Pennhurst Asylum wins National Championship of Haunts

Photo: Chuck Mound

by Tara Adams

Writer, Haunt Hunters App 

SPRING CITY, Pa. — Each fall, as Halloween approaches, the long-abandoned halls of Pennhurst Asylum fill once again. Long lines of thrill seekers are drawn to one of the country's most popular haunted attractions.

The former Pennhurst State School and Hospital, which operated from 1908 until its closure in 1987, has become a must-do seasonal destination for visitors from not only Pennsylvania but across the country. Its appeal lies not only in elaborate Halloween scares, but in the authenticity of the setting itself.

The quality of Pennhurst's attraction led to fans choosing it as Haunt Hunters App’s National Champion of Haunts.

The award is based on fan engagement within the League of Haunts, a featured competition on the Haunt Hunters App that delivers weekly matchups throughout the Halloween season. Powered entirely by fan participation, Pennhurst Asylum dominated the 2025 season, accumulating 2,105 total power points to claim the No. 1 spot.

"We saw an incredible level of participation around Pennhurst Asylum this season,” Haunt Hunters App officials said. “Every week, fans showed up in force by voting, sharing, and making a lot of noise. When people talk about a haunt having a following, this is what that looks like.”

“The League of Haunts is fueled by fan energy,” Haunt Hunters App officials added. “This award celebrates not just raw numbers, but the passion of the fan community that supports it.”

Jim Werner, Pennhurst Asylum operations manager, thanked the fans who attended the attraction throughout the year and chose Pennhurst as the top haunt. 

“It was a banner year here at Pennhurst. It was full of frights. It was full of screams. It was full of fun,” Werner said. “We couldn't be more thankful to our friends at Haunt Hunters, and, more importantly, to the industry and the people that came to visit us, because it's the people that decided this. It wasn't just a random poll or anything. This was engagement. So that means a lot to us - that people are following us, people are watching us, and people are loving what we're putting out for them.” 

Unlike many haunted houses built in temporary spaces or empty box stores, Pennhurst offers guests the chance to walk through a real institutional complex marked by decades of documented neglect and overcrowding. The building’s history has made it a frequent subject of documentaries, paranormal investigations, and ghost tours, adding to its reputation as one of the most haunted locations in the country.

During the Halloween season, the Pennhurst grounds are transformed into a 4-part attraction featuring indoor haunted experiences spread across several structures and underground tunnels. Those attractions are The Catacombs, Pennhurst Asylum, The Morgue, and Pennhurst Tunnels.

Visitors move through darkened wards and darkened corridors designed to create an immersive and often disorienting experience.

Organizers emphasize detailed sets, theatrical lighting, and costumed performers trained to deliver intense, close-up scares. Sound effects, strobe lighting, and sudden environmental changes are used to heighten tension and keep guests off balance throughout the walk-throughs.

Pennhurst’s scale also sets it apart. The property’s size allows for longer attractions and a steady flow of visitors, making it one of the area’s most attended Halloween events each year. The asylum’s deteriorating architecture, peeling paint and rusted doors remain largely intact, lending an unsettling realism that cannot be replicated in purpose-built haunts.

“They’re scary because you don't know if they're scare actors grabbing you or if, maybe, it's something else,” said Pennsylvania resident Denisse Mrugal, who attended Pennhurst Asylum on Halloween. “If ghosts are real, then they're definitely here.”

Beyond Halloween, Pennhurst continues to attract visitors through historical tours and paranormal events, reinforcing its status as a year-round point of interest in Chester County.

As the Halloween season returns, Pennhurst Asylum once again stands as a reminder of the site’s complex legacy — a place where real history and seasonal spectacle intersect, drawing thousands in search of a uniquely unsettling experience.

Gravestone Manor Wins Haunt Hunters App's 2025 Haunt With A Heart Award

 

by Tara Adams
Writer, Haunt Hunters App

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — On a cool fall night along Route 315, the line outside the Trion Warehouse looks much the same as it has for years: families, couples, and longtime Halloween regulars waiting for the doors of Gravestone Manor to creak open. 

