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Photo credit: Michelle Ellis

A group of six students from Fossil Ridge’s Journalism 2 class decided to drive to two of Denver’s haunted houses, “Asylum” and the “13th floor”. We split off into two seperate groups of three and wrote individual reviews of our experiences of the scares.

13th Floor –

In the rather slow line I remember saying “this better be worth standing here” and I was definitely surprised, and scared, with how much fun it really was. The line took about an hour and a half of standing and shuffling until we finally got to the end with a few groups ahead of us, we noticed we had stopped moving for a longer period of time than normal and we realized we were standing next to the fastpass lane. Every few seconds another group would walk up and go in before us. After about 5 or 10 minutes of watching people in the fast pass lane go and the groups ahead of us never moving, our group of three started asking questions about why now would be the only time our line didn’t constantly move when we were so close. But afterwards we finally got to go in and see what our wait was for. We went in expecting to be scared right off the bat, but realized we had to get pictures first then stand in another short line for a minute. Finally, we started the haunted house, which resembled a narrow hallway until things started popping out of the walls. The themes would change after a few minutes from things like zombies to spiders. The coolest moments were the different “terrains” like the squishy floors or having blown up tubes that went up to your waists and not being able to see your feet, or the moving bridges that shook while you walked and the second bridge that had spinning walls and made you think you were falling over. Overall, the entire house was a very scary experience but it was definitely a team building fun experience and I’m glad I didn’t get too impatient in the line.

   – Greenley Slater

After waiting in line for an hour and a half, it’s hard to imagine a justifiable twenty minutes inside, but the 13th floor did just that. It incorporated aspects l’d never before seen in any haunted attraction I’ve been to, and strung them together in seamless transitions. There was the clown hall, my personal biggest scare, followed by a chop shop, swamp, spider web, and so much more. The swamp in particular was unlike anything I’ve experienced before, using lasers and rubber-plastic blow-ups to give the sensation of wading through water. Moving bridges and spinning lights caused a feeling of falling, and there were several times I was so scared I dropped to the floor. Actors swung from the ceiling on zip lines and popped out of holes in the wall. The Thirteenth Floor was terrifying and I highly recommend it.

   – Karen Manley

After hearing a lot about this seemingly amazing haunted house I was excited to experience the fear the house advertised. After waiting almost an hour and a half in the line, my expectations were high and I desperately wanted this to be something that I could tell people about and they would respond in awe that I accomplished the impossible and made it to the “13th Floor”. Sadly, this was not the case. When we entered the haunted house I was preparing for the worse. They went all out with props and that added to the fear factor, but it was the fear of the unknown that made it as scary as advertised. The dynamic props were my favorite part, the moving floors, the spinning bridge, the swamp, and the squishy floor definitely made this haunted house memorable. Overall I would definitely tell anyone searching for a scare to visit this haunted house if they want a fun and memorable experience. I give this haunted house a 9/10

   – Ellie Street

Asylum –

I love Asylum. Having gone through last year, I definitely had my hopes raised for this year’s tour but instead of fear, I only got disappointment. Asylum started out fantastic with the first attraction, Post Mortem: The Escape. Tense, fast paced, stressful, and fun are the only words I can describe the First attraction. After the adrenalin rush I got from the first attraction, we waited in a spooky hallway as we trembled with anticipation waiting for the next attraction Primitive Fear: Anarchy. My hopes were quickly lowered as I slowly found out that the second attraction was almost the exact same as the previous year with minor differences. I also noticed that there was no Mr and Mrs Nice Guy, part of the main attraction, in fact, there were hardly any actors in the second attraction at all. Any actors that there were in the second attraction seemed low energy as well. We eventually made it to the final attraction Ridgegate: The Deranged. The final attraction was okay at best. Most of the scares were mediocre at best with minor shock value but enough to make you uncomfortable. The actors were better in the final attraction as well. Overall, I give the Asylum haunted house a 5/10.

   – Rhett Daly