Haunted Houses and Scream Parks: Oklahoma’s Spooky Season Fun

Halloween has turned into less of a holiday and more of a season. Pumpkin spice shows up in August, Spirit stores take over every failed retail space in town, and every old field or barn suddenly becomes “haunted.”

I'm not at all complaining, this is the best time of year, and all of that is part of the charm.

Scream parks and haunted houses are the real backbone of spooky season. You walk in knowing something’s going to jump out, and somehow you still scream when it does. Then you laugh at yourself, or at your buddy who just hit a falsetto note nobody thought he had in him. It’s not so much about fear as it is about the comedy of it.

The Comedy of Fear

The atmosphere’s half the fun. Cold night air, that popcorn smell drifting around, generators rattling away in the background, and a healthy dose of fog machine juice in your lungs. It’s the closest thing adults get to trick-or-treating, only with overpriced hot chocolate instead of free candy.

And if you’ve got kids, here’s the gamble... you’re either teaching them how to let go of their fear or you’re setting them up for a long-term relationship with their nightlight.

Odds are 50/50

I have a mother who also loves the Halloween season, so naturally, she took us to every haunted house that was nearby. Sometimes we'd get home from school, and our house would be haunted. Plenty of fun frightful memories that made us all run and scream, though I will say the one time she faked us all out with a blood capsule while cutting up chicken may have scarred us all for life.

My oldest sister still loves haunted houses and really scary movies, our middle sister is the biggest chicken in the world, and I'm somewhere in the middle. Think Army of Darkness vs Nightmare on Elm Street.

Therapy isn’t cheap, but the memories are free..

Controlled Chaos and Chainsaws

But that’s the appeal, the controlled chaos. For one night, you actually want strangers with chainsaws to chase you through a cornfield. Any other time of year, and someone is going to learn a hard Smith & Lesson...

If you're up for some haunted fun, ready to let go of your imagination for a while, here's the rundown of Oklahoma's best haunted attractions in no particular order, alphabetically.