What many fall fun seekers may not realize is that the all-volunteer haunted attraction they’re about to walk through has also become one of the region’s most consistent charitable fundraisers.

That blend of scares and service is why Gravestone Manor has been named the winner of Haunt Hunters App’s inaugural Haunt With A Heart Award, an honor recognizing haunted attractions that pair quality entertainment with a meaningful commitment to their communities.

Started in 1998, Gravestone Manor has grown from a small local haunt into a fixture of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Halloween season. Just completing its 25th year, the non-profit attraction is known for its immersive storytelling, theatrical performances, and detailed sets.

While the attraction delivers plenty of chills, its impact extends well beyond haunt season. 

Gravestone Manor has raised more than $600,000 for United Way of Wyoming Valley over its 25-year history, contributing approximately $20,000 to $30,000 each season, Project Coordinator Rob Padden said in an interview in September 2025. The haunt typically operates for about 15 nights each fall.

“The combination of what they put on for the public and what they give back to the community really stood out,” Haunt Hunters App organizers said in announcing the award.

Padden said community support has always been central to the haunt’s mission.

“I hope they have a fun time. That’s all,” Padden said. “We know we don’t have the budget of some of the larger ones, and we kind of set that in our ticket price. We think $12 is very reasonable for what we are. For a family of four to be able to come out and enjoy a Halloween attraction for under $50 — where does that happen nowadays?”

Keeping the attraction affordable has helped make Gravestone Manor a destination for families who want a Halloween experience without the intensity of large-scale commercial haunts. Instead of extreme gore or high-pressure scare tactics, the attraction leans into atmosphere, creativity, and performance.

Each season features an original storyline written by the volunteer team, with every room designed to move the narrative forward.

“We want you to be able to have a good time with a couple of good frights here and there and a couple of jump scares,” Padden said. “But we’re not going to go overly gory. We’re not going to chase you around with a chainsaw, because that’s not what we do.”

The Haunt With A Heart Award is presented by Haunt Hunters App to attractions that demonstrate how the haunted house industry can entertain while giving back. For Gravestone Manor, the recognition arrives during a milestone year, underscoring a 25-year legacy built on creativity, tradition, and community service.

As the 2025 Halloween season fades into memory, the legacy of Gravestone Manor continues, not just in screams and laughter echoing through the warehouse, but in the lasting support it provides to the community it calls home.

For more information about Gravestone Manor, visit https://www.gravestonemanor.com.

Catfight Coffee Wins Haunt Hunters App’s Golden Ghoul Small Business Award

 

by Tara Adams 

Writer, Haunt Hunters App 

BOONTON, N.J. – By any standard measure, Catfight Coffee is not a typical coffee shop. 

The décor leans toward spooky, the walls tell stories of classic horror and rock and roll, and Halloween is not treated as a season but as a year-round state of mind.

That commitment, paired with consistent community involvement, delicious coffee, and attentive customer service, has earned Catfight Coffee the Golden Ghoul Small Business Award from Haunt Hunters App.

The award recognizes a spooky-themed small business that goes beyond aesthetics, one that actively engages its community while maintaining a welcoming, reliable experience for customers. 

According to Haunt Hunters App officials, Catfight Coffee stood out for doing both without compromise.

“Anyone can put skeletons on the wall,” the award announcement noted. “Catfight Coffee built a space people are excited about returning to.”

Located in Boonton, N.J., Catfight Coffee has become a gathering place for horror and rock and roll fans, artists, musicians, and those looking for something different from the usual coffeehouse atmosphere. Its themed setting is deliberate but not alienating, inviting casual customers alongside devoted genre fans.

What separated Catfight Coffee from other nominees was its steady calendar of public events and community-focused nights. Creepy coloring book night, themed movie nights, and many other creative gatherings have turned the shop into a neighborhood venue rather than a novelty stop. 

