Sizing up the scares

This was shaping up to be a bad year for local haunted houses. JoyRides Family Fun Center, which had run a haunted house, a haunted trail and even a haunted corn maze, closed up shop last November.

The local Ghoul’s Gulch production company, which had partnered with TheatreWorks on a terrific downtown haunt a few years ago, is producing haunted houses in Greeley this year.

Fortunately, we knew we could count on Mind Seizure, usually the scariest haunted house in town.

And, we discovered, there would be a promising new entry this year: Haunted

Mines, at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry.

To size up the two haunts, we assembled our usual GO! Scream Team. Faithful

readers will remember that last year, my 10-year-old son, Aidan, the youngest of our team, chickened out in the parking lots and wouldn’t go in. This year, I took along a secret weapon: Hannah, the girl next door. I knew that if Hannah was brave enough to go in, Aidan’s macho would kick in, and he’d be shamed into going with her. It worked . . . at first.

We all walked into Mind Seizure, through two or three blood-soaked rooms full of weapon-wielding maniacs.

Hannah was screaming. Well, we were all screaming, to tell you the truth. But Hannah’s scream had reached a special kind of volume and timbre that could shatter the eardrums

of screech owls. She wanted out, so we quickly found an emergency exit, and the two other fifth-graders, boys who were now freaked out by Hannah’s screaming, exited as well. That left a couple of ninth-grade boys and I to push on and explore the rest of Mind Seizure and the new Haunted Mines tour.

We survived, and we recorded our impressions.

Word of warning: The haunted houses, which are rated a bloody PG-13, generally don’t offer refunds for kids who leave partway through.

MIND SEIZURE: Expect great costumes, loud music and scares

Mind Seizure keeps up its tradition as the bloodiest, scariest haunt with a noisy, intense attraction that will stay in nightmares for weeks to come.

Seizure had been located in a large tent in the parking lot of the Flea Market.

This year, it moved into the permanent structure of the market’s pavilion.

Maybe that’ll make it warmer on cold nights. In any case, this is a terribly chilling place.

As a heavy metal soundtrack blares, you walk through a series of rooms and mazes, peopled by good actors in outstanding costumes and masks.

You’ll see the insane, bloody-faced clowns with the giant hands from previous years.

You’ll see the Grudge.

You’ll see murderers with meat cleavers, chain saws and even (loved this one) a Sawzall.

But the biggest scare came from an old bit done extremely well. In the middle of a very creepy graveyard, a mannequin in a business suit sat on a bench.

We looked at him VERY carefully, to verify that he did, indeed, look plastic and that his eyes weren’t blinking or moving. We passed him . . . and he stood up . . .

Aaaaaaaaahhhh!

HAUNTED MINES: Creepy scene scores, despite poor timing

Like the old JoyRides’ haunted trail, this is both indoors and outdoors, as you crawl through mine shafts and scurry through actor-filled chambers to a grinding, industrial soundtrack.

Although not as noisy or intense as Mind Seizure, it’s far more ambitious, with actors going through actual scenes to creep you out.

The highlights:

Quicksand — an area that makes you feel as if you’re sinking into the sand.

The swamp thing — a thing that reaches out of the muck just as you’re crossing a bridge.

“I think it’s human!” one teen exclaimed as we tried to figure out whether it was mechanical or organic.

Before going into this new haunted house at the mining museum, I felt a twinge of distaste at the timing. Just two months after six miners were trapped in Utah and three rescuers killed, here was a haunted house about ghosts in a scary mine, where a plummeting elevator threatens to drop you into the abyss.

I know they’d started planning this thing — a fundraiser for the museum — more than a year ago.

But still . . .

Placing questions of taste and timing aside for a moment, however, this is one creepy haunted house.

Mind Seizure

Hours: 7-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and Oct. 31, 7-10 p.m. Sundays- Thursdays, runs through Oct. 31

Where: The Flea Market, 5225 E. Platte Ave., one mile east of Academy Boulevard

Cost: $13

Discounts: $2 off and a free Mountain Dew with coupons from Taco Bell; $2 off admission when you bring two cans of food

per person to benefit Care and Share Food Bank, 2-for-1 tickets with student ID Sundays and Thursdays through Oct. 22.

Web site: http://mindseizurehauntedhouse.com

Side attraction: As usual, Mind Seizure offers The Nightmare Machine, which takes a separate admission

of $1.

Haunted Mines

Hours: 7 p.m. “until the lines die down” Fridays-Sundays and Oct. 29-31, runs through Oct. 31

Where: Western Museum of Mining and Industry, 225 North Gate Blvd., Interstate 25 Exit 156A.

Cost: $13

Discounts: Download $1- and $2-off coupons at their Web site.

Web site: hauntedmines.org

Other upcoming Halloween events

Oct. 27 — Pumpkin Patch at Aerials Gymnastics, inflatables, games, costume contests, 6-9

p.m., Briargate Aerials, 3536 Hartsel Drive, $10/$25 per family; 260-1893.

Oct. 27 — Erotic Exotic Ball, costume contests, SODO, 527 S. Tejon St., 314-0420.

Oct. 31 — Glass House Haunted House, multicultural haunted house, 5 p.m., The Glass House (Lennox), 1001 N. Nevada Ave.,

Colorado College, free; 389-6607.

Oct. 31 — TESSA’s Halloween Carnival, with trick-or-treating, family activities and information booths, 4-8 p.m., Swink Hall at the El Paso County Fairgrounds, Calhan, free; 785-6808.

REAL HAUNTS

Learn about some of the most haunted places in the Pikes Peak region and

see photos from a ghost tour, Oct. 28 in Life.