The next haunt in our Summer Haunted Attractions series is the historic Bell Witch Cave in Tennessee; this post comes to us from the bellwitchcave.com website. Read on…

No supernatural story in American history is more famous than that of the Bell Witch. In fact, tales of the spirit were so widespread that they caught the attention of a General and future President, Andrew Jackson.

To the right you will see the very famous picture of Betsy Bell, John Bell’s daughter. Betsy was tortured by the Witch for several years of her childhood.

What was the Bell Witch? Like most supernatural stories, certain details vary from version to version. But the prevailing account is that the Bell Witch claimed to be the spirit of Kate Batts, a mean old neighbor of John Bell who believed she was cheated by him in a land purchase. On her deathbed, she swore that she would haunt John Bell and his descendants. The story is picked up by the Guidebook for Tennessee, published in 1933 by the Federal Government’s Works Project Administration.

We invite you to come take a tour of the old Bell farm. Visit the Historic Bell Witch Cave and canoe down the Red River. For a truly haunting experience, schedule a Special Night Time Haunted Candlelight Tour. Come and learn the details of one of the most famous mysteries in American history.

Betsy Bell

(Queen of the Haunted Dell)

There are many “ghost” or “haunting” tales in American History and when you investigate the many paranormal events it is hard to overlook the Bell Witch. The human interactions with the spirit date all the way back to 1817. Former president Andrew Jackson was quoted as saying “I had rather face the entire British Army than to spend another night with the Bell Witch” after he and some of his troops spent a night at the Bell’s farm.

Over time so many people traveled great distances to visit the Bell’s home that it had to eventually be torn down for safety purposes in the latter part of the 1800’s. The Historic Bell Witch Cave, Inc. has preserved some of the artifacts from the original cabin such as a chimney stone and an iron kettle. You can see these articles along with some other artifacts, news articles and photos from the time John Bell and his family resided on the farm when touring the re-constructed Bell cabin.

The Bell farm is in a secluded area in Adams, Tennessee and it is a very beautiful representation of the state of Tennessee with its rolling green hills and farm land. If you are interested in paranormal activity or if you are a history buff then the Bell Witch Cave and Farm will definitely not disappoint. If you like canoeing or kayaking the Red River is a great river to navigate and enjoy the beauty of Tennessee. We would love for you to stop by if you are ever in the area.

Be sure to check out our blog and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We update these outlets often with special events and you can read about visitor experiences as well. If you would like to share an experience you had, you are welcome to post comments on our blog.

The next attraction in our Summer Haunted Attraction series comes to us from Britain, in a story written by Brady MacDonald from the latimes.com website; enjoy!

A unique new haunted attraction opening this summer at a small United Kingdom theme park will combine a walk-through horror maze featuring live actors with a dark ride journey inside an abandoned mine shaft.

The Hobs Pit maze and ride is set to open June 2 at Pleasurewood Hills theme park in Lowestoft, England, located about 100 miles northeast of London on the North Sea coast.

The 30-year-old amusement park has been promoting the new attraction with a clever viral marketing campaign that hints at the ride’s paranormal back story.

As the story goes, artifacts found on the site of an abandoned mine where the ride is being built suggest demonic activity. A journal from 1835 indicates that a group of crazed miners trapped in Hobs Pit turned on each other with pickaxes. Those who managed to survive the slaughter eventually fell to their deaths down a shaft that led straight to hell.

The new attraction pairs two theme park staples that are rarely if ever combined. The ubiquitous haunted dark ride can be found at theme parks both big (Haunted Mansion at California’s Disneyland) and small (Ghostwood Estates at Pennsylvania’s Kennywood) while horror walk-through mazes have become standard fare at annual Halloween events.

Year-round walk-through attractions with live actors still remain fairly rare at theme parks around the world. Universal Studios Hollywood offers House of Horrors every operating day with actors portraying the Mummy, Wolfman and Frankenstein. The U.K.’s Alton Towers has used the Sanctuary scare maze outside the Halloween season as a back story preview for the 14-inversion Smiler roller coaster opening this summer.