Equally important to the award was customer service. Haunt Hunters App cited consistent feedback praising the staff for being knowledgeable, welcoming, and attentive. The shop’s themed-identity never eclipses the basics: quality coffee, friendly service, and an atmosphere where people feel comfortable lingering.

Catfight Coffee’s owners, Musician Acey Slade and his wife, Meiling, maintained that balance carefully. While the brand embraces the spookier side of pop culture, the goal has always been inclusion rather than exclusivity. First-time visitors are treated the same as regulars, and longtime customers are recognized without the space feeling insular.

The Golden Ghoul Small Business Award is part of the Haunt Hunters App’s effort to highlight independent businesses that keep Halloween culture alive while contributing positively to their local communities. Winners are selected based on theme authenticity, community involvement, customer experience, and overall consistency.

For Catfight Coffee, the recognition confirms what many patrons already knew: the shop is more than a themed backdrop. It is a working neighborhood business that understands its audience, supports local creativity, and delivers on the fundamentals every day.

In an era when themed businesses often burn bright and fade quickly, Catfight Coffee has done something rarer. It's building something sustainable, strange, and genuinely welcoming. 

Congratulations, Catfight Coffee. 

Clown Metal Act FNG Takes Home 2025 Haunt Hunters App Monster Mosh Music Award

 

Photo courtesy of Matt Montgomery 

By Tara Adams
Writer, Haunt Hunters App

In a world where haunted attractions chase louder scares and darker corners, Haunt Hunters App has crowned a band that could have crawled straight out of an oil-slicked, spooky season midway.

FNG, a group of five disenfranchised clown car mechanics led by Matt “Piggy D.” Montgomery as Giggles, has won Haunt Hunters App’s inaugural Monster Mosh Music Award as part of the 35th Annual Chuck Mound Bigtime Awards and Honors announced in Times Square, New York City.

The award is a nod to musicians who best embody edgy artistry, theatrical performances, and who propel loud, immersive rock and roll chaos on stage. 

Montgomery is Marilyn Manson's bassist and former longtime bassist for Rob Zombie. Members of Los Angeles-area thrash band The Lords of Sin (Kevin Angel, Bryan Angel, Kevin Aguilar, and Michael Sanchez) make up the rest of FNG, which stands for Faith No GWAR. 

While not outright horror, FNG lives at the intersection of carnival nightmare and underground metal. Their stage mayhem is fueled by their workplace grievances and frustrations with modern life. And their reinterpretations of GWAR and Faith No More feel designed to echo through fog-filled corridors and abandoned funhouses. 

For the Haunt Hunters App community, a crowd steeped in haunted houses, Halloween culture, and counter culture, FNG fits in like a favorite scare actor: admirably absurd but full of rebellious charm.

Part of FNG’s appeal lies in its ability to bridge decades of horror-infused music with modern working-class concerns in a spectacular, satirical way. 

Unlike polished mainstream acts, FNG embraces rough edges. Their debut show on June 25, 2025, at Whisky A Go-Go in West Hollywood, Ca., offered a similar raw quality that defines the best haunted houses: the sense that something might go wrong at any moment, but it's a fun ride however it turns out.

FNG's take on GWAR honors the alien-warrior absurdity while filtering it through their own warped clown lens. Their Faith No More renditions, meanwhile, highlight the band’s range, blending menace, groove, and unpredictability in a way that mirrors the original band’s refusal to fit neatly into any one box.

That versatility, through their own reinterpretations of the music, helped set FNG apart in 2025. 

According to Haunt Hunters App officials, the award recognizes artists who stand out in the entertainment industry, whether through atmosphere, performance, or impact. FNG checked all three boxes. Their music would fit in at haunted attractions, Halloween events, and horror gatherings where sound is as critical to fear as lighting and layout.

In old newspaper terms, FNG isn’t just background noise. They’re the scream behind the headline.

