From Scary Farm to Horror Nights: The History of Halloween Haunts
Hello and welcome to the Where In The Park Podcast & Blog! This is Kevin, and on this episode, I will be sharing the history of how we got those scary nighttime Halloween events at theme parks. Here in North America, the main events include Knott's Scary Farm, Universal Halloween Horror Nights, Cedar Fair's Halloween Haunts, HalloWeekends and SCarowinds, Six Flags' Fright Fests, and United Park's Howl-O-Screams. Legoland parks have held their Brick-or-Treat events since 2001, but they're something different. Also, Disney does have after-hours Halloween events at their parks as well, but they're not the type of event I'm covering today either. Don't worry, though, we'll be going over Disney's events on next week's episode.
Content Disclaimer Warning
Before I continue, I do want to warn anyone listening and/or reading that this episode will include a few references to horror-related content, and it will also include tragic stories that include real deaths that have happened at theme parks. If you are not interested in hearing about those tragedies, we will warn you as they're coming up, but their occurrences did alter the course of these types of events and the safety protocols now in place, so I feel that they are worth learning about.
For the same reason, we will not show images depicting gore or anything graphic. If you are interested in the topic, we invite you to scroll to the bottom for the full list of resources referenced in this episode and blog, where you will find additional details, images, videos, etc. Throughout this article, links are provided to items discussed, though their material might not be directly referenced.
The Origins of Fear: From Fiction to Frights
Now, humans being fans of fear isn't anything new. If you look up the origins of haunted houses and mazes at theme parks, you can go pretty far down the rabbit hole. Whether we're talking about the first horror novel, Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto," published in 1764, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum's addition of the "Separate Room" back in 1846 -which was later coined the Chamber of Horrors, the first horror movie, a two-minute long film from 1896 by Georges Melies, Le Manoir du Diable (also known as The Haunted Castle or The House of the Devil), there was also Grand Guignol that opened the following year, which was a theater specializing in on-stage horror that opened in 1897.
Luna Park at Coney Island's 1905 Dragon's Gorge, the first of many haunted rides at amusement parks, or 1915's "Orton and Spooner's Ghost House" in Liphook, England, aka Haunted Cottage, which is understood to be the world's oldest haunted house walk-thru attraction. That walk-thru is also said to be the first time up-close humans in costumes were part of the scare. There's also 1920s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which is considered the first feature-length horror movie. And then, in 1930, there was the first Midnight Ghost Show, "El-Wyn's Midnite Spook Party." These were traveling shows held at movie theaters that combined live performances and horror movies.
Each of these can be pointed to as part of the origin of today's theme park spooky season events in its own way. But you may have noticed that Halloween itself wasn't really an inspiration for any of them.
From Samhain to Shock Theater: How Halloween Evolved
I could easily spend an hour or two going over the history of Halloween right now, but I'm not going to do that. Let's just say that today's celebration on October 31st may have started with a Celtic harvest festival named Samhain (SAH-win), and it became All Hallow's Eve when the Catholic Church moved All Hallow's Day, also known as All Saint's Day, from May 13th to November 1st sometime between the 8th and 9th centuries, arguably to align with that Celtic celebration soon after Romans conquered some of the ancient Celtic realms. Either way, each of these traditions focused on celebrating, or at least acknowledging, the dead, but the holiday, for the most part, was only recognized in Celtic regions of Ireland and Scotland. Celebrating the eve of All Hallow's Day wasn't really a thing in the United States until after The Great Famine of 1845, sometimes called the Irish Potato Famine, in which around a million Irish and Scottish people emigrated to the United States.
It would take some time, but eventually, ideas for what Halloween could be started to take hold. It transformed from a night of respect and/or fear of the dead, to a night for adults to drink and party, to a night for young boys to pull pranks, to a night for children to dress in costumes and have fun. It took about a hundred years, but around when World War II ended in 1945, Halloween had become a nationwide American secular tradition, with children across the country dressing up and trick-or-treating regardless of their religion or national origin.
