24405 S. La Grange Road, Frankfort, IL

year: 2011

tourers: bryan, Paul, laura

costs: $16

chainsaws: 3.5/5

website: www.creepyhallow.com

The Blood Shed was a new haunt that premiered in 2011. The web site and numerous billboards located around the south suburban Illinois region promised a great experience. As the number of professional pay haunts in the south suburbs is limited, it was a welcome addition that the Tourers had to check out. The price was a bit on the higher end, particularly for a brand new haunt, but local gas stations and businesses were offering $3 flyers, plus since business was slow the people running the haunt gave us a few dollars more off the price., so with that it was more reasonable,

The haunt itself is located in Frankfort, IL, on the grounds of a giant garden center. The "shed" part of the Blood Shed is a giant metal shed that houses the haunt itself. In addition, there is a haunted hayride that takes visitors out into the cornfields. We did not partake of the hayride in 2011, but we did explore the house. The shed itself features a large number of rooms, beginning with a welcome room where an actor introduces you to the haunt and sends you on your way. Interesting rooms/props included a giant animatronic dog that barked and growled realistically, a creepy clown room, a forest scene complete with wolf man, a child's room with "A,B,C, D,I,E" spelled out in blocks on the wall (nice touch), a Nightmare on Elm Street-themed room with spinning bed, and a giant end room where multiple actors popped out at once and followed visitors through the exit.

Overall, the haunt was decent for a first year haunt. The actors all seemed to be enthusiastic, and there were some clever rooms. There was a bit too much empty space in the warehouse which could have been used in a better fashion, and the price was a bit steep for the type of haunt that it was (as similar haunts usually run in the $10-$12 price range), but for a first effort it was worth a trip and worth looking into for 2012.

This Blood Shed is the name of the haunted house, but the name of the whole even is Creepy Hallow.


photos

year: 2012

tourers: Bryan, Paul, Lisa

costs: $18

chainsaws: 2/5

For 2012, The Blood Shed raised its admission price to $18, and added a Zombie hunt in the cornfield in addition to the haunted shed and hayride. For $40, one could do all three, or a combined hayride/haunt for $30. Since our experience the previous year was good but not great, we opted to do the hayride alone and skip the haunt itself. We used our $3 off flyers to get the hayride for $11. However, since we were there early in the season and the actors were anxious to scare people, the people running the haunt said we could go in for free, so we gladly accepted.

The hayride consisted of a very short (one minute or so) trip in a straight line to a cornfield, when we then got out and walked through a maze. The maze itself was well lit and laid out, which helped us keep from getting lost, but the problem was that there were too few actors in the corn maze to make it interesting. As is was, it mostly consisted of walking through the maze looking for the exit. The only memorable scare came at the very end, where Mike Myers ran at visitors from deep within the cornfields, then quickly dodged to the right out of the line of sight.

The haunt itself had changed a bit from last year, although not for the better. A number of rooms were the same as 2011, but there were fewer actors, and the ones that were there were not very into what they were doing. For example, one part of the haunt had us walking down a long corridor, at the end of which was a picture frame playing scenes from the movie The Ring. This was setup for a live actress to come slowly down the corridor behind you while you were distracted watching the movie. It would have been very effective had we not seen the actress casually hanging out talking with someone as we entered the room.

Additionally, there was again a lot of wasted space within the haunt. The Blood Shed has a great location, with the potential to have a very effective haunt loaded with rooms and corridors, but as it stands now, there is a lot of walking down empty corridors from room to room. As the roof of the shed itself is very high, and visitors can see the outside of the rooms themselves, having lots of empty space to walk through simply takes visitors out of the haunt experience.

There was one cool room where both the walls and ceiling moved in on you while walking through, bringing the corpses hanging from the walls on the bottom left and right into contact with visitors, but one scene is not enough to justify the high price of this haunt. Currently, based on our experiences with other professional pay haunts, the Blood Shed should be no more than $10. Although we got into the haunt for free, we still felt that something was lacking, so the high price is something that will most likely keep us away in the future.

Judging from the numerous billboards, web site promotions, and from the design of their own web site, it seems that the owners of the Blood Shed are spending a lot of money to get their name out into the haunt community. We feel that perhaps less money might be spent on advertising in order to bring the costs down to a more reasonable level.

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