😱😈 Our Visit to Elysburg Haunted House 👻🎃
Date: 10/19/2024
Location: Elysburg, Pennsylvania
Elysburg Haunted House, easily one of the longest running haunted attractions on the east coast, by far takes the cake as the longest running Pennsylvania haunt! It’s 2024 and Elysburg Haunted House is back for their 49th year of providing a frightfully fun experience! Our crew got our first taste of the spooky fun that the Elysburg Haunted House offers back in 2020. They’ve been a must visit on our Haunt Tours ever since! What makes Elysburg Haunted House such a gem of a haunt is their passionate cast & crew, who is completely made up of volunteers who just ooze love and passion for the spooky season!
We arrived on the property shortly after 8pm on a rather chilly Saturday evening. We immediately took notice of what had to be a record-breaking crowd on hand! The parking lot attendants were doing their best to steadily funnel cars into the lot. Even from the furthest parts of the parking lot, you’re immediately drawn to the buzz, screams, and thrilling energy spilling from the midway. As you make your way towards the midway area you are immediately immersed into that upbeat and spooky fun atmosphere. The midway area featured at least half a dozen food trucks to satisfy any and all of your hankerings & cravings, ample seating areas, energizing music, and countless roaming spooks! Don’t forget to swing by the merchandise stand to snag some Elysburg Haunt memorabilia.
For those who are unaware, Elysburg Haunted House is a fundraiser for the local fire department(s) in the Elysburg area. Despite not having a large budget for construction and marketing purposes, these folks have crafted a truly legendary and must-see haunted attraction experience! For just $20 you’ll receive a solid 30-35 minutes of legitimate in attraction experience, by far one of the best bang for your buck haunt experiences you’ll ever encounter! All proceeds go to a good cause, which has even helped the Elysburg Fire Department purchase a 1-million dollar fire engine in years past! Elysburg Haunted Houses boasts at least 10 new & redesigned scenes for the 2024 haunt season! Just when we thought these folks couldn’t find new ways to surprise us… boy were we wrong! You’ll have to keep reading to hear about the new surprises for 2024!
Once ready to experience Elysburg Haunted House you’ll hop into the queue line. Be forewarned that this place draws in massive crowds & can develop a rather lengthy wait in a hurry (2+ hours at times)! No fast pass option available here, so if you’re looking to minimize your wait visit these folks early on in the season OR arrive early on the night you plan to attend. Eventually the queue line will lead directly past the ticket booth where you’ll snag your tickets and head forth to the opening scene. The beautifully crafted mansion facade that is the lone barrier between you & the mayhem in the woods! A lovely witch character greets you and shares a few rules before sending you forth into the mayhem! Even on their busiest nights, the Elysburg team does their best to appropriately manage the lines & pace of groups entering the attraction to avoid conga-lines from forming within the trail!
Elysburg Haunted House consists of one large massive indoor walkthrough smack dab in the middle of two lengthy outdoor trails. Be prepared to encounter literally everything and anything along your journey, ranging from a Satanic Devil worshiping section (good luck making it out without sacrificing your soul) to an elegantly crafted & decorated Witches Hut (super cool ambiance & incredible “hosts”)! From start to end we are always thoroughly impressed with the originality of the scenes at Elysburg Haunted House! All of the sets and its contents are handmade and delicately crafted. While you won’t encounter massive high-end animatronics or loads of special effects, Elysburg Haunted House has plenty of special tricks up their sleeves that are sure to startle even the most experienced haunt goer! Stationary props came to life, walls converged to trap guests, trick doors, and many other unique tactics were utilized to disorient guests. The “War Zone” scene featured an army fellow hollering “fire in the hole”, a crashed plane, & realistic audio effects to immerse you into a high-intensity battleground. Move swiftly as you try to dodge the bullets! A forest of Christmas trees possessed a few ghillie characters that were cleverly hidden & would provide quick startle scares. Objects that didn’t appear like they should or could move fooled us several times, catching us off-guard providing more spine-tingling startles. Heck, even a remote control car was disguised as a massive spider that came chasing after us, such a frightfully-clever idea! The scares truly came from every which direction, so nobody is safe while traversing through this unnerving forest!
The multi-story house walk-through looks deceiving from the outside, but be forewarned, it’s not for the faint of heart! You’re immediately drawn to one of the biggest changes to the Elysburg Haunt this year. Outside of the house & the first few scenes were converted into a never before seen Jaws/under the sea theme! A massive shark was emerging from the waters, waiting to chomp off a limb. Board the old elevator & go for one JAW-SOME shark exploration in the NEW Shark Tank - you’ll plunge to the deepest and darkest depths of the ocean as you try to avoid being consumed by a massive shark! As we darted out of the shark infested waters we traversed through an area swarming with seagulls, dodged numerous Octopus that came barreling for us from above, and then submerged once more into the waters in the Elysburg Submarine (The USS Slodysko)! As you descend into the old decrepit basement, you truly feel as though you’re descending deeper into the lower deck of a functional submarine. We passed by the supply room, medical room, and torpedo room before we rose to the surface at last! We were truly amazed by these NEW scenes, as they were certainly unique and incredibly immersive! The spooks throughout the house are sneaky & appear literally out of nowhere to deliver startles. At one point we were “dancing with Satan” as we ventured into a demented church funeral that ended with the lights cutting out & our crew being on the receiving end of a bone-chilling surprise. We tried to navigate our way through a black-out hallway and what we found on the other end was rather startling! One of our continued favorite scenes is the rainforest/swamp-esque section featuring large snakes & a man-sized rat, YIKES! Special shout-out to our favorite clown who possesses the Pinocchio-esque nose
With being a true old school style haunted attraction, Elysburg Haunted House uses little animatronics or high end special effects, relying heavily on their cast and crew to deliver the scares & bring their show to life! Elysburg Haunted House was crawling with spooks and had legitimately no major areas of dead space! The cast and crew here at Elysburg Haunted House is always an energized and passionate crew! These folks have a true passion for haunting & to top it off they are all completely volunteers - WOW! These folks were energized, interactive, and provided phenomenal performances, succeeding countless times at providing sneaky hair-raising startles!
We just love how creative & thrifty the Elysburg team is when it comes to their scenic design & methods to deliver startles! Many of the spooks have multiple resources available to them to deliver frights, allowing groups to go through multiple times in a night yet receive a different startle each time! Elysburg Haunted House defies all odds & shows you don’t need high-end animatronics to effectively scare folks.
After exiting Elysburg Haunted House we had the pleasure of chatting with Harvey Boyer, who’s been a staple at Elysburg Haunted House for many years. While Harvey may not have as large of a role on the team these days, we always love chatting with him. His love & passion for the Elysburg Haunt is undeniable! As always, the Elysburg Haunted House team is already brainstorming ideas for 2025 (their 50th season!!) & several years past that, these folks clearly never sleep.
Elysburg Haunted House is still by far the best kept secret in the haunt industry! The experience Elysburg Haunted House provides is unique, immersive, and just downright frightfully fun! Elysburg Haunted House is a MUST-SEE Haunted Attraction as it’s sure to please all varieties of haunt goers! If you’re a haunted attraction guru and you’ve yet to visit Elysburg Haunted House, pencil them into your schedule, you won’t be disappointed! Job well done to the entire Elysburg Haunted House team! Thank you for all that you folks do for the community and keep providing that old school spooky fun experience we’ve come to know & LOVE! We were once again truly blown away by the experience Elysburg Haunted House offers and will most certainly be visiting again for many years to come!
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