the bunch is Jazzy Jones’ portrayal of Ash’s demonically possessed sister, Cheryl. She goes from nerdy to scared to snarky comic relief demon so naturally, and really throws herself into some of the play’s more intense and weird moments (like the aforementioned tree scene).
 
The production itself in this tiny theatre was also fantastic. They made the most of a bloody curtain and half a cabin set, getting a ton of mileage from almost nothing. Being a tiny theatre with only thirty seats, and an Evil Dead production at that, the ponchos they sold up front proved to be necessary. Numerous things, from demons to babies to a whole lot of blood would fly at the audience, and if you’re sitting in the front row (which you really should do for a show like this), you will get wet. Very wet.
 
So, you know, don’t wear anything you wouldn’t mind getting dirty.
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This is what I looked like with the poncho I wore.
Without it, I'd probably look like I belonged on an episode of Forensic Files.
Conclusion:
 
A fun, trippy, bloody night at the theatre, I would highly recommend this show to anyone who loves the Evil Dead or enjoys the theatre and Halloween events.
 
Hail to the king, baby!
Thank you for joining us this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - The Tension Experience: Ascension

9/26/2016

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

I can’t tell you how long we’ve been in the back of this van. The hoods over our heads block out all but the brightest of light. We’ve been told not to speak, and I’ve lost track of counting the streets a while ago. Every so often, we stop, I can hear the van door slide open, and someone getting out. Then we’re moving again. Classical music blares in the background, distracting and disorienting me. I know Fiona is nearby, but I can’t reach for her.
 
Then we stop, and my mask comes off, and the madness begins.
 
So starts The Tension Experience: Ascension.
 
The Tension Experience is a new haunt for 2016, and as such we were a bit hesitant about attending (having been burned by untested events in the past, we generally prefer to go places that have been established), however with good word of mouth, we decided to give this one a shot.
 
Tension all about mystery, and the fact that I’m not going to give away any serious spoilers about it probably won’t help you get a serious idea of what it’s about, but I’ll do the best I can. What I can say is that it isn’t a traditional haunt, it’s more a part of the growing field of immersive theater, where you sign yourself up to be a part of an interactive experience, where you’re part of the show. Some of these shows push you more than others, while some you’re just along for the ride.
 
Tension is one of the ones that pushes you.
 
From the very moment you park in their dingy-looking parking lot to the moment you’re in the van, to the very end of the show where you’re standing, confused and talking about just what the hell happened with the rest of the people in your group, it is an experience that gets in your head and tweaks it in every way it can, for better and for worse.
 
The story is layered and in depth, but ultimately unnecessary to the actual experience. As attendees, we’re brought into the cult of the OOA. It’s a quasi-religious organization, and if you check out their website or any of their real-world experiences they’ve been holding since about April, you’ll get a lot of story. I mean, a lot of story. It can be a bit daunting, and a bit intimidating, but know that not much of it really matters in the long run.
 
And… all right, I’m going to get to my complaints about the show before I get to what I really loved about it. This is a new show, and a lot of that shows. They make a lot of promises, like it being an immersive experience customized to your personality and actions, and when there it feels like a fairly linear (if often non-linear) experience where your choices don’t mean much. A lot of tantalizing story possibilities are brought up, without resolution, like a frightened woman sneaking me a note at show’s beginning that had information that never came up again. They rely a little too much on shock tactics (overwhelming each of the five senses in fairly unpleasant ways in one section) and had several long, empty stretches where we were just sitting in blind silence. While disorienting at first, it got boring in a hurry after a while. As well, and this is just a personal phobia thing, if haunts could stop cramming things in our mouths in an effort to seem more extreme, that’d be very appreciated, thankyouverymuch.
 
As well, if you’ve got problems with nude strangers, or changing your own clothes in public (long story), this may cause some issues.
 
Now, complaints aside, I want to say that I really like this show. At nearly two hours in length, it has a way of overwhelming the mind and getting into your head, creating a feeling of intensity and paranoia like I’ve never felt before in a fictional setting. Perfect example: more than an hour into this experience, I’m a mess, I’ve been covered in things and had all sorts of things done to me, and I look at myself in a mirror. I don’t see myself anymore, I see this haunting, intense face, the face of a guy who’s survived a horror movie. After the experience is over, Fi and I get home, and we still wonder if we’re in it, knowing rationally that we haven’t been followed, and yet still full of paranoia. I write this article the next morning, and I still have a weird feeling like I’m being watched.
 
