NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, Oct. 24.
As Halloween approaches, the North Olympic Peninsula will be host to ghouls, ghosts and other creatures that go bump in the night as haunted houses open up for horror business.
The five houses — popping up everywhere from Forks, the West End home of vampires, to Port Townsend — will creak, groan and terrify willing adults and kids this weekend and next.
A Rain of Terror
The Rain of Terror Haunted House will be open at Quillayute Airport near Forks from 6 p.m. to midnight today and Saturday, as well as on Halloween night Friday, Oct. 31, and Saturday, Nov. 1.
The haunted house is so frightening that only about 75 of the estimated 100 people who entered the haunted house during its opening last weekend actually managed to complete the multi-story course of terror, and many of those needed a second attempt and an escort, said Forks Police Sgt. Mike Rowley, lead organizer of the haunted house.
“We’ve had a panic attack and urination. We’re working on vomit and defecation,” Rowley said.
“We have EMS on standby,” he added.
Sponsored by the Forks Police Foundation, the two-floored haunted house is located in an old World War II aircraft hangar at Quillayute Airport, he said.
It is a much larger venue than last year’s first attempt to create a Halloween spook house at the Forks Teen Center, Rowley said.
The cost is $5 for walk-ins at the airport or $10 for a bus tour that leaves from the Forks Teen Center, 945 S. Forks Ave., every 30 minutes starting at 6 p.m.
Children younger than 12 should not enter the haunted house.
“It is designed to scare,” Rowley said.
About 35 actors — volunteers from Forks, LaPush and Port Angeles — inhabit the haunted house, which is divided into about 30 rooms.
Every light in the hangar is turned on, Rowley said.
“There aren’t a lot of ‘Boos,’” he said.
That doesn’t mean the interior is bright and cheerful or the actors “friendly.”
Rowley said police officers see a lot of things that people would rather not see, and it produces a fertile imagination on how to scare people.
Many rooms are just bright enough to see the gruesome details, Rowley said.
“Some rooms are so dark, all you can see is movement in the room with you,” he said.
“You will be followed. You will be separated from your group. You may be chased.”
In the first week of the haunted house, at least one woman had to be taken out of the first room by her companion, and more than one person left the haunted house either by one of several escape doors — or at a dead run, he said.
All proceeds benefit the Forks Police Foundation to fund next year’s haunted house and help with foundation projects, including uniforms and equipment for the police department’s cadet educational program for youths ages 12-17 interested in police work.
The Haunted Bordello
Port Townsend’s Haunted Bordello — a haunted house for mature audiences only — will open to the public in the Old Consulate Inn at 313 Walker St. from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. today and Saturday.
Cash-only admission is $10.
Proof of age is required for entry and is limited to those 17 and older.
The tale behind this ill-reputed haunting is ominously scant on detail: “Many years ago on a dark October evening, something bad happened in Port Townsend’s finest pleasure palace.
“Time was men lined up outside the Old Consulate Inn to glimpse girls passing in front of the window. Today, those windows are boarded shut, and no one would be mad enough to spend the night in the old place,” goes the legend on the haunted bordello’s playbill.
Those who make it through the haunted bordello will get a coupon for a drink at the Pourhouse, 2231 Washington St.
“If I survived a haunted bordello, I would probably want a drink and a cigarette,” said Nathan Barnett, co-owner of the Old Consulate Inn.
Guests are asked to wait until after their visit to the bordello to partake in alcoholic beverages, and those who appear to be under the influence will not be admitted.
“And if you’re running for office, this is the wrong thing to do this weekend,” Barnett said.
Barnett and fellow inn co-owner Cindy Madsen have transformed the Victorian house into a “haunted bordello” every year since they purchased it three years ago.
The inn is closed, beautiful furnishings moved out, and the inn is transformed into a dark, creepy place.
“It’s not at all the glorious, serene place we live,” Madsen said.
The transformation into a 19th-century bordello of horrors is “just a romp,” she said.
