It's three days into October and the city is already crawling with Halloween-y things to do.
While many of us on the L.A. TACO team are seeking out the most extreme, sickest Halloween haunts, we have plenty of friends and colleagues who say "helllllllllll no" to all of that and would prefer not to have psychological damage by the end of the season.
So today we donned our masks (made of human skin) to dig into the seven best Halloween haunts that will raise your hair this year, whether you're looking for a chance to be part of a spooky immersive theater production, or dying to descend full-bore into the darkness of humanity's soul for some truly sick, sick stuff.
Either way, abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Urban Death Tour of Terror ~ North Hollywood
We’ll start with the sickest. If you’ve never been to the Urban Death Tour of Terror, trust us; you’re unprepared for what you’re about to see. A seasonal passion project from Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater, this crew would go to bed angry if it failed to really shock, disturb, and thrill you in equal measures.
North Hollywood's own Grand Guignol begins as you're handed a sputtering flashlight and directed with just two other souls into a warren of pitch-black tunnels emanating with moans, screams, and knocks, and saturated with human monstrosities, stumbling psychos, and the occasional completely nude scare actor.
It all leads to a phantasmagoria of an experimental stage show cast in the model of Brecht's Theater of Cruelty, in which both real and very human horrors are depicted in short vignettes that spring out of the darkness like a fever dream. Some are humorous, some even beautiful, while most veer from red meat for horror fanatics to those that reflect a very stark, very dark, and triggering reality of the human condition at its lowest. It's vaudeville's infamous Aristocrats Joke meets Saw, with a splash of Requiem For a Dream. You will probably be thinking of this show for a long time after your first nightmare.
And just when you catch your breath and think it's over, you'll be directed back into that pitch-black maze to find your way out...
Advance tickets are $23, $28 at the door.
4850 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601. Closest Metro lines and stop: Bus Lines 224 and 501 - "Lankershim/Vineland."
Queen Mary's Dark Harbor ~ Long Beach
Rest in pieces, Shaqtoberfest! Our black hearts are overjoyed to see the return of Dark Harbor, the Queen Mary's very own Halloween carnival and haunt in Long Beach. The production value is top-notch, the jump scares and impressive animatronics keep coming, there are some surprises, and it's hard to think of another atmosphere with the power to haunt you like the deserted hallways and dank corners of the actual old (haunted) ship.
This year, there are six new or re-imagined mazes, many riffing on the ship's history, along with a zombie-shooting experience, carnival rides, food booths and a hookah bar, acrobatics, and other attractions to keep you occupied between your descents into madness. Tickets start at $42.99.
Through Nov. 2 ~ 1126 Queens Hwy. Long Beach, CA 90802.
Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights ~ Studio City
We love it when horror gets a deservedly big budget on the silver screen. And that extends to a haunt designed by Hollywood’s best. Universal remains a must-do, incomparable in size, scale, and breadth of activities. We love it, not only for the wonder of finding yourself lost in some of your favorite scary scenes from intellectual properties like A Quiet Place, Insidious, and The Ghostbusters, but also for Universal’s Terror Tram tour and freshly invented mazes, which show the haunt’s consistent effort in doing something new. Plus, you can’t beat those San Fernando Valley views…
This year, the theme park’s original mazes were among the biggest highlights, including a sequel for the great “Monstruos, the Monsters of Latin America” maze and a post-nuclear apocalypse zombie maze called Dead Exposure: Death Valley. And despite our skepticism, The Weeknd's maze is usually among the strongest.
Halloween Horror Nights not only keeps the scares coming amid violent vignettes of terror and gore that resonate deeply with our horror-geek lizard brains, but it also lends the sheen of its big Hollywood budget to the things riddling your worst nightmares, transforming everyone into a Last Girl/Boy for a night. Tickets start at $87.
Through November 3, 100 Universal City Plaza Universal City, CA 91608. Closest Metro lines and stop: Metro B Line or Bus Lines 155, 222, 224, and 240 - "Universal City/Studio City Station."