FNG's debut show at Whisky A Go-Go 

As fringe culture continues to expand beyond movies and into live experiences, bands like FNG have become essential, not as decoration, but as an active participant. That philosophy made the band a natural fit for the Monster Mosh Music Award in 2025.

For a community that values authenticity over polish and fear over comfort, crowning a clown metal band steeped in chaos, crankiness, and covers of GWAR and Faith No More felt like an inevitability.

Congratulations, FNG.

Opinion: Classic horror was more creative than today’s scare factory

by Tara Adams

Writer, Haunt Hunters App 

Older horror movies didn’t just try to scare you, they haunted you.

Before timed jump scares and CGI monsters were rendered to pixel-perfect smoothness, horror relied on something far more dangerous: imagination. The classics understood that what you don’t show is often far more terrifying than what you do.

Think about “Nosferatu,” “Psycho,” “The Haunting,” or “The Exorcist.” These films weren’t built around body counts or shock value. They were built around atmosphere, dread, and the slow, uncomfortable realization that something is very wrong. 

Shadows mattered. Silence mattered. A single glance, a creaking floorboard, or a held note in the score could chill an audience. 

Limitations were the secret weapon. Without digital effects, filmmakers had to innovate. Practical effects, makeup, forced perspective, and lighting tricks were creative challenges. Directors had to solve problems, not just render solutions. When you couldn’t show everything, you had to imply it, and implication is where horror thrives.

Classic horror also trusted its audience. It didn’t spoon-feed lore or over-explain every supernatural rule. Films like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Wicker Man” left room for interpretation, debate, and lingering unease. The horror followed you home because the film didn’t wrap everything up neatly. 

Modern horror too often feels obligated to explain itself too much, draining the mystery along with the fear.

There’s also a thematic boldness missing today. Older horror used monsters as metaphors for topics such as sexuality, religion, war, disease, paranoia, and societal collapse. “Godzilla” was nuclear anxiety. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was Cold War fear. Even slashers like “Halloween” tapped into suburban dread and the illusion of safety. 

Today’s horror frequently gestures at “trauma” without exploring it deeply, using it as a label rather than a lens.

That’s not to say modern horror has no bright spots. It does. But the industry’s obsession with franchises, reboots, and opening-weekend returns has turned fear into a product line. When every scare is focus-tested and every sequel is pre-planned, creativity becomes collateral damage.

Classic horror endures because it wasn’t manufactured. It was crafted. These films weren’t chasing algorithms or social-media reactions. They were trying to get under your skin and stay there.

And decades later, they still do.

Why "Nosferatu" is the only horror film the Vatican ever recommended

by Tara Adams

Writer, Haunt Hunters App 

When the Vatican released its list of “Some Important Films” in 1995, which was meant to celebrate movies that reflected moral, artistic, and spiritual value, the 45 selections leaned heavily toward biblical epics, humanist dramas, and reverent classics.

And then there was “Nosferatu.”

F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent vampire film, an unauthorized adaptation of “Dracula,” is thought to be the only horror movie ever recommended by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications, which released the movie list 30 years ago in honor of cinema's centennial. 

The Vatican didn’t honor “Nosferatu” because it was scary. It honored it because it was moral.

Unlike modern horror, which often revels in chaos, excess, or nihilism, “Nosferatu” presents evil as something unmistakable, corrupting, and self-destructive. 

Max Schreck’s Orlok isn’t a seductive romantic antihero. He’s a walking plague. He's skeletal, rat-like, and associated with pestilence and death. His presence brings disease to entire towns, rather than temptation or glamour.

In other words, evil in “Nosferatu” isn’t complicated. It’s a curse.

That clarity is precisely what makes the film spiritually resonant. Count Orlok doesn't win. He doesn't evolve. He is destroyed by light: sunlight, purity, and self-sacrifice. The film’s heroine, Ellen, defeats the vampire not with violence, but by willingly offering herself to delay him until dawn. Her act is one of conscious martyrdom, echoing Christian ideas of sacrifice, redemption, and the triumph of light over darkness.

