Category: Site Updates

The Map link at the top of these pages goes to a Google Maps where I have entered the location of all the haunted houses. If the entry starts with “2026”, it is supposed to be operating this year. Some other haunts are listed as “2025” and I have not confirmed them yet. As soon as I do I will update their map entry.

It is that time again, haunt fans! I will start updating this index for the 2026 season shortly. So far, no haunt has submitted any information to me, but I have seen a few of them post to social media announcing dates for this season. When I get a moment, I will go out and start collecting information o share here.

If you are visiting this site, you probably like haunted houses. Most folks are not into them. But, even those of us who do like them, don’t like them until late October. Only the truly “into it” folks start planning haunted house visits before then. And the stats for this site show that…

Virtually no visits to this site in the weeks leading up to October. Only a few hundred last week. The real thrills come later, as we see more folks start searching for things to do on the week of Halloween-proper.

And, for what it’s worth, the folks visiting outside of late-October are mostly hitting the page for The Haunt, the Slaughterhouse themed bar downtown which operates in the months when the haunt itself is closed.

Let’s see how 2025 does… But I don’t expect nearly as many visitors this year. The new A.I. search engines do a great job listing haunts before you even get to the search results:

I had to go to Page 2 of search results to even find my site, just after the listing for Slaughterhouse (when I searched last night). I feel bad for folks who do this for a living. 😉

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.