A place so twisted and demented that not even the owners daughter can walk through the hallways.
Sophomore Madison McCullough’s family are the owners of the House of Torment. Although her family owns the house, she does not actually work there or take any part in role-playing.
“I love working with my family and with people but I am too much of a chicken to scare people or actually walk through the house. I do not like going through the house,” McCullough said.
Many students enjoyed spending this Halloween being spooked at the House of Torment which is composed up of three different attractions, the mental asylum, the slaughterhouse and the cursed tombs. Each is filled with crazy lights, blood and guts, weapons and insanely realistic monsters.
“The scariest thing was a the slaughter house’s monster because of how real they looked. They got really close and followed you around the most than any other house,” sophomore Hadley Kopser said.
The House of Torment has been around for sixteen years. It started in the backyard of McCullough’s house, and was basically a neighborhood event that scared a few kids down the block, but eventually became one of the top haunted houses in the nation. The house was successfully ranked ninth “Scariest Haunted Attraction” in the nation by http://www.hauntworld.com.
“It took all of the family’s help and many, many years of planning and preparation to get where we are now,” McCullough said.
Sixteen years ago, McCullough’s parents were working two full-time jobs while having a scary house in the backyard was just something on the side. It all started with her dad’s interest in haunted houses.
“We choose haunted houses because my dad has a creative mind and he always loved haunted houses,” McCullough said.
Having a top-ranked haunted house that’s popular around the country sometimes means a lot of traveling.
“We’ve gone to Paris and stayed there for six weeks while my dad was helping people there building a haunted house and we just got an offer to go to Dubai to go there and help build a haunted house there,” McCullough said.
The House of Torment has expanded extensively. The house has moved from several locations throughout the sixteen years that it has been open. It used to be located at an old post office near Anderson which expanded and moved its location to North cross mall.
The house continued to expand and became a one-hit-wonder. The new location of the haunted house is now at Highland mall located on 6001 Airport Blvd.