The Halloween Haunted House Review: Blackout Haunted House (NYC)

Seriously: What sort of haunted house has a safety word?

The ghost-child was forcing me to put one of the vilest things imaginable in my mouth. An object so shocking, so disturbing, and so flat-out wrong, that… well… I won’t spoil the surprise here.

“Suck on it or ‘Safety’,” the ghastly girl said to me.

I wasn’t about to tap out just yet. Although I later learned, anecdotally, that this particular moment was as far as a fair number of visitors got, I would suffer through to the end. But the worst was yet to come.

New York’s Blackout Haunted House has more in common with a Guantanamo simulator than a church basement haunted house. You don’t feel scared as much as you do violated. Honestly, after going through this thing, you can be excused for wanting to take a bleach shower. You will be touched (by people in various stages of undress). You will put unthinkable objects in your mouth. You will encounter about three or four shockingly memorable and disturbing moments—the sort of things that, when you later tell them to friends, they simply don’t believe you (or perhaps give out a cry of “How is that legal!?”—I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if the cops had shut this thing down halfway through my visit). And you will do it all alone.

Indeed, one of the chief selling points of Blackout is the fact that you must go through it alone. In many ways, this is refreshing—haunted houses can be crowded affairs, where guests feel like cattle herded along a path. And, honestly, the presence of a hundred giggling yahoos really does kill the illusion. At Blackout, you are the center of attention at all times. It may be horrific, painful, abusive attention, but at least they care! And it seriously is one of the scariest haunted houses you’ll ever enter, and possibly one of the most traumatizing way to spend your Halloween.

BLACKOUT HAUNTED HOUSE:
Fear Factor: 5/5
Production Value: 3/5
Length: 20-25 minutes
Price: $40-$50
Location: 54 West 39th Street
More info: http://www.blackoutnyc.com
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