House of Torment is a great place to go with a group of friends or family. It does a great job of getting people in the spirit of Halloween. The facility includes three different houses, each of which has a different storyline and incorporates different types of scares. Here is a recap of my personal experience at the 2018 House of Torment.

Before the first house, the actors came out and welcomed customers to the house and monsters would take pictures with anyone who requested. They would also sneak up behind people if they weren’t paying attention, or if they were on their phone.

“Blackthorne Penitentary” – In my opinion, this house was the least scary out of all three, but was still a fun experience to walk through. It did have some cool aspects though, such as a room with green lasers. The monsters wore glow sticks around their backs, making it impossible to see them in the dark. This house also seemed to have the most jump scares out of the three, the most being where the monster would charge at the crowd and scream, making people freak out and leap back. There were also monsters that would jump out from behind doors and some popping out of windows, which people were not expecting. The Penitentiary also had a dragon that was breathing out fire as we walked by.

“Darkest Dreams” – This house was by far the best out of all, as it was the scariest and included the coolest special effects. There was another green laser room, but this time a lot of the monsters popped out from above us. We walked through a tunnel that had a projection on the wall, giving the illusion that the tunnel was spinning. A smoke machine also went off as we were in the tunnel, throwing off both balance and vision. Later in the house, there was a floor that shifted around when we crossed it, followed by a jump scare at the end. A mat came out of the wall and squished our entire group together, which was scary given that it touched us out of nowhere. In “Darkest Dreams,” it seemed like if there wasn’t a problem with balance, there were still strobe lights that blurred vision and therefore made it difficult to maneuver through the rest of the house.

“Trick or Treat” – This house was a perfect middle in terms of ranking them. It included a tour guide at the beginning of the house, who ended up trailing behind and showing us the way through the house. “Trick or Treat” also seemed like the largest house and took the most time to get through. The coolest part of this house was a steep, vertical platform that we walked uphill on, and then were frightened with jump scare towards the bottom.

Overall, House of Torment was a great experience and I think that anyone who likes to get scared should check it out. You will get the perfect mix of jump scares, gore and some haunted house classic “get chased out by a chainsaw” moments. The House of Torment opened Sept.21 and will remain open until the night of Nov. 3.