2009 Horror in the Dark at Olin Park: The Castle Event Reviews

I will first start out by saying that we got to Olin Park about 20 minutes before they closed. It was raining on and off so there wasn't much of a wait which was a good thing. The person who took our tickets told us it would take about 20 minutes to walk through. I don't really want to comment on the rooms because I am still not sure what I saw. There is no intereactions from the actors, all they do is go roar. All the scares are pretty predictable and you can tell exactly when they are going to come. They have a few areas of the house that they have good dark hallways but they don't take advantage of it. The rooms are decorated pretty cool but it doesn't add to the scare factor. But by the time we reached the end it took us seven minutes to walk through the house.

The haunt is a pavillion on a hill and the walk in the light rain felt a bit creepy and added to the anticipation we were going to be scared. Finding Olin Park entrance was not hard because had a white sign on the boulevard pointing an arrow where to turn into. We were travelling north on John Nolen Drive away from the beltline (Hwy 12/18) and made a right turn immediately by the railroad tracks crossing the stop and go lights at the intersection into Olin Park. They have a small canopy over a picnic table to buy tickets and a short walk up a winding road to the doors of the pavillion. The wait was short and we were in quickly after a large group of people. We entered and immediately were feeling around trying to figure which way to go, we wandered briefly and found a reception area. Let me tell you I do not want to be diagnosed by either the receptionist or the doctor. Very creepy and all we did was skeedaddle deeper into the asylum. I will not descrive more, but the volunteers and/or actors really put their heart and hopefully not someone' else's beating heart into either creeping us out or scarying us into a wall. I will say they have an excellent special effect with a victim getting some much needed shock treatment. The effect was very well done and creeped me out. They have insane inmates or monsters, hard to tell roaming the hall and we either screamed ro jettisoned ourselves in the opposite direction. The use of strobes was minimal but very effective use of them, because took us awhile to get out of one room, especially since we found the directions we got from the eerie person/entitiy in the room may or may not have been correct. I will also share this, once you think you are safe from the haunted house, you are not.