The way the ideas for how to celebrate Halloween originally spread was by books, news articles, and postcards, but it wasn't until the inventions and widespread adoption of telephones, radios, and televisions that the holiday really took hold. In fact, television is likely the reason why monsters are associated with Halloween at all. In October 1957, "Shock Theater" began airing weekly on televisions across the country, introducing many people to classic Universal Studios horror films. They featured unique costumed "horror hosts" depending on where in the country you were watching from, and they became kind of a phenomenon, resulting in many people dressing up in costumes as those classic monsters for Halloween.
The First Sparks of Spooky Fun
Around this time, many local charities would also have spook houses at festivals or carnivals, normally the week of, or before, Halloween, mostly as a way to prevent kids from pulling pranks, but also to make some money for those charities. According to Ted Dougherty, the author of the book "History of Knott's Scary Farm," Jaycees had been creating haunted houses since 1939, with houses being run in California during Halloween as early as the 1940s. He also explains that another group named Campus Life began building haunted houses in 1968, with a house operating in Long Beach in 1970. By 1972, there were around one hundred haunted houses in major cities in the country run by Campus Life. It's also worth noting that in 1965, the Hollywood Wax Museum opened on Hollywood Boulevard with its own chamber of horrors, inspired by Madame Tussauds, but it featured the recently popularized movie monsters, mostly from Universal Studios.
A Brief Glimpse at Disney's Early Halloween Events
From our research, the first recorded Halloween celebration in a theme park was in 1959, when the original Disneyland in Anaheim held a small event on the Saturday of Halloween that year. But, like I said, we'll be covering more about Disney and Halloween in next week's episode.
Now, just for the timeline of it all, I do also want to point at that on August 9th, 1969, Disneyland opened the Haunted Mansion. It wasn't marketed as a Halloween attraction, but it definitely set the bar for what a spooky attraction at a theme park could be.
The Birth of Knott's Scary Farm
Okay, remember a few sentences ago when I mentioned that "Shock Theater" was popular? Well, it inspired other TV stations to start their own versions of late-night horror movies hosted by costumed spooky characters. On October 3rd, 1970, a local station in the Los Angeles area premiered their program, "Fright Night" -hosted by the character Sinister Seymour, portrayed by actor Larry Vincent. On Halloween Day in 1971, Sinister Seymour hosted a meet-and-greet at Universal Studios, where he also gave out the prize for the costume contest being held in the park. At the time, Universal didn't have a theater that Seymour would be able to perform a show in, so it was just a photo-op.
In September 1972, Gary Blair, the agent for Seymour, contacted Bill Hollingshead, the head of the park's entertainment department -meaning he was the person in charge of talent at Knott's Berry Farm. Blair asked if it would be possible to have Seymour do a version of his show in their new (at the time) John Wayne Theatre, currently the Walter Knott Theater, for Halloween. Hollingshead told him a month wasn't long enough to prepare for a Halloween event, and that he should contact them again in the Spring of the following year. Seymour instead hosted a "Halloween Spook-tacular" show at Magic Mountain in Valencia, California. This was likely the first Halloween-themed show to occur inside a theme park, but it wasn't considered a success. A likely reason for it being unsuccessful was that this screen-based show took place in an outdoor theater at 2 pm and 4 pm.
I should point out that the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World screened the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and gave out tickets for free rides on the Haunted Mansion to kids that same weekend before Halloween in 1972, as they celebrated "Halloween Weekend." It was definitely a promotion, but not necessarily an event.
But anyway, Seymour's agent took Knott's up on their request to call them back in the spring, and according to Knott's historians, it was Walter Knott who decided to go forward with a three-day Halloween event the Friday through Sunday before Halloween in 1973, even though the rest of the family did not think it was a good idea. Unlike Magic Mountain, Knott's used Seymour as the headliner for an event with a separate ticket, running from 6 p.m. to midnight on the Friday and Saturday before Halloween. This event, the very first Halloween Haunt, more commonly known as Knott's Scary Farm these days, was planned by Martha Boyd and George Condos from the Knott's Berry Farm marketing department -fresh off designing the walk-around character Whittles a few months earlier, along with Bill Hollingshead and Gary Salisbury. This event included the first theme park haunted maze when they transformed the Haunted Shack attraction into the "Monster Maze." The Calico Mine Ride and Timber Mountain Log Ride were also decorated for Halloween, and the rides' creator, Bud Hurlbut, scared riders while wearing a gorilla costume, for some reason. For the most part, there were some fog machines, but there weren't many monsters roaming around Ghost Town that first year, but the park's Peek-ins, which normally had static figures inside, now had live actors as monsters inside for the event.
