With October in full swing and Halloween just around the corner, festive stores, activities and attractions are becoming available for fans of the spooky holiday.
One of the biggest Halloween attractions in Baton Rouge, The 13th Gate, began providing frights Sept. 23 and will continue every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night until Oct. 31.
“The 13th Gate is a 40,000-square-foot haunted attraction,” said Dwayne Sanburn, The 13th Gate owner and designer.
The 13th Gate is recognized nationally each year by magazines like Haunt World and Haunted Attraction as one of the top haunted attractions in the country because of its movie-quality sets, Sanburn said.
“We’ve been in the top three or four for the past four years now,” he said. “We made No. 1 twice.”
A walk through The 13th Gate takes about 30 to 40 minutes and is filled with movie-quality sets, professional and University actors and professional makeup artists, Sanburn said.
Stephanie Cronan, French and international business freshman, is the table victim of Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre room.
Cronan said seeing everything behind the scenes like the costumes and makeup is her favorite part of the job.
“There’s so many aspects of the job that people don’t realize,” Cronan said.
Sanburn said workers start designing and constructing new sets each year in November and work year round to change about a third of the haunted house.
Each new set added to the attraction costs about $75,000 to $80,000 to construct, and about $250,000 is spent each year to update the entire attraction, Sanburn said.
“Coming next year for our 10-year anniversary, we’re opening a whole new attraction called The 13th Gate Necropolis,” he said.
The new attraction will be located across the street from The 13th Gate and is a 25,000-square-foot replica of a New Orleans style cemetery, Sanburn said.
Another haunted attraction for fright-seekers is the House of Shock in New Orleans.
“The House of Shock is one of the most intense haunted attractions in the country,” said owner Ross Karpelman. “We are an over-the-top, theatrical haunted house.”
The House of Shock is different from most haunted houses with features like a live stage show filled with fire, live actors and stunts, live bands, sideshow freak acts and a bar, Karpelman said.
A less-frightening form of these haunted houses is available at the haunted hike at Bluebonnet Swamp.
The hike, which takes place Oct. 15, 22 and 29 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. and features a nighttime walk full of creatures and candy, is designed for the younger crowd as an alternative to haunted houses, according to the Bluebonnet Swamp website.
A less frightening Halloween hot spot, Haints, Haunts and Halloween: A Country Fair, is being hosted by the LSU Rural Life Museum on Oct. 31, according to the LSU Media Center. The afternoon will consist of trick or treating and activities of an old-fashioned Halloween country fair.
Another spooky event, The Baton Rouge Zombie Crawl, is a gathering of zombie participants that travel around the city donating canned goods. It will take place Oct. 23 at 7 p.m.
And popular haunted corn mazes like the AgMaizing Corn Maze offer more Halloween adventures around Baton Rouge.
AgMaizing Corn Maze is located in Port Allen and has the word “LOST” cut into the corn field. Daphne Kissner, chief operating officer at AgMaizing Corn Maze, said this is the first year this corn maze is open.
The new corn maze opened Sept. 17 and will operate every weekend through November from 5 to 10 p.m. on Fridays, noon to 10 p.m. on Saturdays and noon to 8 p.m. on Sundays. Part of the maze will be filled with frightful actors every weekend from 7 to 10 p.m., Kissner said.
Directions and more information about the corn maze can be found at www.agmaizing.com.
Kissner said growing and constructing the corn maze is a relatively easy process and involves planting the corn using the grid method, which means it is planted in horizontal and vertical rows to thicken the corn.
The corn is grown on site, and the paths are cut using a weed eater when the corn is about 1 foot tall.
Along with the corn maze, there will be a haunted hayride, plenty of concessions and picnic tables for people to have a tree-covered lunch.
“It’s just a very nice country setting,” Kissner said.
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Contact Ferris W. McDaniel at [email protected]