“It is the first one not only for Pleasurewood Hills, but the first in the UK and we’ve heard stories it’s the first one in the world as well,” the park’s general manager Alexis Camelintold the BBC.

Hobs Pit will be developed by the Pleasurewood Hills staff along with help from a pair of Hollywood veterans who have worked on attractions at Disney and Universal theme parks. Special effects expert Rob Ostir (“X-Men: First Class,” “Thor,” and “Tron: Legacy”) and voice actor Corey Burton (“Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “The Transformers” and “Phineas and Ferb”) will provide creative direction for the new ride. The back story and show scenes for the attraction were written by Sean Alexander, an illusionist at the amusement park.

Hobs Pit, which is expected to begin “soft opening” test runs on May 25, will replace Woody’s Fairytale Fantasy dark ride and a nearby Main Street shop.

Even though summer hasn’t officially begun yet, our countdown to Halloween has, so each week we will bring you a different summer haunted attraction from across the country and around the world.

Today we bring you a story from hauntednight.com about  Japan’s ‘ghost houses’ where people go to escape the heat of summer and scare up some chills; enjoy!

Visit a “Ghost House” for Summer Chills

It’s the dead of summer, and you’re suffering from sweltering temperatures and oppressive humidity. You want to cool off, so you head to the local pool, a water park, an air conditioned shopping center, or your local haunted house. Uh, did you say “haunted house”? That’s right. If you live in Japan in the middle of summer, it’s not uncommon for people who want a “summer chill” to visit one of Japan’s many haunted houses or “obake-yashiki” (literally, “ghost house”).

The obake-yashiki is often open only in summer months and in large amusement parks or entertainment venues. It’s believed that the scares and chills you experience at an obake-yashiki can help cool down the body amid the summer heat.

So exactly what is an obake-yashiki? A haunted house—yes—but it differs somewhat from the North American convention of a haunted house both in terms of presentation and scares.

Traditional obake-yashiki are often centered around old ghost stories and supernatural beings from Japanese folklore, such as yurei (ghosts that return to the physical world because a person has died a sudden or violent death or with unresolved hatred, revenge, love or sorrow), yuki-onna (the “snow woman” who preys on men stranded in the snow), and rokurokubi (a supernatural being that appears as human during the day but at night has the ability to stretch its neck to great lengths to feed on people). Scenes with characters resembling these beings are not uncommon in a Japanese haunted house.

The first thing you may notice when visiting an obake-yashiki is that it is downright creepy. The traditional obake-yashiki makes little use of blood or gore and instead relies on the “creep factor”: a run-down old building, an abandoned house, furniture and items scattered in disarray in a dimly lit space, a room with antique-looking Japanese dolls, some missing limbs and heads. Not exactly scary, but creepy to the core—just what’s needed to build up the tension and prepare the visitors for the real scare that is to come.

The obake-yashiki is often set in a traditional Japanese setting to re-create the environment of ancient ghost stories. Just as a dark, cobweb-covered, Victorian-style parlor room with wall pictures askew may invoke an image of a haunted mansion, an old, damp and creepy Japanese-style room with rotted tatami mats and torn sliding doors invokes the same haunted feel in the obake-yashiki. There is an increasing trend of using hospitals and schools as other haunted settings, as well as scenes that are directly tied in with recent J-horror movies.

The largest haunted attraction in Japan is the Haunted Hospital in the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park just outside of Tokyo. Once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest haunt in the world, at 900 meters or half a mile, this 60-minute walkthrough is filled to the gills with creepy ambience, well-positioned scares, and talented actors.

Another thing you may notice is that “ghost houses” are very heavy on decorated sets and static props and make less use of animatronics than their Western counterparts. The level of haunt technology in Japan is not on the same level as that of the U.S., the leader in innovative haunted props. Though more and more haunt technology is making its way from other countries to Japan, most static and animatronic props in the obake-yashiki must be made by hand and, therefore, require more time to achieve the same result.

