Winner of several national haunt awards and voted one of the country’s top 13 haunted attractions in online polls, this cross between a haunted house and a classical wax museum comes to life each October inside its creators’ home (!), a 150-year-old hotel in central Ohio. Every year, the husband-&-wife team of former Hollywood FX artists David and Laura Lady turn their already bizarre home into a haven for strange and deadly creatures of every kind. They offer guided tours to curious human visitors, who are shown through the hotel’s lobby, dining hall, library, laboratory and various guest rooms occupied by various odd and inhuman beings. The emphasis is on the all-encompassing fantasy-horror theme, bombarding guests with a sensory overload of menacing, unsettlingly realistic life-size monster figures and a level of set detail that is unsurpassed in the industry. First-time visitors often find that they need to go through the horrific halls of the hotel more than once just to take in all its freaky sights and sounds.

Promoted as being suitable for all ages, HH rejects the usual haunt scenes of blood-drenched victims in favor of a morbid sense of graveyard humor, preferring to use its ever-changing cast of ghastly ghouls to entertain rather than simply to shock. Drawing more out-of-state traffic each year thanks to its growing reputation as a must-see event for horror fans and Halloween buffs, the hotel is an easy destination even for spooks with no sense of direction. It’s conveniently located on State Route 4 in the village of Chatfield, 45 minutes south of Sandusky (home to Cedar Point Amusement Park) and 75 minutes north of Columbus.

MILDLY INTERESTING INFORMATION ABOUT HORROR HOTEL:

* Years before Horror Hotel came about, David and Laura (when they were still just boyfriend and ghoulfriend) designed and operated a traditional live-action Haunted House in the Ohio city of Bucyrus for four seasons and a Chamber Of Horrors museum in a shopping mall in Mansfield, OH for two seasons.

* David is the sole author-illustrator of his own monster comic book, HASSLE CASTLE, which ran for 40 issues. He still considers bringing it back someday. (He also considers world domination, so it’s hard to tell what may materialize in future.) David was a major contributor to the well-known Morris publication How To Operate a Financially Successful Haunted House, for which he provided many room designs and artwork.

* The Ladys have worked on (and sometimes appeared in) a number of low-budget horror movies and videos. David was voted Favorite Host of the HauntWorld video series and had his own short-lived (5 half-hour episodes and 2 hour-long episodes) public access comedy-horror show, DR LADY’S HORROR GALLERY, years before THE LATE DR LADY SHOW was born. Their hotel has been featured on Entertainment Tonight, Halloween: The Happy Haunting Of America as well as Halloween specials for HGTV and the Travel Channel.

* Horror Hotel was a Fright Times Magazine “Y2K Fright Award” winner, made the cover of Haunted Attraction Magazine, and has been featured in other publications including Happy Halloween Magazine, Scary Monsters Magazine and UndergroundEntertainment. It was covered at length in David J. Skal’s book Death Makes a Holiday.

* When the U.S. Post Office issued their Classic Monster Stamps in 1997, Horror Hotel was declared an Official Postal Station and a special cancellation stamp with an image of Laura in her vampire make-up was created.

* If you took all the latex masks in Horror Hotel and laid them end-to-end in a straight line, it would be a complete waste of your time.