Iowa-based haunted house information, since 2010. Posting haunted house videos since 2006.
I have slimmed down the website a bit this year due to lack of time, and I do not plan to use the directory plug in I have been using the past few years. It is $$$ to renew the full license, so we’ll see what next year looks like.
I only have name and website link so far for the haunts that have submitted information, but I plan to get full details added when I get a moment.
I expect to start updating this site for 2025 later this week. I am greatly motivated after spending two days exploring the fully-immersive “Dark Universe” section of the new Universal Epic Universe theme park in Orlando last week. That place is a dream for anyone who appreciates classic Universal horror movies, for sure.
While most of the haunts ended their season this past weekend, some will continue to run through the weekend after Beggar’s Night/Halloween. Check the calendar to see what is running, but keep in mind, there are others not in the calendar that might be operating.
If you are done with Halloween and ready to move on to the next holiday, drop by Doing Des Moines (website or Facebook page) to see what I do the rest of the year. We expect to frequent the upcoming Holiday Hullabaloo event since we had so much fun there last year.
I did a bit of site cleanup today, adding video interviews to the main haunted house information pages, as well as updating the Reviews page with current ratings and links to review sites. There is always ore work to do than I have time to do, so please let me know of any errors you find. Thanks!
This site began listing haunted houses in 2010. Before the site redo in 2010, I kept every previous year available to we could look back on what operated in previous years. I spent several hours tonight trying to get all of this data posted to this new site. Most of it I had, but I had to get one of the years from the Internet Wayback Machine 😉 (My old system I created was far better for archiving data than the modern and expensive one I use these days).
There is still a lot of cleanup to do, but I wanted to make this data available before Halloween. You can start with Year 2010 and take a look.
The awards were listed on the old site, but never got added to this new version. Until tonight. You can look back on the winners of various awards over the years by going here. (Linn’s Haunted House even still displays their’s inside their entrance, along with their Cityview award.)
If you think you are done visiting haunted houses for the season, please vote for your favorites now. (If you are not sure you are done, you can’t still vote, and if you go to any more haunts later, you can re-vote using the same e-mail address and I will discard your earlier entry.)
I previously hosted the website for Circus of Freaks in Bussey, Iowa. The last time I posted about them was in 2020 when they announced they would not operate that year but stated “huge things are coming for the circus. (Ah, Covid, we lost so many things to you that year).
At the time, I had a site category of “Circus of Freaks” for them. With the new-for-2023 Barnum Circus of Freaks, I kept accidentally using the old “Circus of Freaks” category in posts about them. I have now renamed both categories so we will have:
And they both start with ‘B’ so I’ll try hard to select the correct one. For now, I think I have the Barnum posts updated to use their new category.
I also added a new tag in the Directory for “Women Owned“, assigning it to Barnum. I may need to add “Women Managed” as well since in her recent video interview she mentioned this.
I need to see if there are more. Tormented Souls Haunt is led by Kumari Henry (she’s the Walt Disney of that operation), and Haunted Woods is led by Marilyn Harris. They might need one or both of these tags added. I am not sure how many women-owned haunts we have had in this area, but Ankeny Haunted Barn was ran by Mindy Bales after her husband passed, then later ran by her daughter and sons. Going back twenty years, several of the haunted houses at Sleepy Hollow were designed and managed by women. Have there been many/any others?
More to come…
The Videos page now has several new interview videos from 2017 (Zombie Hollow, Haunted Woods and Trail of Terror). I will be working on interviews from Barnum Circus of Freaks and Linn’s Haunted House next. I have many more I want to get to and get interviews with, but we have some family obligations (Living History Farms and Night Eyes) that limit my haunt time.
In addition to these new videos, I have posted some pre-DMHH videos, which were the predecessors to Des Moines Haunted Houses:
…and if I can find time, I’d like to organize all the various haunted house TV commercials I did over the years and get them uploaded to the new DMHH channel.
Time permitting.
Stay tuned…
I am very happy with how many haunts (and related activities) I have found so far this season. If you know of any I have missed, please let me know.
HAUNTS: I try to do a daily post on Facebook with which haunts are open that day. I get this information from my Calendar page. When I was going through it today, I noticed several mistakes I made. I have corrected those, but I expect I may still have some missing dates or wrong hours. Take a moment to check the calendar, and your listing in the index. I appreciate your help in getting your information updated on this site. Thanks!