Of course, today Knott's Scary Farm is recognized as the very first theme park Halloween event. So, I could just wrap up the episode here with a simple, "...and other theme parks followed Knott's lead, and that's how we got all of the events at theme parks today." Of course, there is more to the story... So, let's get into it.
Monsters Take to the Streets
Sinister Seymour would headline Halloween Haunt again in 1974, but he passed away from stomach cancer in March of the following year. Knott's continued with the Halloween Haunt events, bringing in radio personality Wolfman Jack for 1975. In 1976, a show named Dead Man's Hanging premiered. It was a short show that ended with a cowboy being hanged for murder, but it would eventually evolve into a pop culture-based comedy horror show years later.
There is an article on ultimatehaunt.com by Bob Vernor that tells the story of how those live actors in the peek-ins ended up on the streets of Ghost Town at Knott's. In 1977, a newly hired "monster" tried to get into his assigned peek-in location, but the door was padlocked, and nobody knew where the key was. So, the employee was instructed to "just kinda walk around... and... uh... scare people." So, he did. The next day, more of the peek-in monsters were allowed to roam the streets, and Ghost Town became the world's first unofficial "scare zone."
By the end of the 1980s, the peek-ins were decorated, but no longer had live actors inside. The term "scare zone" wouldn't actually be coined until 1996, when Camp Snoopy was branded as "The Gauntlet."
Scare Actors and Scare Tactics
Before I continue, I want to take a moment to explain that over time, the people in the "monster" costumes have become known as "scare actors." There are auditions every year, and many people return yearly to perform their characters at haunts. One of the tools used to scare people are cans filled with coins, or nuts and bolts, or whatever loud metal items they can find, and they are shaken toward guests to surprise them with a loud sound. In Ted Doughtery's book about Scary Farm, he explains that this tradition began with employees at Knott's taking a #10 can, which is about 7 inches tall, and usually used for bulk canned foods, and they mounted a door handle to it and put some metal inside. That was the first sound effect at a haunt, and it was successful, but they eventually changed the design to use smaller soup-sized cans and bought a can sealer from a local canning company to make sure the sound was consistent.
The first maze created just for the event, not just repurposing the rooms from the Haunted Shack, was also in 1977, it was named "10 Chilling Chambers," designed by Rick Campbell at the direction of Marion Knott. It was built inside Wilderness Dance Hall. A second maze was added in 1979, Chamber of Horrors by Craig Nelson, which was added to the Fiesta Village area of the park. Wolfman Jack's last year at the Haunt was 1980, in 1981 Dr. Demento and "Weird Al" Yankovic performed a show in the Wagon Camp, they weren't technically headlining the Haunt, but they were mentioned on the flyer. In 1982, Elvira, "Mistress of the Dark," took over as the headliner, and mazes started to become more detail-oriented. That year, they also introduced a maze that was actually a maze, with turn arounds and dead-ends for the first time. In 1983, Bud Hurlbut sold the Log Ride and Mine Ride to the Knott family, and Bill Cook took over haunt redesigns and eventually took over control of Knott's Scary Farm.
The Rise of Sliding
Before I continue on from Knott's, I want to point out that in 1985, scare actors began experimenting with sliding. The first "sliders" would scrape flattened soup cans on the floor to make noise as they ran and would "slide" toward guests, which originally looked more like a baseball player stealing a base. It wouldn't take long for a few test runs in Camp Snoopy and then in GhostTown by scare actors named Todd Stubbler, Bobby Albright, and Wade Gordon, to evolve into many skilled people using knee, toe, and hand protection to scare people at Halloween Events. Todd Stubbler designed gloves with metal washers sewn onto them to scrape as he slid to cause sound and sparks, and that has transformed into metal for scraping being built into today's slider costumes. There is a great documentary named "Sliders of Ghost Town" that goes into more detail on how all of this developed. If you want to learn more about this, give it a watch.
