09/08/2025
Demon House Haunted Attraction LLC.
Monongahela, PA
September 6, 2025
Once upon a time. Once upon a time, there was a house. It was dark and quiet, with many, many rooms and deep cellars and lots of places the light never touched. People avoided the house. They talked about it in whispers, and only in well-lit rooms. But other things loved the house. They flocked to its corners and found comfort in its shadows. And there they stayed, waiting, waiting…until the doors opened once or twice a year, and the things in the shadows came out to play.
The first thing that you should know about Demon House is that it is a genuine 19th century manor house with a maze of narrow, shadowed corridors, interlocking rooms, and a spectacular spiral staircase. The building itself is both beautiful and menacing, with hallways turning back on themselves and rooms opening into other, smaller rooms. If you stop to think about the floorplan, you’ll probably go a little mad. This attraction has the kind of atmosphere that other attractions only dream about. Every part of the attraction showcases the hauntrunners’ originality and commitment to DIY: one of the hauntrunners teaches at Tom Savini’s special effects school and builds the bespoke props that fit into the house’s nooks and crannies while the other is a makeup artist who designs bold, striking airbrush looks that stand out in Demon House’s dark halls. You won’t find any big, commercial effects or animatronics here. Everything is designed for this space.
Demon House doesn’t just have a distinctive look; it also has a distinctive acting style. Of course, you can’t call a place “Demon House” without evoking images of little Regan McNeil skittering backwards down the stairs. Demon House’s actors understand the assignment: they’re flexible and aggressive, from the deformed patient writhing in torment on her bed to the wild-eyed explorer trapped in the catacombs. But aside from their speed and acrobatic skill, these actors walk a fine line between sinister and hilarious (think Captain Spaulding or maybe Beetlejuice). They approach their victims with a real sense of demented joy. The house also gives them plenty of places to hide. The creatures lurk in corners, spring out of alcoves, and run down hallways, shrieking in glee.
Demon House offers a compact, concentrated dose of spookiness. Its relatively small size doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of room for variety. The house is the dark jewel in a creepy crown but the hauntrunners also invite guests to experience an asylum, a clown-infested funhouse, a ramshackle warehouse, some catacombs, and a brand-new fairy tale-themed maze before dumping them into a pumpkin patch in Tromaville and a backwoods settlement.
After an entertaining and interactive rundown of the attraction’s rules (no eating, no drinking, no smoking, no va**ng, no running – good luck with that one) hosted by a superbly stylish medium, guests enter the house, which is straight out of Mike Flanagan’s nightmares. The manor serves up a delicious slice of classic supernatural horror. Guests make their way through cramped halls, up that gorgeous staircase, and into a disorienting warren of rooms where malevolent creatures crawl out of walls, toys come to violent life, and plague doctors stalk the unsuspecting. If you manage to survive this onslaught, you’ll enter an asylum where the babbling, shrieking inmates have taken over and are taking out the doctors and any unfortunate intruders. Oh, but you’re not even halfway through. Next, you enter a funhouse by crossing a springy, spongy red carpet that delivers you into a dripping red tunnel…and you realize you’re walking into the mouth of a monstrous clown. You end up in a day-glo carnival maze lined with looming clown figures and hunted by insane clowns. The funhouse opens onto an OSHA-noncompliant warehouse where the workers are DYING for someone to take over the next shift. (In keeping with the Rust Belt setting, this section delivers some of the biggest and best effects of the night, including an extremely unstable elevator – and its even more unstable operator.) The industrial setting gives way to catacombs, where an Indiana Jones wannabe has been driven mad by something way worse than a big rock.
The biggest surprise of the year is Demon House’s revamp of its beloved chainsaw maze. Demon House has rebranded the section as Scary Book Forest, drawing dark inspiration from nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Guests are funneled through narrow wooden walls that open onto scenes that blend whimsy and horror. (You know that the original “Little Red Riding-Hood” didn’t have a happy ending, right? And have you ever thought about the measures the Three Little Pigs might take to defend their home from that rotten wolf? There’s also a genuinely upsetting Little Miss Muffet.) The scenes are brilliant, with the creatures’ performances coordinated with lighting and sound. And if you’re worried about the change in theme, don’t fear: there are still chainsaws. (Which Lily missed entirely because she took off at the first whiff of gasoline.) What makes this section especially smart is the potential for expansion – in fact, there were hints of Hansel and Gretel in the entrance to the house and a nod to Peter Pumpkin Eater in the poisonous pumpkin patch.
In an attraction where the actors are trained and drilled for consistency, it’s hard to single out the best performances, but we especially enjoyed the imperious medium, the bickering manservants, the haunted doll, the thing in the walls, the mad doctor doing experiments in electrification, the menacing clowns (Art could NEVER), Shorty, the explorer, the various fairy tale creatures, and the gloriously over-the-top witch.
Aside from its commitment to horror, Demon House excels at customer service. For years, the Demons have used a system that eliminates the anxiety of waiting in line. When you arrive, you’re assigned a group number and a bracelet and set free to roam the yard. You can grab a hot dog at the concessions stand, browse the shops, catch a movie in the outdoor theater, or relax at the fire pit. When your number is up (heh), a tolling bell will summon you to the staging area. When Lily and I visited, the crowds were enormous – we’re talking middle-of-October, ready-for-Halloween enormous. But despite the crowds, we waited only about 10-15 minutes between arriving in the yard and being escorted into the house. Once inside, we never bumped into another group. The monsters are so adept at crowd management that our little group could have been alone in the house.
Demon House is an atmospheric, original attraction that has the charm and threat of a dark fairy tale. Enter its halls, experience its fiends…and sleep uneasily ever after.
Cost: $25 Friday and Saturday; $40 for RIP (Really Impatient Person); $20 for Sunday nights… but keep your eyes peeled for Groupon deals!
Safety Protocols, Group Size, Etc.: The haunt includes both indoor and outdoor portions. Groups are small to accommodate the house’s narrow halls, although very small groups (e.g., two people) may be combined. We went through with another two-person group.
Concessions: There is a stand with hot dogs, nachos, fries, soft drinks, etc.
Other stuff to do: Fire pit; outdoor movie screen; gift shop with t-shirts, handbags, hats, jewelry. The haunt also hosts guest vendors. This year’s offerings include gorgeous (and well-priced) dolls based on pop-culture horror characters from KrypticKre8tions.
Other stuff to know: You will park in the lot of a local health center and take a fabulous luxury shuttle up to the mansion. (Take a couple dollars to tip your driver.) There are no bags allowed inside the house, so leave the purses and backpacks in the car, kids. This attraction offers a decent cardio workout: to get to the second story of the house, you ascend a narrow, winding staircase. Also, be aware that the yard is steep, which can be challenging if you’re running from someone who wants to turn you into dinner.