The non-linear portions of the show, where groups are split up, encourages conversation afterward as you find out what separate and unique experiences you and your friends had, as well as the strangers you were with. It creates an odd sense of community in this way, when we’re left to clean up after the show together, talking with people who were strangers hours before like they’re close friends due to this bizarre, shared experience.
 
As well, all my complaints about how the show physically tests you aside, I found a lot of the experience of it pushing boundaries to be both fascinating and thrilling. I was uncomfortable, the people around me were uncomfortable, and yet for two hours I was able to forget about the world and feel like myself because of how much it pushed me.
 
And at least one of the plot twists, which I won’t share, has me both deeply amused and feeling betrayed all at once.
 
Well done, Tension. Well done.
 
So, while it is imperfect, The Tension Experience: Ascension is still an exciting and different new immersive experience, and one I would highly recommend for people who are willing to push themselves.
 
Score: 8.5/10
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We survived the Tension Experience!
Thank you for joining us this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries 2016 - Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights

9/24/2016

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

So, yeah, if you’re hanging around this blog and saw my introduction to the Long Halloween recently, one of the things you’re probably wondering is, “Hey, isn’t this September? Halloween isn’t until October!”
 
Well, long story short on this is that, with so many Halloween events in the Los Angeles area, the most competitive among them tend to open earlier and run longer, which for Fi and I is pretty fantastic, as it means we can almost do one of our favorite events either on or around her birthday (September 23rd). Thankfully, this year her birthday actually fell on a day when Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights was open, letting us make it the kickoff to our Long Halloween season.
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My selfie game still needs a lot of work, if you can't tell.
As I’ve said before, Halloween Horror Nights is one of our all time favorite Halloween events. Set in a major theme park and with the special effects, makeup and set-building technicians of a major motion picture studio behind them, Halloween Horror Nights is consistently one of the highest quality Halloween events out there. Adapting major horror properties into their events, you will more often than not feel like you’re walking through your favorite horror movies.
 
This year in particular was a very special year, as they were going for a greatest hits reel of some of the greatest icons of horror, along with some newer highly requested properties. How successful were they this year adapting them? Well, let’s dive in, shall we?
 
NOTE: For the sake of this series of articles, the term "maze" will actually very likely never mean maze. The terms "maze" and "haunted house" are pretty interchangeable from everything I've seen, though from what I can tell "maze" is usually used by larger events and theme parks when they are running a number of haunts. They are usually straightforward and offer little in the way of getting lost, but hey, you never know, they might surprise you.
 
SPECIAL THIS EVENT SPECIFIC NOTE: Normally I try and take a ton of high quality pictures of these events to properly memorialize them for my audience. However, my camera decided to die right around the time Halloween Horror Nights opened this year. We made do with Fi’s quite decent cell phone camera, but admittedly some of these pictures are better than others. I’ll try and get a higher quality camera for future events that allow them.
THE HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS EXPERIENCE
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Typically we like to get to the park quite early to take in the opening scare-emonies, which is basically an announcement that the park is opened followed by a bunch of guys with chainsaws running at us. I know, neato. Anyway, that didn’t happen this time, as we got there so early we were ushered in via an early entrance program, and, well, got to see close to half the Halloween Horror Nights mazes while it was still light.

While it was great to see the mazes sooner (I’m as impatient as anyone), a lot of them had windows allowing us to see daylight, which is a big no no when it comes to scares.
 
But, I digress. Once the lights went out, the true entertainment of the park came out, and we got to take in the “scare zones”, stretches of the park set up with costumed actors jumping at you with weapons and going for cheap jump scares. While most years the park has multiple themed scare zones, this year Universal went with one overall theme, The Purge: Election Year, and stretched it throughout the park. Being a big fan of this movie, we had a lot of fun dodging through the massive stretches of purged out park, including the half-assed mini maze, The Purge: Gauntlet of Fear. While hardly anything new, given that the park has done Purge themed scare zones in two past years, we still enjoyed it.

THE MAZES

The Exorcist
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Like I said, this year is billed as a greatest hits sort of experience, with a lot of top notch classic and modern horror movie experiences, and perhaps none has had more hype than The Exorcist. While the idea is cool on paper to have an Exorcist maze, the reality is far more disappointing. Remember how the movie mostly takes place in one bedroom? Yeah, that’s a problem when it comes to creating varied maze experiences. The maze is basically a collection of repeating bedroom sets broken up by occasional black hallways with Captain Howdy’s face popping up in the dark. While the Regan makeup is amazing, and the Pazuzu statue scare toward the end is trippy, this maze was easily the weakest of the night.
 
