Halloween turns L.A. suburbs into haunts

Living in Los Angeles has its perks come Halloween, especially on the city’s outer edges where some of the entertainment industry’s best makeup and special effects artists live amid eerily disconnected suburban sprawl.

Localized haunted attractions have always been a seasonal offering in L.A.’s family-oriented neighborhoods, but the success of specialized theme parks such as Knott’s Scary Farm or Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights has spawned homespun yard haunts, abandoned-lot takeovers and thrilling attractions for those who need more than a ghost and a skeleton to get their spine tingling.

Because of the resurgence of zombie and gore-centered horror films — such as Saw, 28 Days Later and the Hostel series — the tamer community projects are now living alongside adult-oriented, professional-grade fright fests.

Take Pierce College’s recent embellishment, for instance. Located in the San Fernando Valley, a place with no shortage of empty lots and expansive spaces to convert, the school’s long-running Harvest Festival — which has always featured a pumpkin patch, hay rides and tame, child-appropriate haunts — now conducts an after-dark FrightFair Scream Park, that features three mazes including a scare-filled corn field and a blood-splattered insane asylum.

Though Pierce College and other community attractions choose to build new structures from the ground up, other areas of Los Angeles are using existing buildings to craft elaborate themed haunts. Pasadena’s Old Town Haunt walks visitors through the basement and catacombs of the historical California Union Savings Bank Building, where mysterious occurrences have been reported for more than a century.

The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride is now in its second year, moving its multi-faceted haunts from 600-acre King Gillette Ranch in Calabasas to the former site of the zoo in Griffith Park.

A popular Halloween tradition, the hayride winds visitors through creepy forests and haunted woods before allowing them to walk through a towering maze made of hay and a slightly more docile group of rides known as “Carnival of Souls.”

The Queen Mary, permanently docked in Long Beach, amped up its budget this year, converting the boiler room and parking lot into a demonic five-maze attraction titled Dark Harbor. A definite improvement from the ship’s previous Halloween attempts, Dark Harbor was created by the same team that created last year’s wildly popular Silent Hill Haunt at Sinister Pointe in Brea.

The Sinister Pointe team also assisted the City of Garden Grove in its reclamation of an empty Black Angus restaurant, working with a film prop production company to turn the 10,000 square-foot space into a horror-filled maze called Diner of the Dead.

By reclaiming spaces such as empty parking lots, abandoned buildings and closed-down restaurants, and turning them into seasonal scares full of mazes, gory makeup and Hollywood-worthy special effects, the city is engaging in a quintessentially Los Angeles form of urban renewal.

Instead of building parks, upscale lofts or new outdoor shopping centers as most New Urbanism planners try to do, these unused spaces are being converted into temporary entertainment destinations that only the film industry can create.

With the economy still in a funk and developers more reluctant than ever to invest in permanently converting spaces, the transitory nature of these haunted attractions is a perfect solution for both landowners and haunt designers. For Angelenos hoping to escape the financial stress of their everyday lives, the growing number of oversized Halloween attractions spewing out of formerly abandoned spaces is a welcome, if not an ironic distraction.

In contrast to amusement parks that take on a Halloween theme this time every year — namely Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain — the local mazes, haunted houses and salvaged buildings give a fright-filled sense of community in pockets of the city that need it most. Indeed, many of the professional pop-up attractions operating this year expanded from yard or community haunts, which gained local popularity, that allow them to expand

Whether done by professionals or amateurs, each neighborhood has its own local Halloween attraction, ensuring that even in a city as large as Los Angeles, a holiday centered around going door-to-door asking neighbors for candy can continue to instill community pride.

With so many options for scaring oneself this Halloween, no one should have to give in to overpriced theme parks. The city is teeming with localized seasonal options for every taste and budget. In the entertainment capital of the world, it is these independent alternatives that will terrorize you the most.

Sarah Bennett is a senior majoring in communication. Her column, “Fake Bad Taste,” runs Wednesdays.