A Tragic Turning Point: The Haunted Castle Fire (1984)
So, while all of this was happening at Knott's, the other theme parks in the country were definitely trying to figure out how to recreate this success at their locations. But, before I get into more Halloween events, I do want to bring up Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, and their walkthrough Haunted Castle attraction that was built in 1979. Okay, let me take a step back, a year earlier, in 1978, Six Flags partnered with Toms River Haunted House Company to install an attraction that was named, simply, Haunted House. This was a walkthrough haunt attraction, complete with plywood walls and ceilings, foam-molded decorations, some wax mannequins, and a few employees in costumes as various "ghouls." All of this was housed in four connected over-the-road aluminum trailers, which the company decorated offsite and then installed at the park. Great Adventure had planned on this just being a limited-time attraction, and it was. The Haunted House attraction was moved to Six Flags Over Mid-America in 1979, where it ran for three more years. But the attraction was popular in Great Adventure, so they actually had Toms River Haunted House Company build a larger version of the walkthrough, and that was Haunted Castle. Okay, so to be clear, there were other haunted houses like this across the country, and even others in New Jersey, but I'm bringing this specific Haunted Castle up because there was a tragic event that happened there that resulted in big changes in the way haunts are created today. At the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that we would be going over some real deaths and that I would warn you before we get into the details, so... this is your warning. I won't be getting too graphic, but I will explain the circumstances and the changes it caused. So, if you want to, you just skip ahead to the next section below...
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Okay, for those of you still here, on May 11th, 1984, there were roughly 29 people inside the Haunted Castle attraction, when, reportedly, around 6:30 pm, a 14-year-old boy was using a cigarette lighter to find his way through a room. He accidentally walked into a section of polyurethane foam padding that was covering a wall, and it caught on fire... The report continues that he tried to put it out, unsuccessfully but then continued through the Castle without notifying anyone about what had happened. The majority of the other guests in the attraction noticed the smoke and ran out, but a group of eight teenagers between 15 and 19 years old, who were at the park on a field trip, did not make it out alive. According to an article on the NFPA website, which is the National Fire Protection Association, they died of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning. That article also points out that "flashover," the point where everything was engulfed in flames, took about 3 and a half minutes. Apparently, almost everything that was used to construct this attraction was flammable.
Four months after the fire, Great Adventure, Inc., its parent company, Six Flags Corporation, and Bally Manufacturing Corporation, the owners of Six Flags, along with two of the park's managers, were charged with aggravated manslaughter. There was an eight-week trial, with thirteen hours of deliberation, but in the end, the jury found the defendants not guilty. But, they weren't exactly off the hook either. They paid millions of dollars in civil penalties and spent over $5 million updating their other attractions to prevent the same situation from occurring again.
Many changes were made to the NFPA 101, Life Safety Code, including a new section about "Special Provisions for Special Amusement Buildings." This required amusement buildings to be protected by an automatic sprinkler system, including on portable or movable buildings. It also required if an attraction had low lighting levels, it needed to be equipped with a smoke detection system that would sound an alarm in a nearby location that was constantly attended, that lights would have to come on to point you toward the nearest exit, and any conflicting sounds or visuals would need to be silenced and turned off. Those rules have been expanded on since they were put in place, but they're the baseline for safety in haunts that are still followed today. Temporary haunts at theme parks have several exits, or points of egress, along the path, as well as these features.
Universal Studios Hollywood Steps into the Shadows
But, Haunted Castle wasn't a Halloween attraction; it was open all year long, similar to Disney's Haunted Mansion. It wasn't until 1986 that theme parks other than Knott's officially started creating their own Halloween events. That year, Universal Studios Hollywood held their first Halloween Horror Nights, and Six Flags AstroWorld officially premiered what they called "Fright Nights."
