This year, the Fredericksburg area boasted two haunted houses for our Halloween enjoyment. The first and original for the area was Audelia Delacruz’s Haunted House,also know as The 290 Haunted House, which started at her house in Stonewall some years ago, but has been housed in the large white building on 290 East across from Trade Days for at least the last 3 years. The second, Theater of Terror, was hosted by the Freddyburg Youth Theater and the Fredericksburg Theater Company and took place at the Steve W. Shepherd Theater or in reality the store-room there on the FTC facility grounds.
First let me say that I do not scare easy at these events. I am more likely to get spooked walking around in my own house, or outside in the pasture in the dark than I am at a Halloween event. My own imagination and fear of animals that might attack, etc. in the dark are more likely to get me to jump. But that being said, I am always looking forward to the event that might scare me. To this end, I was very excited to attend these two events, just to see if they could scare me.
Both houses are put together by a collaboration of adults and teens/children and participation inside is both as well. One has several years experience of putting on a haunted house production, where the other is in its first year, unless I have somehow missed it in past years. If that is the case please correct me. The latter has years of experience putting on theater productions. Both have the resources available to put on an exceptional production. Both have smoke, strobe lights, and dimly lit rooms. One also had other lights, flashing or glowing things to add to the effects as well of lots of sound effects. Each also had a bit of narration.
Here is the major difference, props and costumes. One far out did the other. Any guesses on which one you think it was?
In one house, every participant was well costumed and fully make-upped so that they were the character they were playing and could not be easily recognized as themselves. In the other, this was not the case. I readily recognized several of them, though in costume, not nearly as well as the other house, and make up was little to none other than a bit of blood on the hands and maybe face.
One made full use of props and decorations, and created a unique theme for each room of the house, covering a multitude of creepy specters to incite your fears. There were people, scary statues, and any number of things that left you waiting and wondering, “is it a real person or not and is it going to move and get me when I go by?” The other house had little difference between sets from room to room, and had almost the same theme in each.
One house also made much more use of the space they had available making the experience last longer, the other was considerably shorter. Sadly, in this second house, I was surprised to already be at the end. A literal, “that’s it???,” moment.
Another big difference was price, $5 for the 290 Haunted House verses $12 for the Theater of Terror.
I do give the participants props for all their hard work during the hours of operation they made a valiant effort to scare their guests. Even there when you consider one was a house of family and friend participants that are out to have a good time and provide the community some entertainment, and the other a theater arts group with the same goal, perhaps with a bit of fund-raising thrown in, there was still a night and day difference between the two. They do all deserve praise for all the before work organizing and setting these houses up, and now tearing them down.
Now before I tell you which was which I have a question for you. Think about the two groups, which group would expect it to be?
The winner for me, this year was Audelia Delacruz’s 290 Haunted House. To answer the question, did it scare me? No it didn’t scare me, even though I was quite impressed with what all they had done and I did quite enjoy going through. It did make me jump and laugh at myself at least once, and it has done that every year. I will be back again next year.
So now to both groups, I can’t wait to see how you raise the bar next year.
On the Wings of Angels 