2009 House of Shadows Event Reviews

I loved the bench that tips back in the first room. That was pretty much the highlight of this haunted house. Some of the actors were good and but most were pretty poor. I liked that the building has been proven to have unexplained paranormal activity in it and I liked being told the history of this old orphanage before entering the house.

This was my first time going to Sparta House of Shadows and I probably won't go again.
First and foremost, the actors weren't as much scary, as they were RUDE. I would preferred to be spooked rather than screamed at. At one point, in the Disco room, one actor was nose to nose with me, screaming in my face. Not scary screaming, yelling screaming. That was totally uncalled for, unprofessional, and actually quite rude. Come around a corner and scare me, or do something scary... don't scream in my face!
The house was dark and I did get spooked when going into some rooms, but nothing scary happened, just a lot of yelling from actors. Interestingly enough, I really didn't hear a lot of people inside of the house screaming because they were scared. And when people exited the house, they were unemotional - casually walking out... not terrified like they should have been.
The lighting could have been better. A lot of dark unoccupied corners.

The outside entertainment wasn't bad, but some actors just walked around and didn't do anything to pump the crowd up.

Having worked for several haunted houses in the past I try to keep an open mind about haunts that are volunteer based as you obviously get some excellent actors and some well you get where I'm going. This house followed that to the tee. My wife and I had been talking about attending House of Shadows (HoS) for the past two years but it never worked out for our schedules. This year we made sure to set this weekend as the one to go and the best word(s) I can use to describe the HoS was disorganized (refering to the way tickets are dealt with) un-professional (in how the actors *front entrance people included* need to learn to stay in character) and lastly un-utilized (there were sooooooooo many places that could have had an actor or prop to yet I was left disapointed just about everytime.

With that said though... There was in my mind one upside that both my wife and I agreed upon... The "Saw" room was something that neither of us had ever experienced before and made for an excellent room (although the actors did not do much for the room). The speech about the history of the house was excellent and made for a good way to boost up the moral of the groups.