Haunted Houses Profit by Going to Extremes Nationwide

By: Kara Gilmour
Staff Writer
Published: Oct 24, 2021

Haunted houses profit by going to extremes, because it's part of the show, and that's worth money.

Haunted houses profit by going to extremes. It's a profit margin that is very high across the nationwide as haunted houses prepare for Halloween extremes. The houses aren't your typical haunted rooms, and it's a trend that profit is led through extremes.

In the past two decades, haunted houses have become a booming national industry. They generate hundreds of millions of dollars and includes family-friendly theme parks and huge high-tech productions. It's the rare theatrical genre that consistently draws young audiences and makes a profit.

Other cities have more haunted houses and New York has become an artistically fertile scene that specializes in the kind of extreme scares that new horror movies rarely provide anymore. "Blood Manor," also in Chelsea, is the most conventional offering in Manhattan. It is essentially one room after another of your favorite movie psychos methodically jumping out from around the corner.

For more deft cinematic references, "Hotel Savoy," an atmospheric tour through vacant floors of an apartment building across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's a milder, more meditative brand of a haunted house, evoking "The Shining" merely by playing a few seconds of Ray Noble's "Midnight, the Stars and You." The most terrifying haunted houses mix the traditional men in costumes jumping out of shadows with inventive showbiz intelligence.

It all sounds silly, perhaps fun for Halloween, but it's big business. The haunted houses are becoming a production stage with directors. Some of them come up with their scary techniques throughout the year before the show. It's profit, even if it means going to extremes.