As in Western haunted houses, Japanese ghost houses also employ actors at key points within the haunt, but more as a startle than as a “scream-in-your-face” type of scare. You won’t find a chainsaw-wielding actor chasing you up and down the halls. Japanese ghosts are thought to haunt a specific place—the place where the hatred, sorrow, or violent death occurred—thus ghost actors are commonly positioned in a scene within the haunted house that reflects the location where he or she was wronged in mortal form.

Contrasts of black and white are common elements of characters in the obake-yashiki. The long, black and disheveled hair and hollow black eyes set against the clown-white makeup and traditional white burial kimono is the standard look of yurei in the Japanese haunted house. Think Sadako from “The Ring” or the ghosts in the “Grudge” series. Adding in some fake blood against the monochrome makeup and costume makes for an even more dramatic contrast.

Despite the many differences, the common element in both Japanese and Western haunted houses are the constant screams you will hear from frightened visitors who ultimately become “chilled to the bone”.

A great source for the background to the Japanese perspective of horror can be found in this excellent article.

158 days to Halloween! 

While that may seem like a long time, especially since summer hasn’t even begun yet, it really won’t be long before the chills and thrills of the Halloween season will be upon us.

Most haunted houses and attractions will open for business in mid-September and this year most will start their season on the most iconic date in the haunted calendar, Friday the 13^th!

Preparation for the Halloween season begins in late July/early August with hauntrepreneurs getting everything ready for the busy fall season. Believe it or not, reservations for haunted attractions including haunted house rentals, haunted props, haunted hayrides, haunted mazes, etc. start booking in late summer and haunted attraction vendors can be completely booked by September 1^st!

Here at Your Custom Haunted House, we specialize in all things Halloween so feel free to check out our Gallery, Transformation Videos, and Rentals pages to get ideas for your next haunted event, then contact us and have your best Halloween ever!

In the final part of our three part series you’ll find out more about how some farmers use haunted attractions as an extra service during the fall season to extend their farming business. Our final farm highlighted in this series comes to us from headlesshorseman.com, read below to find out more about this creative farmer.

Featured on The Today Show & Weather Channel!

Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses is located in Ulster Park, NY, part of the Historic Haunted Hudson Valley. The property incorporates over forty-five acres of naturally landscaped property that includes foreboding woods, surreal ponds, fruit orchards and more.

It has been named World’s Best Haunted Hayride by AOL News, voted America’s Scariest Haunted House in the Northeast by MTV, voted “One of the Best Haunts in the country” by Hauntworld.com, voted #1 “America’s Best Top 13” by Hauntedhouseratings.com.

In addition, it has been named #1 Hayride in America by American Airlines Magazine, as well as #1 Haunted Attraction in the country by Haunt World Magazine, also receiving top ten national rankings from CNBC, AOL, USA Today, Fangoria Magazine and “named #1 on the Planet by The New York Daily News”. Headless Horseman is a theatrical experience like no other!

Our attraction includes a one mile hayride, a labyrinth style corn maze, six professionally created haunted houses, four food concessions, as well as Ghoulish Gifts, Magic Moon Gifts, Scarewear and Witchy Woman gift shops.

Additional nightly entertainment includes the ALL NEW Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular starring John Shaw and from Las Vegas Lady Diabla, the world’s youngest female sword swallower.

The Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular is an act like none other you have witnessed before, all of the stunts are REAL! Done with humor and audience participation. SEE these human marvels for yourself LIVE and in the RAW!! John Shaw and Lady Diabla will leave you amazed, entertained, laughing, and gasping in awe. The Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular will be the show that you talk about for years to come.

John Shaw and Lady Diabla travel throughout the world and are one of the most sought after THIRLLSHOWS on the globe!! You will soon see for yourself why The Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular is The Wonder Show Of The Universe!!! They perform nightly starting at 8PM on our main stage next to the Mansion of Dahlia Blood.

Our attraction is designed and built by professionals from the lighting, costume, sound, set design, special effects, and make-up industries. We employ over 250 actors and staff trained to provide a memorable and enjoyable evening for the whole family.

Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses
778 Broadway, Route 9W
Ulster Park, NY 12487
845-339-2666