The Universal event took place over two nights, Friday, Halloween night, and Saturday, November 1st. The event did not include any haunted houses, but it did have a live concert by R&B band Ready for the World, fresh off their Platinum self-titled debut album, which included the Billboard Number 1 hit "Oh Sheila" from 1985. There was also a laser show, a monster magic show, and more, but the main attraction was the Terror Tram. Keep in mind that back in 1986, the Universal park in Hollywood was still advertising itself as "Universal Studios Tour." Now, I'm about to explain the occurrence of the first theme park death related to a Halloween event, so this is your warning. If you don't want to read this, skip to the next section.
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Okay, so, the Terror Tram attraction that first year featured many monsters in scenes where they would quote "attack" the tram. Sadly, the first night of the event a 20-year-old park employee named Paul Rebalde, leaped from a parked tram filled with mannequins dressed like corpses, to scare guests on a tram, but got trapped between the third and fourth sections of the tram, and was "run over and dragged approximately 100 feet" according to the Sherriff's department, as quoted in a November 2nd LA Times article. He was pronounced dead around 9 p.m. -To be clear, Paul was doing his job that night, he was in costume, and his job was to scare people on the tram, and what happened was an accident. He had been working for Universal in retail, selling toys and film since May of that year. That article quotes Joan Bullard, then publicity director for Universal Studios, as saying, "It's not unusual. We have a lot of volunteers working on the Halloween event. There is no skill involved in what he did." There were also quotes from co-workers, who described him as "one of the sweetest kids" and "the kind of guy that always walked around with a smile on his face."
That article also mentions that Bullard admitted that the company expected to lose money on the weekend venture. Universal Studios still held the Saturday event, but would not try another Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood until 1992, but that event wasn't also unsuccessfully. In 1991, Universal Studios Florida premiered Fright Nights, which they renamed to Halloween Horror Nights in 1992. A quick note on Fright Nights, Jay Stein, the then-president of Universal, wanted to an after hours Halloween event, similar to how Disney had been running their Very Merry Christmas Party since 1983. So, he worked with Julie Zimmerman to get the event running. The only haunted house they had that first year was the Dungeon of Terror that was put into the Jaws queue, because the ride wasn't running that year because of technical issues they had operating that attraction. They also had a show named "Chainsaw Massacre" in 1991 that lead to development of the "Chainsaw Drill Team," which debuted in Orlando in 1993. Scare actors with chainsaws are still prominent at many Halloween events.
But yeah, those Florida events were profitable, and have continued every year, except for 2020, when all of these events were paused for the COVID-19 pandemic. The event came back to Hollywood from 1997 to 2000, but were skipped again until 2006, but they have been running every Halloween season since then, again, except for 2020. These days, Halloween Horror Nights has also expanded across the Pacific Ocean, with events held in Universal Studios Japan and Singapore as of 2008 and 2011 respectively.
Six Flags' Fright Nights and the Rise of Fright Fest
Now, back to 1986, over at Six Flags AstroWorld, a theme park that operated in Houston, Texas, from 1968 until 2005, debuted their own "Fright Nights" event. This was held for five nights, including the weekends before and after Halloween, plus Halloween day, which again fell on a Friday that year. Much like Six Flags Fright Fest today, this event was not a separate ticket event; it was included with regular park admission and available to season passholders. It had attractions for children during the day, like face painting and trick-or-treating, but also included attractions named Sanctuary of Strangeness, Magical Spirit Cabinet, and River of Blood. It was renamed Fright Fest in 1992, and the event was successful enough because it went on to run annually every Halloween season until 2005, which included the very last day the park was open.
The concept for Fright Nights, and later Fright Fest, were copied at Six Flags Over Georgia in 1987, Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Over Mid-America (which is now Six Flags St. Louis) in 1988, Frontier City in 1989, Six Flags Great America in 1991, Great Adventure in 1992, Magic Mountain in 1993, Fiesta Texas in 1996, Darien Lake in 1998, Six Flags America (which closing permanently in a few days), Six Flags Marine World (now known as Discovery Kingdom), Elitch Gardens (which is no longer a Six Flags park), and Great Escape in 1999, Six Flags New England and Worlds of Adventure in 2000, La Ronde (located in Quebec, Canada) in 2002, and, finally, Six Flags Mexico in 2012.
