Students looking for a good fright this October can choose from three horrorific haunts summoning the ghoulish spirit of Halloween in Sonoma County.
This year’s activities range from fear-fueled events including haunted houses and mazes to live-screened horror flicks, panic-pumped amusement rides and an extreme yard haunt with a full-blown light show.

Blind Scream, The Last Ride and Doc’s Horrortorium

Inside a vacant warehouse in Santa Rosa, an unsettling labyrinth of darkness awaits its next line of victims. Outside, a crowd of scare-junkies gathers around the local haunt to get their evening’s fix of terror. One by one, each guest enters the warped, pitch black series of corridors, armed only with the faint light of a glow stick just bright enough to disturb the slew of deranged freaks lurking in the shadows.
“It’s a walk into and through your worst nightmares,” says Judy Groverman Walker, co-owner and marketing specialist for the horror-riddled house.
With 6,000 square feet of long, lightless and winding passages, Walker encourages visitors to tour the twisted maze from hell, known as Blind Scream, at their own pace. Victims are kept from wandering off the main path by monsters constantly leering out of the dark, Walker says. Along the way, guests can expect a visual dose of lunacy from a giant spinning vortex to a playground of evil clowns.
Aside from Blind Scream the premise includes a second haunted house named Doc’s Horroritorium, and The Last Ride, a three-minute death trip underground.
The Halloween spectacle, started in 2010 and based upon the Hopper House of Horror, is the culmination of the vision of co-owner Drew Dominguez, who’s built and designed more than 50 professional haunted houses in his career.
A macabre shanty filled with the sounds and smells of creatures roaming the haunted house’s dingy halls, Doc’s Horroritorium offers scare-seekers an in-depth theatric experience of gore and the grotesque. Through a series of thematically designed rooms Doc Hunter and his demented family carry on blood-bursting performances for new visitors playing witness to the mad doctor’s sideshow of terrors.
At any given moment 35 to 60 actors in elaborate monster costumes prowl the grounds. Walker says, “We work with and train our actors for months prior to the haunt’s opening.”
Guests still thirsting for more can sate their every last desire for fright by venturing onto The Last Ride.  Believed to be one of only 50 functioning in the United States, the ride provides the highly creepy and unusual simulation of being buried alive.
Willing participants begin their experience by climbing into an authentic coffin, then lay down as gravediggers close the heavy lid upon them.  The ride, which goes from casket to hearse to six feet under, includes the use of hydraulics and the smells and sounds of dirt being shoveled down upon the helpless victim.
While Walker and Dominguez don’t recommend children under seven going into either haunted house, they pull in a wide range of audiences and ages from families and groups of 40 to 50-year-old men and women out for a scare to college students and haunted house enthusiasts from the Midwest, where haunts are a popular past time.
“It’s a great date night,” Walker says. “We even get grandma and grandpa coming through.”
Walker, Dominguez and their crew of monsters will be terrifying from dusk (approximately 7 p.m.) till 11 p.m., except on Sundays when the haunt closes at 10 p.m., Oct. 25 through Halloween. Located on the Corby Auto Mall in the Manly Used Car Superstore at 2770 Corby Avenue, Blind Scream and Doc’s Horrortorium cost $15 a piece or $25 as a pair at the door and $20 online at blindscream.com; The Last Ride costs $7.
Walker will also hold two nights of fundraising in which a portion of the haunt’s proceeds will go to support community based non-profits; the Santa Rosa High School ArtQuest fundraising night will be on Oct. 26, and the Cardinal Newman Youth Empowerment and Service night on Oct. 27.

Wicked West Ghost Town of Jose Ramon Avenue

Outside the warped chambers of sadist surgeons, Halloween enthusiasts looking for a high-quality,  free  haunting experience can go to the Wicked West Ghost Town of Jose Ramon Avenue.
In its fourth season , the extreme yard haunt follows a storyline called the Legend of the Rosa Witch, and includes several rooms and a maze with 8-foot-tall walls. The ghost town also contains an interactive monster that allows visitors to activate different props in the yard and a constantly running light show, which creator Bill Wolcott says has never been done in a home haunt before. A computerized setup using an 80-channel Light-O-Rama system to sequence the lights with music, the haunt includes more than 20 Halloween related songs from the past to the present.
The town, last year listed as 4th in the nation out of more than 300 registered home haunts, comes together each year as a neighborhood project in which Wolcott and his neighbors volunteer their time for three months to scare the bejesus out of people. This year he plans on ranking in the top three.
“We have at any given time an average of ten monsters working within the haunt,” Wolcott says. “Their main job is to do anything they can to make our spectators wet themselves.”
Last year Wolcott estimates about 8,000 people flocked to the ghost town, about 2500 of whom came on Halloween night alone.
Guests begin their journey into the ghoulish underworld by entering the Mead Clark Lumber Co. doors. “After that it all depends how they can manage their fear and find their way out,” Wolcott says. “We don’t assure a good scare, we just want them to make it out alive.”
Built entirely out of 100-year-old redwoods, the town is meant to replicate the look of some of Sonoma County’s first buildings. The “insane Shaking Marshall” and brand new 2011 scarecrow are the town’s most extreme props. Almost all of the props inside the haunt are handmade and range from authentic Old West saddles to wooden tombstones.
The Ghost Town, located at 472 Jose Ramon Avenue in Santa Rosa, operates from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from 7:30-10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; Halloween night the haunt will carry on until 11 p.m.