The fact that there were two guys in front of us, constantly breaking the mood by hopping out of line to shove their camera in Regan’s fish tank every time it popped up, was also an odd experience.
 
Maze Ranking: # 7

Krampus
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Krampus
 
After a long, sort of death march, across Universal’s lower lot to the filming backlots, we made it to a trio of mazes that were all ones we were looking forward to. The first was Krampus, based on the recent so-so horror movie. That being said, though the movie was so-so, I knew it would translate well to a maze because it’s colorful. The scares are varied and weird, from children being eaten by chimneys, to demonic (but delicious smelling) gingerbread men taking over a kitchen, to killer toys run amok, to evil snowmen, to the demonic Krampus himself. Combined with some high quality sets which are distinct, ever-present Christmas music, and random rooms where the temperature greatly drops (always welcome in Southern California), and this was a dark, fun time.
 
Maze Ranking: # 4
 
American Horror Story
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I’ve got an odd relationship with American Horror Story, the show, which’ll take up more words than I want to put here. The maze, however, was one I was looking forward to, because I know the show’s very into its surreal imagery and fantastic sets. On this front, the maze greatly delivered. It recreated all the most famous scenes from seasons 1, 4 and 5, and brought monsters like the Rubber Man, Twisty the Clown and James Patrick March into their respective, creepy worlds. That being said, what this maze had in amazing sets (including a very cool freak show entrance pavilion) and the ever-present theme song, it lacked in performers, being one of the most sparsely populated mazes of the night.
 
Maze Ranking:  # 5
 
Freddy vs. Jason
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I’m a huge fan of the Friday the 13th series, and a pretty decent one of A Nightmare on Elm Street, so I was curious to see what it would be like to see the two titans of horror go head to head. While not explicitly based on their mashup movie, Freddy vs. Jason turned out to be the highlight of the night. Switching seamlessly between Elm Street and Camp Crystal Lake, this maze was heavily populated by Freddy, Jason and their victims, to a point where you could rarely go more than five feet without being attacked by one of them. Their makeup and costumes were fantastic, the sets were spot on, and the alternating ending (depending on when you go, Freddy or Jason will be the victor) makes this one worth doing more than once (we did, and were fortunate enough to see both endings). Easily the most fun we had all night, and one that thoroughly earned its maze ranking.
 
Maze Ranking: # 1
 
Halloween: Hell Comes to Haddonfield
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Theatrical Fog: AKA "Bigfoot Sighting" camera filter
I was probably the only person who wasn’t impressed with last year’s Halloween maze, so I couldn’t say I was really looking forward to this years, based on the mediocre Halloween 2 (the original Halloween 2, not the he-who-shall-not-be-named new film). Well, I’ll take back any doubt, as this maze was a strong contender for the best maze in the park. It faithfully recreated the major beats and moments from Halloween 2 shot for shot (sometimes literally, as in the finale where a great Jamie Lee Curtis lookalike shot out Michael Myers’ eyes), and if it weren’t for a mediocre and frankly bizarre ending walking through a giant pumpkin, this would’ve been the best maze of the night.
 
Special bonus points for beginning right outside the Doyle house, with Donald Pleasance’s insane voice echoing over speakers shouting my favorite, deeply silly line, “I SHOT HIM! I SHOT HIM SIX TIMES!”
 
…
 
Okay, maybe that’s just funny to me.
 
Maze Ranking: # 2
 
Eli Roth Presents the Terror Tram
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Though not technically a maze, I’m putting this here because it’s a similar experience. The long and the short of the Terror Tram is that you ride a tram out onto the backlot, which has been decked out for Horror Nights to a particular theme, and walk around famous sets while being harassed by performers fitting a certain theme. In the past, we’ve seen this decorated to fit the Walking Dead and The Purge, and, well, it’s always been a pretty weak attraction, since there’s only so much you can do using the same sets over and over.
 
This year was no different. It had clowns. They were creepy. It was fun. It was also forgettable. The wait is pretty atrocious, and there are several bottlenecks that can slow things down, and if I’m going to be honest, you could skip this and wouldn’t miss a single thing. Do it if you’ve the time (or, like us, front of the line tickets), but know you won’t miss much by skipping it.
 
Oh yeah, and watch your knees getting in and out of the tram. That’s my pro tip for the night.
 
