Haunted Review - 7th Street Haunt

On our way to find the Devil's Attic, we just happened to pass another haunted house we had never heard of, and after checking out the website and making sure they were open, we decided to give it a shot. After all, the night was still young, and we were eager to be scared some more!

I had the pleasure of meeting Tracy, whose son owns the haunt, before going in. First off, I want to say she's one of the nicest people I've met, and bless her heart, we were the third review group of the evening and her son couldn't be there, so she was fending off the wolves alone, but she was handling it well. She gave me a little background, and it was a real pleasure to meet her.

After chatting with Tracy a bit, we headed over to have our picture taken, where we put Amy in a gown on a gurney and they gave me a fake knife and extra body parts. It was hilarious.

Then we entered the haunt. Once again, we didn't find a lot of the typical horror movie characters, which was nice. There were scenes from some movies, but it was tasteful and unique, not the most common horror movie scenes. The actors interacted with you quite a bit as well, especially the maid and the gentleman. I got dusted, apparently I was dirty. :)

I did notice the layout was a bit confusing, because when you're going through a series of hanging curtains, you expect to keep going through the curtains, so I ended up going the wrong way once. The space was a bit too big for some of the rooms and sections of the haunt, too. Not to the point that it was terrible, but it was hard for everyone to get scared, because you often saw what was coming. There was just a lot of wasted space that could have been condensed to squeeze more scares in. Again, it wasn't something that was really terrible, and it was still entertaining the whole way through, but the space just felt off.

There were a lot of screams in the haunt, and while a lot of it was the pop-out-and-scare tactic, there were a lot of creepy factors too. There was one room that literally almost made me pee my pants, which is a huge accomplishment. I absolutely HATE clowns. I cannot stress that enough. They are unnatural and terrifying. The clown room was stressful and horrifying, and I have to give major props to the clowns. They're the reason I went running off and ended up off course. At the time, I didn't care, I just had to get away.

The haunt was unique, and it has lots of potential, but the thing I have to keep in mind is what I learned after going through the haunted house. This is the first year for the 7th Street Haunt, and they had to throw this together in an incredibly short amount of time. Between June and now, they managed to turn a huge, empty building into a haunted attraction, and let's face it, renovations, preparations, set design, costume design, casting and auditions, props, storyline...that's a lot to put together in about 3-4 months. There is a lot of potential, and I can't wait to see what they do with more time. And more space.

I also learned from Tracy that many of the actors and contributors to the 7th Street Haunt came from the old Psychomania in Indiana, the one that burned down last year, making many of us shed tears because it was such a phenomenal haunt. Given the talent from Psychomania, I'm confident that the haunt will be ridiculously good with more time for planning and design.

There were a lot of good screams, the props and actors were exceptional, there are a lot of pluses to this haunt, and I have to give them credit, they did an awful lot with so little. Taking everything into consideration, as well as the experience and opinions of my pals, I would have to give this haunt 3.5 Ghosts. Which is still an above average rating, but I plan to revisit next year, and I guarantee next year will be better by a long shot, and I'm banking on a higher rating. I can't wait to see what next year brings.


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