Creep LA: Ghosts ~ West Adams
Creep LA: Ghosts is a high-budget, immersive-theater-based haunt put on by CBS and JFI Productions. This year it's based on the humorous network show Ghosts, taking place over 60 minutes among two mansions, one filled with mellower show-related curios, drinks, and photo ops, the other a winding, lengthy scare-maze filled with ghosts and spirits that promises to be different for everyone who enters. The story revolves around a haunted house filled with phantasms, many of which don't yet know they're dead, leading to confrontations with mortality and one big final moment of terror.
In our past Creep experiences, that may mean you're getting stuffed into a casket for a nervous minute or led astray by a scare actor for a unique experience, but time will tell once this haunt debuts this Friday night. Tickets start at $70.
Through October 27 ~ 2215 S. Harvard Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90018
Delusion: The Red Castle ~ Downtown
Thirteenth Floor's high-concept, high-priced immersive theater experience Delusion puts a spin on the traditional haunt by turning the audience into actual characters in the show. This year, the popular attraction has moved to the grand Stimson House in USC-adjacent University Park, casting it as the castle of one Dr. Frederick Lowell and you as his patients, embroiled in the good doctor's attempts to unlock your mind's hidden powers to help get back the departed love of his life. However, as you awake from your somnambulant slumber, Lowell has disappeared, though you're still not exactly alone as you make your way through the house, choosing your own path, while confronted by scenes of despair and horror on your way through the story to the final act. And again, they have a whole friggin' castle this year! Tickets start at $109.
Through November 3 at 2421 S. Figueroa St. Los Angeles, CA 90007
Reign of Terror ~ Thousand Oaks
There’s something inherently scary when visiting a haunt that isn’t backed by a major production studio or theme park. A lingering chance that an “I” wasn’t properly dotted, resulting in the hire of some actually escaped maniac or, at the least, an unhammered nailhead poking from some set, just waiting to give you lockjaw.
Reign of Terror is more akin to the kinds of huge haunts full of mechanical giants and detailed scare actors that you see on The Travel Channel. And this year it's moved next door to become even bigger, packing a series of eight different, themed environments across 142 rooms and 32,000 square feet, making it the biggest indoor haunt in SoCal.
The scares begin while you’re in a very, very long line and continue at a non-stop pace for about 40 minutes, with undead creatures that have more tricks to frighten you than the endless popping out of walls we've found at higher-priced theme park haunts. And if you miss the haunt in October, they’ve been known to bring the whole thing back with a holiday theme once Halloween is through. Tickets start at $40.
225 N. Moorpark Rd. Thousand Oaks, CA 91360. Closest transit lines and stop: Thousand Oaks Transit Line 42 - "Janss Marketplace" or Thousand Oaks Transit Lines 41 and 44 - "Moorpark/Hillcrest."
The Medieval Torture Museum ~ Hollywood
Ah, but what could be crueler, more shocking, more disgusting than man’s inhumanity to man? Hollywood’s Medieval Torture Museum is not a haunt in the traditional sense. Just a peon to the horrors wrought by puritanism, repression, and religion, as you walk through a macabre carnival of torture equipment that gets particularly specific as to which body parts should be pierced, torn in half, sliced, or stretched. It’s some fucked-up shit, to be sure. Proving nothing is scarier than people. They also offer a private ghost tour experience, where you can learn all about paranormal research and use some beeping, booping things said to be conduits to the spirit world.
6757 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, California, USA 90028. Closest Metro lines and stop: Metro B Line - "Hollywood/Highland Station" or Bus Lines 212 and 217 - "Hollywood/Highland."
The 17th Door ~ Buena Park
This immersive haunt prides itself on inflicting 34 minutes of pure psychological horror onto its participants. The theme of this part-maze and part-horror theater experience is making your way through "Perpetuum Penitentiary," a fictional prison described as the "most horrendous" in the world where a dark sickness is spreading among its inmates, and you’re no exception. It promises to use the latest "dark technology" to showcase humanity's evils.
As a food publication, we are the most enthralled with their "meat locker" part of the maze where mad butcher is believed to reign. "Surrounded by slabs of flesh—some animal, some not—you find yourself trapped in this icy chamber," the haunt's website states. "Trapped and alone in this frozen tomb, no one hears your screams."
Tickets start at $39 and up.
8420 On the Mall, Buena Park, CA 90620