The Walking Dead
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The Walking Dead has been a presence at the last four Halloween Horror Nights, and as such has started to wear out its welcome. I wasn’t terribly excited to hear that Universal had decided to transform it into a year round attraction, but since we paid for front of the line passes and it was open for Horror Nights, we figured we’d give it a go. In retrospect, I’m glad we did. Since the attraction is built to be year-round, the sets and effects are even higher quality than the average maze, with impressive animatronic walkers mixed in with a large number of made up scareactors. Covering the first five seasons of the show, we get top notch horrors featuring everything from the bicycle girl zombie of the pilot all the way up to the Wolves’ truck full of gnashing torsos. This one was the surprise of the evening.
 
Maze Ranking: # 3
 
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Blood Brothers
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During Fi’s and my first Halloween Horror Nights, there was a maze based on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it was one to remember, faithfully recreating the original movie on a scene by disturbing scene level. This year’s maze billed itself as a pseudo-sequel, taking place between the first and second movies of the TCM franchise, telling an original story of the Sawyer family. Unfortunately, without any serious story to latch onto, this became something of a generic cannibal hillbillies maze. A very well done one, with a lot of fantastic Leatherface scareactors, but nothing to really write home about in the end.
 
Maze Ranking: # 6
And so, that ends our Halloween Horror Nights experience for 2016. We had a blast, the mazes as always were great, and we’re looking forward to seeing what crazy experiences the rest of this season has to hold. The next one is going to be a weird one, as we take on the mysterious Tension Experience.

Thank you for joining us this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween 2016 - Preview & Recommendations

9/18/2016

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Hello blog readers, sorry I’ve been away for so long. Between finishing the final steps of dealing with my father’s estate and the release of Almost Infamous, I haven’t had a lot of time for this blog. However, now that things are easing up some, I’m back, and dare I say I may be better than ever?
 
No, I won’t go that far, but I will do my best to continue to provide entertaining material for your reading pleasure.
 
In the spirit of that, I intend to talk to you today about my favorite time of year, which is right around the corner.
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I am, of course, talking about election season.
Well, okay, not exactly. If you’ve spent any time around this blog in the past, you know that my wife, Fiona, and I are huge Halloween people. We love horror movies, we love dressing up, and if there’s one thing we love most about the season, it’s the various Halloween entertainment options available. From haunted houses, to theme parks, to interactive theatre and everything in between, this is a pretty fantastic time of year for us, and as I did last year, I mean to share our Long Halloween 2016 adventure with you, dear readers. That’s right, you’ll be getting more reviews, amusing anecdotes, pictures and tips for how to best enjoy the haunt season. And while this is advertised as just an introduction to our festivities, I’m also going to give you a sneak peek below at some of my favorite Halloween recommendations in Southern California, where I'll also include links to them (and my own reviews of them from previous years). So sit back, relax, and let the terror flow through you…
MATT CARTER’S HALLOWEEN 2016 RECOMMENDATIONS:

Halloween Theme Parks:


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Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights – No offense to the long running Knott’s Scary Farm, but the gold standard of Halloween theme park events has to be, hands down, Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. Featuring Hollywood quality mazes of some of the greatest licensed properties ever to adapt to haunts (this year alone brings Freddy vs. Jason, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween and The Exorcist to life), this one is a can’t miss event. That being said, since it’s a can’t miss event, the lines will get absolutely insane (up to 3 hours on some of the more popular mazes), so I can’t recommend getting front of the line tickets enough.
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Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor – A former cruise liner that now doubles as a museum and hotel hardly seems an obvious choice for a Halloween overlay, but knowing the ship’s reputation for being legitimately haunted adds an extra spark. While not nearly as slick as Universal Studios, Dark Harbor with its six mazes (three on ship, three on land) and carnival like atmosphere more than makes up for it with enthusiasm. Their scareactors are more than willing to get in your face to get an extra scream out of you. And when this happens in the pitch-black hull of a ship…

Theatre, Traditional & Interactive:

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Wicked Lit – If you want a little more class and a little less in the way of scares for Halloween, Wicked Lit is my top recommendation. Taking place in an actual cemetery in Altadena, Wicked Lit consists of a theatre company acting out three creepy and twisted classics of horror. Works from the past have included adaptations of Poe, Lovecraft and Stoker, and with a solid cast from year to year, they remain a standout among Halloween performances.
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Alone: An Existential Haunting – For something a little more surreal, I would highly recommend Alone. While admittedly I’ve only ever done this event once, it left enough of an impression that I would always recommend it. As its title suggests, in Alone, well, you go through the event alone. You start out in a non-descript building, waiting your turn, and once you go in, you’re in for a strange time exploring many facets of human emotion. While wandering through last years experience, I encountered short, interactive vignettes where I experienced wonder, sadness, joy, and on occasion, a little bit of fear. I refrain from calling this a straight haunt, because it is something so much more, and so strange, that it has to be experienced to be understood. Lamentably, they’ve stated that there’s only going to be a one-night showing this year, but if you’ve got time to keep an eye out on this one, it’s worth watching out for. Though one note for safety: you will probably get messy in this one.