HalloWeekends, FearFests, and Cedar Fair Expansion
Meanwhile, over at the legacy Cedar Fair parks, their Halloween events appear to coincide with the company's purchasing of Knott's Berry Farm in 1997. Cedar Point celebrated HalloWeekends for the first time in October of 1997, a few months before the purchase of Knott's was finalized in December of that year. The first year, it had two haunted houses and a spooky train ride. The following year, HalloWeekends premiered at Dorney Park and Valley Fair. Worlds of Fun started its own version in 1999. In 2001, Valley Fair's Halloween event went on hiatus, restarting as ValleyScare from 2006 to 2021, and then Return of ValleyScare again in 2024. Besides ValleyScare, the other parks mentioned would eventually change the names of their events to Halloween Haunt, except for Cedar Point, which still uses the HalloWeekend moniker.
Carowinds started their SCarowinds Halloween events in 2000, the same year that King's Island started running Fearfest, back when the parks were still owned by Paramount. King's Dominion started its own Fearfest in 2001, followed by Canada's Wonderland in 2005. After Cedar Fair purchased these former Paramount parks, the events changed their names to Halloween Haunt, except for Carowinds, that kept the SCarowinds name, though for a while it was referred to as SCarowinds Halloween Haunt.
California's Great America in Santa Clara, California, didn't have its own Halloween Haunt until 2008, but it stopped running there in 2021.
Howl-O-Scream at United Parks
And that brings us to Howl-O-Scream, the Halloween event found at five United Parks properties around the country. The SeaWorld park in Abu Dhabi has "Spooky Sea-son" during this time of year, but it's more of a family-friendly celebration of Halloween with trick-or-treating and fewer scares. But, here in the U.S., we have Howl-O-Scream, which is a nighttime separate ticket event that takes place at all of the Busch Gardens and SeaWorld parks over here. It started with Busch Gardens Williamsburg in 1999. That year, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay had an event named "Spooky Safari" that was focused on family fun with only a few scares, but they rebranded it into Howl-o-Scream the next year in 2000. One year later, SeaWorld San Antonio debuted their version of the event in 2001. In 2008, the other SeaWorld parks added daytime Halloween experiences, but it wasn't until 2021 that the SeaWorlds in Orlando and San Diego would try their hands at Howl-O-Scream as well.
The Legacy of Haunt Season
Today, these events are still going strong at the majority of theme parks across the country, running anywhere from late August to early November. The spirit of fear and excitement during the Halloween season is still felt at these parks, and if you haven't experienced one of these, we recommend at least trying it once to see it for yourself. Sometimes the advertisements make the events out to be much scarier than they are in person, which, if you are like us at Where In The Park, you can go there and just appreciate the amount of work put into the immersive environments, and the care put into the costumes and decor, regardless of the scares.
Join the Conversation
If you have any photos or stories about your experiences at any of these events, please join us on our private Facebook group, Where In The Park Explorers! We would love to learn about how you have enjoyed these events.
Until next time, we'll see you... Somewhere in the park.
Articles referenced in this blog:
Fright Fest Wiki: Six Flags AstroWorld Fright Fest
GreatAdventureHistory.com: The Original Haunted House at Six Flags Great Adventure
Knotts.com: The History of Knott’s Berry Farm
NFPA Journal: The Haunted Castle Revisited
ParkFans.net: The Haunted Castle
Reddit: From the Cow Missing archives: Promotional artwork for Universal Studios Hollywood’s 1992 Halloween Horror Nights
Six Flags of Texas Source: Park History Timeline
Six Flags Wiki: Knott’s Halloween Haunt 1973
Ted Dougherty: The History of Knott’s Scary Farm
Ultimate Haunt: The Legacy of Halloween Haunt – Interview with Bob Venon, Ghost Town Monster Alumni - 1977-1979
YouTube: Sliders of Ghost Town by Giant Pictures, LLC