For the Vatican, “Nosferatu” isn’t horror as exploitation. It’s horror as a parable.

The film was included under the Vatican’s “Art” category and has been praised for its groundbreaking visual language, including expressionist shadows, distorted architecture, and imagery that externalizes spiritual decay. Long before jump scares and gore, “Nosferatu” showed how fear could be philosophical, symbolic, and deeply moral.

It might also help that the film doesn't indulge in cynicism. There is no irony. No wink to the audience. The monster is a monster. The cost of evil is catastrophic. And goodness, while fragile, is stronger.

That view aligns far more closely with religious storytelling than most horror that followed. It’s, perhaps, why films like “The Exorcist,” despite its religious themes, didn't make the Vatican’s list. “Nosferatu” doesn’t question faith or blur moral lines. It affirms them in shadow and silence.

A hundred years later, the idea that the Vatican’s lone horror pick is a silent German vampire film feels poetic. “Nosferatu” endures not because it shocks, but because it warns. And because it understands that horror doesn't have to be blood or screams. It can also be the slow spread of darkness when it goes unchallenged.

In the end, that may be why the Catholic Church found it worthy.

Evil exists.

Light matters.

And dawn always comes.

Even for vampires. 🦇

References 

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_pccs_doc_19960101_100-cinema_en.html

https://decentfilms.com/articles/vaticanfilmlist

Why the Creature From the Black Lagoon Is Universal’s Greatest Monster

 

by Tara Adams

Writer, Haunt Hunters App 

Universal Studios gave the world no shortage of iconic monsters: Dracula with his aristocratic menace, Frankenstein’s Monster with his tragic pathos, the Wolf Man with his cursed humanity. All are classics. 

The greatest Universal monster, though, isn’t wearing a cape or stitched together in a lab. It rises silently from the water.

The Creature From the Black Lagoon is Universal’s best monster because he is the most purely cinematic, the most misunderstood, and the most hauntingly modern of them all.

Released in 1954, “Creature From the Black Lagoon” arrived late in the original Universal monster cycle, yet it feels ahead of its time. While earlier monsters leaned heavily on gothic castles and old-world superstition, the Gill-man belonged to the natural world. He wasn’t summoned by black magic or cursed by fate. He simply existed. And it was the humans who intruded.

That distinction matters. The Creature isn’t evil. He’s territorial. He’s curious. He’s reacting. Long before pop culture started interrogating who the “real monster” is, the Black Lagoon was already asking the question. The film frames science and exploration as noble pursuits, yet the monster’s tragedy is that he’s punished for being discovered. In today’s age of environmentalism and vanishing species, the Creature feels relevant.

Visually, no Universal monster comes close. Millicent Patrick's design is flawless: sleek, expressive, and graceful, yet eerie. The Creature doesn’t lumber like Frankenstein or stalk like Dracula. He glides. Those underwater sequences, especially the mirrored swimming shots, remain some of the most beautiful and unsettling imagery in classic horror. Even now, they feel dreamlike, romantic, and dangerous all at once.

And yes, there’s romance. The Creature’s fascination with Kay Lawrence isn’t presented as conquest, but as longing. It’s the most melancholic love story Universal ever smuggled into a monster movie. The Gill-man doesn’t want to dominate humanity; he wants to understand it, or at least one fragile piece of it.

Perhaps most importantly, the Creature has endured without dilution. Dracula has been parodied into camp. Frankenstein’s Monster has become shorthand for misunderstood brute. The Wolf Man is forever tied to transformation tropes. But the Creature remains singular. He is still strange. Still elegant. Still tragic.

In a studio stable filled with monsters who speak, scheme, and roar, the Creature says nothing, yet somehow says more.

He is not a king of the undead or a creation gone wrong. He is nature pushed too far, beauty mistaken for threat, and loneliness made monstrous. That’s why, decades later, the Creature From the Black Lagoon doesn’t just swim alongside Universal’s icons.

He towers over them — just beneath the surface.