Fun for the Whole Family:

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Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns – If you’re not into getting scared but still want a good Halloweeny time, I cannot recommend Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns enough. Hundreds of professionally carved jack-o-lanterns may not sound terribly impressive on paper, but when you can get results like this…
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This...
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This...
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And this awesome tree full of jack o'lanterns...
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You’re in for a good time. While they used to run the whole month of October in the past, this year due to venue availability they’re only doing select dates in a few cities around the country. So if you’re interested, check out their site for availability!

For the More Extreme Crowd:

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The 17th Door – There’s a definite industry of “extreme” haunts out there (i.e. Blackout, McKamey Manor), haunts that go out of their way to push people’s buttons and in some cases, straight up torture you. Fiona and I generally don’t like to go this far, since we like to have fun with Halloween and all, but the 17th Door may prove an exception. While not completely extreme, it rides the line, but in an intense, and ultimately entertaining way. It has a dark, too real at some points storyline, with scenes that go out of their way to push buttons including suicides, footage of actual surgery, and the use of mild electric shocks and dead cockroaches. This one’s not for the faint of heart, which is why they do have a phrase you can use for mercy that’ll get you out of the haunt (though of course, there are no refunds). If you’re looking for a boundary-pushing time, the 17th Door, now in their second year, is worth considering.

The Best Haunt in Town:

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Delusion – I’ve spent a lot of words on Delusion in the past, and I’ll spend as many as I have to to make everyone aware of how amazing Delusion is. While not as traditionally scary as most, it is known to craft a nightmare or two, while providing an experience unlike any other. You see, Delusion doesn’t craft itself as a haunted house, but more as a piece of interactive theatre. Attendees are just as integral to the plot as the actors in the haunt itself, and you will be forced to make decisions that will push the plot forward. Instead of just watching horror unfold, you're a part of it. In past years, we've been forced to hide under beds, negotiate hostage exchanges, masquerade as villains, and watch as members of our group are nearly executed in demon sacrifices. Delusion is a singular and unique experience, and is one I cannot recommend highly enough. Lamentably, they sell out *very* quickly (this year's initial run ran out of tickets within a few days of announcing), however, they will often extend the run. If this is something you want to check out, keep an eye on their site and social media to see if they'll make an announcement.
And that, dear readers, is my sneak peek and recommendations for the Long Halloween, 2016. Stick around for more event reviews as they come, as for us it will begin this Friday.

Will we survive The Long Halloween? Stick around and find out. The adventure begins this weekend…

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries - Alone: Index of Absorption

11/1/2015

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

(Secondly, apologies in advance for the lateness of these last two blogs, due to some odd problems with Weebly I was unable to post for a while, but since it looks like these are mostly fixed, here we go!)

It's been days since I attended the Alone: Index of Absorption event, and I'll be honest: I have almost no idea how I'm going to write about this. Alone is the most different, bizarre, and utterly wonderful thing that I have attended this Long Halloween season, and yet it is impossible to rank it or compare it next to the other events we've attended in that it is so utterly unlike them. It's barely scary, but incredibly intense and powerful in a way that will linger in you for days, so I am stumped about what I'm going to say. I'll try my best, though, without giving too many spoilers away, but be warned, there's every chance I'll sound like a complete lunatic by the end of this article.

I've been vaguely aware of Alone for the past few years we've been doing The Long Halloween, but it was never seriously on my radar. Fi and I haven't really been into events that run on the more extreme side of things until relatively recently, and from the sound of it on paper, it could have easily been one of those. Going through a nearly pitch black building, alone, being tormented and accosted by the people within. It sounded like it was jumping on the bandwagon from the completely insane-sounding Blackout experience (one of the few haunts I'll outright refuse to do because of the stuff I've heard they pull), and I just wrote it off on general principle. However, over time as our skin thickened, and we read more reviews about alone, I became more intrigued. Everything I'd heard about it was that it was less a haunt, more a surreal, dreamlike experience you're meant to wander through alone.

