Haunted Journeys

Richard has decided to write another post on this blog talking about something we are both very passionate about: Halloween! Since he has been doing a bunch of guest posts on the blog we decided to give him a different signature at the bottom of his posts so you can tell who's writing them. Enjoy!

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Fall is swiftly approaching and with it comes Halloween, pumpkin flavored coffees and beers and, of course, a plethora of haunted attractions; all of my favorite things in life. However none of this is happening right now so I'm left with nothing to do but watch scary movies and start planning ahead.

As mentioned in earlier posts my wife and I have, over the past few years, traveled all over Ontario to visit numerous haunted attractions in the month of October. Personally I love the more detailed attractions. I love my haunts with a theme and thick atmosphere. Its fun being scared sure but I really love that immersive feeling of temporarily walking into another world. That being said I'll still have loads of fun in any generic black walled haunt where psycho clowns, zombies and Hollywood movie serial killers all live and laugh together in harmony.

It's usually around the close of summer that my wife and I start looking ahead and sorting out which events we intend on visiting this year. In our search for new thrills and chills we usually find our way to this webpage: http://www.ontariohaunts.com/. Now while this site is an excellent guide to haunted attractions in the Ontario region I find its rating system to be a tad misleading.

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This site utilizes a "skull meter" rating intended to help you sort out which haunts are family friendly and which are more suited for older children and adults. Trouble is the number of skulls the haunt gets depends on "gore and horror". Well, horror is subjective and I have no idea what they mean by it here so I'm guessing this meter is slanted more towards gore than anything else.

So, looking at the list one would see that "Fort Fright" in Kingston has been given two and half skulls while "Nightmares Fear Factory" in Niagara Falls has received only one. Anyone looking at this would assume that "Fort Fright" is scarier than "Nightmares" and, having visited both, I can assure you this couldn't be further from the truth. Now, if we're going by gore alone, "Fort Fright" did have decorations depicting corpses and skulls and the like while "Nightmares" is pitch black attraction so if this meter measures gore alone it is technically correct. However, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I did not find "Fort Fright" to be a scary experience at all; I'd think even some younger children might find it a bit boring at times. "Nightmares" on the other hand is probably the scariest, most harrowing haunted attraction in Ontario. I would not recommend this attraction for children at all. They boast hundreds of chicken-outs yearly and these are not idle boasts. I was in line once to witness one, it really ramps up the tension.

Over the next few weeks it is my intention to write a series of reviews about the haunted attractions my wife and I have visited. Now I'm not going to give detailed walk-throughs or anything of the sort as I don't want to spoil any of the surprises awaiting the unwitting victims... er, patrons. What I do hope to create is a somewhat more in depth and comprehensive guide to local scary attractions than what is currently available. So, keep your eyes peeled for "Haunted Journeys 1: Year Round Attractions", my first... well, technically second... installment in my haunt review series.

Richard Vaughan