Outside the warped chambers of sadist surgeons, Halloween enthusiasts looking for a high-quality,  free  haunting experience can go to the Wicked West Ghost Town of Jose Ramon Avenue.
In its fourth season , the extreme yard haunt follows a storyline called the Legend of the Rosa Witch, and includes several rooms and a maze with 8-foot-tall walls. The ghost town also contains an interactive monster that allows visitors to activate different props in the yard and a constantly running light show, which creator Bill Wolcott says has never been done in a home haunt before. A computerized setup using an 80-channel Light-O-Rama system to sequence the lights with music, the haunt includes more than 20 Halloween related songs from the past to the present.
The town, last year listed as 4th in the nation out of more than 300 registered home haunts, comes together each year as a neighborhood project in which Wolcott and his neighbors volunteer their time for three months to scare the bejesus out of people. This year he plans on ranking in the top three.
“We have at any given time an average of ten monsters working within the haunt,” Wolcott says. “Their main job is to do anything they can to make our spectators wet themselves.”
Last year Wolcott estimates about 8,000 people flocked to the ghost town, about 2500 of whom came on Halloween night alone.
Guests begin their journey into the ghoulish underworld by entering the Mead Clark Lumber Co. doors. “After that it all depends how they can manage their fear and find their way out,” Wolcott says. “We don’t assure a good scare, we just want them to make it out alive.”
Built entirely out of 100-year-old redwoods, the town is meant to replicate the look of some of Sonoma County’s first buildings. The “insane Shaking Marshall” and brand new 2011 scarecrow are the town’s most extreme props. Almost all of the props inside the haunt are handmade and range from authentic Old West saddles to wooden tombstones.
The Ghost Town, located at 472 Jose Ramon Avenue in Santa Rosa, operates from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from 7:30-10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; Halloween night the haunt will carry on until 11 p.m.

Outside the warped chambers of sadist surgeons, Halloween enthusiasts looking for a high-quality,  free  haunting experience can go to the Wicked West Ghost Town of Jose Ramon Avenue.
In its fourth season , the extreme yard haunt follows a storyline called the Legend of the Rosa Witch, and includes several rooms and a maze with 8-foot-tall walls. The ghost town also contains an interactive monster that allows visitors to activate different props in the yard and a constantly running light show, which creator Bill Wolcott says has never been done in a home haunt before. A computerized setup using an 80-channel Light-O-Rama system to sequence the lights with music, the haunt includes more than 20 Halloween related songs from the past to the present.
The town, last year listed as 4th in the nation out of more than 300 registered home haunts, comes together each year as a neighborhood project in which Wolcott and his neighbors volunteer their time for three months to scare the bejesus out of people. This year he plans on ranking in the top three.
“We have at any given time an average of ten monsters working within the haunt,” Wolcott says. “Their main job is to do anything they can to make our spectators wet themselves.”
Last year Wolcott estimates about 8,000 people flocked to the ghost town, about 2500 of whom came on Halloween night alone.
Guests begin their journey into the ghoulish underworld by entering the Mead Clark Lumber Co. doors. “After that it all depends how they can manage their fear and find their way out,” Wolcott says. “We don’t assure a good scare, we just want them to make it out alive.”
Built entirely out of 100-year-old redwoods, the town is meant to replicate the look of some of Sonoma County’s first buildings. The “insane Shaking Marshall” and brand new 2011 scarecrow are the town’s most extreme props. Almost all of the props inside the haunt are handmade and range from authentic Old West saddles to wooden tombstones.
The Ghost Town, located at 472 Jose Ramon Avenue in Santa Rosa, operates from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from 7:30-10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; Halloween night the haunt will carry on until 11 p.m.

Dr. Evil’s House of Horror

In the West County, another deranged doctor is skulking about his haunted home leaving guests with a perpetual case of the goosebumps. Owned and operated by Tracie Skaggs and her husband, Michael Skaggs, Dr. Evil’s House of Horror offers visitors to walk through their monster-riddled maze and explore the doctor’s many rooms of terror.
“You’ve got to watch it,” Tracy says to folks going to see the doctor. “You will be touched, you will be moved and you could very well get slimed.”
While the annual event can bring lines of people, the Skaggs have set up a big fire pit and live-screened horror films this year to keep their guests cozy while they wait.
Inside the maze, walls and doorways open up, close in and increasingly shrink in size. Volunteer actors play out a variety of bloodcurdling freak shows throughout the different rooms including one man who performs sacrifices.
“The best way to describe it is as an obstacle course of horror,” says Michael Skaggs, who builds the sets, which take more than two months to construct.
The House of Horrors, now celebrating its 10th Halloween, first came to life when the Skaggs owned an amusement park and decided to create a haunted house for their customers. One year a family in town needed to raise money for a wheelchair accessible van, and the Skaggs offered to donate what money they made from the haunted house to their cause.
While the amusement park shutdown eight years ago and is now a campground, the Skaggs have held onto their Halloween spirit, and donate all the haunted house’s proceeds to different charities each year. Proceeds this year benefit The National Kidney Foundation and Elves with Shears, a local charity group that provides Christmas to the needy via donations of decorated trees, gifts and food.
Dr. Evil’s House of Horrors runs from sundown to 11 p.m. every Friday and Saturday through the month of October at 16101 Neely Road in Guerneville. Tickets cost $10. While the Skaggs don’t recommend anyone under the age of 12 inside the house, a spooky maze designed for children is also open to the public on the property.