So I was curious, but still uncertain.

Then we got a little taste of Alone at this year's ScareLA (a convention for haunters) in August. Alone has been holding a number of smaller events throughout 2015 leading up to their big house in October, and with basically a free demo version to try on for size, we figured, what the hell, let's see what it's like.

Remember those words surreal and dreamlike? Yeah, those summed up our demo quite well, actually. We were brought into a dark room lit only by a swirling laser light with about 20 other people and made to lie down on the floor, while most of us were covered in a sheet and listened to a trio of people talk about madness and colors in increasingly intense voices. One at a time we were brought into the Alone part of the experience, where we crawled, got rolled up in a blanket and flung around a room, drawn on and dressed in weird colorful things before being brought back to the room to lie down. I've never been on drugs and never intend to be, but I have it on good authority that the experience is pretty similar. Not being too terribly freaked out by this, we vowed to do the event come October.

Flash forward a couple months, and Fi and I were driving to Downtown LA, finding an old film production house with a front door reading ALONE, INC. We were eager and nervous, especially after receiving an e-mail that stated we'd likely find ourselves being touched, grabbed, embraced, forced to crawl, endure pitch blackness, have our faces painted and likely get very messy.

Long Halloween Tip # 18: Listen to the warnings given in any Halloween event, and dress appropriately. There's no event I'd recommend this for more than Alone.

Still, we checked in to the sparsely populated lobby, slightly unnerved by the shadows we'd see crossing along the backlit, wall-sized sheet behind the front desk. We waited our turn, slowly watching as guest after guest before us was brought into a dark back room when their name was called. Fiona was called in before me, and so I sat alone, chatting briefly with one of the guys who would go in after me, asking me if I had any idea what we were about to get into. I told him what little I knew, but since it wasn't that much, the nerves were kicking in pretty heavily.

And then I was called into the darkness. I was told to walk along a dark corridor and choose between two doors. Not seeing any particular benefit to one or another, I chose the one on the left, and was pulled into a dark room by a woman who started writing on my arm with a marker about how I was not a triangle, while speaking in an eerie, intense tone about light and color, before she sent me into the darkness.

And from there... well, I can't rightly say everything that happened, and if I were to go into all the detail I felt at the time I'd probably sound crazy, but what I'll say is that it was a truly intense, profound emotional experience. It was scary, at times, but not too scary. More than anything, it was surreal and beautiful. I'd walk into a room and be told to sit on a swing, while an actor pushed me around for a while, laughing. Another time I'd be put in a pitch black room and thrown around for a while by a wild-eyed man, visible only in brief flashes of light. I'd crawl along a long tunnel with only a laser light at the end, swirling around me, only to exit into a room with a person in a unicorn costume and be coaxed into dancing with them.

I'd be taken into a room full of vinyl records and be told to smash some against the wall before being told to clean them up, or go into a room with a man whose face is covered in wet clay and be told to write on the wall with some of the clay from his briefcase.

Sometimes I'd go into a room and just have a person stare at me, intensely, or sadly, or maybe while smiling warmly.

One time there was a room where a sad, crying woman stood in the center, pulling me into a hug, and though I knew she was acting I couldn't help but tell her everything was going to be okay.

Then I'd go crawling through a tunnel made of blankets and wind up having a pillow fight with a man and playing patty cake, while we're laughing the whole time.

So much more happened, so much that I'll never forget and much more that seems so much a blur I can't be sure if it was real or I dreamed it. It was a bizarre, truly amazing experience to have gone through, reaching into me and touching my emotions in ways they're rarely touched, because I'm a pretty reserved person in general. I keep everything close to my chest, and I don't really open up to strangers, but the way they subtly break down emotional barriers and force you to connect to strangers, even if just by looking them in the eyes, it makes for a truly and unique experience.
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There's flour in my hair, clay under my fingernails, writing on my hands, sore knees and paint on my face, and I couldn't care less. This was an amazing experience.
Though not a traditional haunt by any means and basically impossible to compare to the rest of what we did this year, I'm pretty sure this was one of the top events. It's been more than a week now, and I still can't stop thinking about the Alone experience.

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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    Author

    Matt Carter is an author of Horror, Sci-Fi, and yes even a little bit of Young Adult fiction. Along with his wife, F.J.R. Titchenell, he is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel and lives in the usually sunny town of San Gabriel, CA.

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