She said that with the inn closed for the event, the haunted house entry fee doesn’t make up for the loss of guests.
It’s all about the joy of creating the haunted house experience, she said.
Barnett said that while the house itself has no actual history that inspired the bordello theme, other parts of Port Townsend provided the spark.
“Port Townsend has its share of horrible stories. It was a rough-and-tumble place,” he said.
Actors at the “bordello” come from all over the Seattle and Tacoma area.
Some are veterans of previous haunted bordellos, while others are new to the gig.
“We try to accommodate to all tastes,” Barnett said.
Touching the actors is forbidden. Those who do will be removed from the property without refund.
Themes are “mature” and include strobe lights, artificial smoke, steep stairs and graphic scenes of violence with sexual content.
Parking is available at the Jefferson County Courthouse, 1820 Jefferson St.
Concessions will be available for purchase.
For more information, visit www.hauntedbordello.com.
Pandora’s Box open
Since 2008, the haunted house at the Elks Naval Lodge, 131 E. First St. in Port Angeles, has been offering both kid-friendly and adult-terrifying Halloween season entertainment.
“You can hear the screams down the elevator shaft,” said organizer Aaron Gedelman.
A kid-friendly version of the haunted house will be from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 31.
The adult-orientated, scream-inducing nights will be held from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. today, Saturday, Halloween night and Nov. 1.
Admission is $6 for kids and $9 for adults.
This year, the Elks have opened “Pandora’s Box” and revealed the “Seven Deadly Sins,” Gedelman said of this year’s themes.
There will be wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony — each displayed in its most horrific side, she said.
Groups of four or five guests are put in the building’s creepy old elevator — complete with metal grate door — and lifted to the building’s fourth floor, where the fear begins.
“Some people get off the elevator and realize they aren’t in Port Angeles anymore,” Gedelman said.
Once in the elevator, she said, there is no going back — or getting a refund — but there is the “walk of shame,” the main stairway that bypasses the haunted floors.
“They just paid for an elevator ride,” she said.
Gedelman said that for those who complete the haunted house, “some people run through; some walk and enjoy the view.”
About 1,000 people paid for the elevator ride last year, but how many took the walk of shame was unknown, she said.
A few return each year, she said, but some are never seen at the haunted house again.
Elks members, their friends and their children volunteer to set up the haunted house and provide the frightful moments.
Funds raised by the haunted house benefit Elks projects, including student scholarships, home nursing care and children’s therapy.
Here there be trolls
Gardiner’s Troll Haven Haunted Castle, 950 Gardiner Beach Road on the western shore of Discovery Bay, is open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2.
Admission is $10 for adults and teens, $5 for children ages 6 to 12 and free for children 5 and younger.
The family-friendly haunting of the fairy tale landmark castle will offer treat bags for children and an upstairs “fun” haunted house.
There are also children’s activities.
Downstairs in the dungeon is the teen and adult haunted house, which is not recommended for children, said Amanda Duty, one of the organizers of the haunted house.
The dungeon is a dungeon year-round as part of the event center and farm’s castle theme, Duty said.
For more information, phone 559-577-3067 or visit www.trollhaven.org.
Northwest Terror
The haunted house at the Sequim Pumpkin Patch, located on the corner of U.S. Highway 101 and Kitchen-Dick Road between Port Angeles and Sequim, will host the “Northwest Terror” haunted house today and Saturday only.
Entry is $5 per person, and the haunted house will be open from dusk to 10 p.m. each day.
It will not be open on Halloween.
Northwest Terror, featuring frightful clowns and monsters, is best for children 10 and older and adults, though no one is turned away, said Eric Lawton, founder of the haunted house.
“There are a lot of startles,” he said.
Lawton, who started as a farmhand at the Pumpkin Patch and helps carve out the corn maze, started the haunted house in 2009.
The haunted house helps fund the Pumpkin Patch’s operations.
“They don’t make back what they spend out there,” Lawton said of the Pumpkin Patch’s seasonal activities.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
