Sharon Jenkins first saw the horror classic Night of the Living Dead in 1968 at the age of nine. She was gripped from the first frame.
“I leaned forward in my seat, eyes wide open, taking in every thrilling second of a movie I’d never seen the likes of before,” Jenkins said.
As the years passed, Jenkins wasn’t content to just watch the celluloid over and over; she wanted to get as close as possible.
That opportunity came in October 2014 when Jenkins travelled over 4147km from her home in Fresno California to Evans City, Pennsylvania — the town where Night of the Living Dead was filmed.
Over five days, she explored the rural town’s buildings and cemetery, as well as the Living Dead Museum, the world’s only zombie museum.
“I must have visited 3 or 4 times,” Jenkins said.
Opened in 2013, the museum specializes in zombie-filled exhibits like the ‘Maul of Fame’, where celebrities — including Night of the Living Dead director George Romero — leave their red prints on a large wall.
The wall “ was extraordinary” according to Jenkins.
“A sight to behold, read, and take in all those whose prints graced the wall.”
The museum is just one of the ways that Evans City has sought to monetize its horror roots, along with the annual Living Dead Festival — a celebration of all things undead.
In fact that year, Jenkins joined 500 other fans in welcoming the film’s director George Romero to a ribbon-cutting of the town’s rebuilt chapel used in the movie.
Horror movie fans like Sharon Jenkins, willing to travel thousands of kilometres to engross themselves in their favourite slashers, are no outliers.
Over the past few years, a frightening new trend has emerged: horror movie tourism. Fans of horror classics like The Shining and Night of the Living Dead are travelling thousands of kilometres, from dozens of countries, to see the real-world locations of their favourite creepy films.
Which is not to say fans have suddenly found a new urge for haunted houses and creepy forests. In the past, horror movie fans could find the locations in online forums or by snooping around, and would just rock up.
But recently, a cottage industry has spawned to offer official visits, tours and, of course, merchandise. And so far, fans are hungry to chomp at the bit of late capitalism.
There are no hard numbers on horror tourism revenue — it’s probably too small to notice in the multibillion-dollar global tourism industry. But according to travel site Atlas Obscura, there are at least 29 locations in the US alone that horror buffs can visit.
Devout fans are eager to engorge themselves in as many horror movie locations as they can. Beyond Evans City, Jenkins has trekked out to visit the house from Halloween, as well as locations from Dark Shadows and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
“This list is crazy!… My family co-operates with my insanity,” Jenkins joked.
Many of these attractions are started by fans like Matt Blazi, who was obsessed with The Blair Witch Project — the original found-footage horror movie which follows a group of young filmmakers in a haunted forest in Maryland, US — before it even came out.
“I remember seeing the trailer in the spring of 1999,” Blazi said, then a college freshman. “I instantly was like ‘what was that!?’ And I dialed up my AOL to find out more. I was hooked.”
So in 2013, Blazi — now in his late thirties — and a few friends started the ‘Blair Witch Experience’. For USD$30, fans are transported back to 1999, as Blazi guides them around the creepy highlights of Maryland, including cemeteries and campsites featured in the supernatural classic.
Blazi wanted his tour to be different from traditional film tours and conventions — where fans gather inside a convention centre to hear from actors and filmmakers. “The Blair Witch Project was such a unique film, it requires a unique event.”
The reception from Blair Witch fans has been “overwhelmingly positive,” Blazi said. “People find out about it and are instantly intrigued.”
One problem unique to horror movie tours is the movies can be too good at scaring people. “Sometimes [a fan’s] fear from when they saw the movie keeps them from coming,” Blazi explained.
While demand for these horror experiences is growing, their popularity usually coincides with the film’s anniversary or a new entry in the franchise. For the 20th anniversary of Blair Witch Project in 2019, there are three times more people trekking through Maryland this year than any previous year.
But why would anyone travel thousands of kilometres to spend time in a forest in the first place?
For horror movies fans, these trips are the equivalent of slasher mecca, a pilgrimage to engross themselves in these terrifying films. The sheer fact they can see, and touch, and smell the real world places gives many goosebumps.
Those bumps have surely been felt by Dave Spencer. A “life-long horror fan”, Spencer has travelled thousands of miles from his home in Maryland to the vistas that brought to life (ironically) Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, Hocus Pocus and many others.
Spencer couldn’t give “one concrete reason” he visits these places: It’s a potent mix of love for “these films and filmmaking in general; to see what’s changed over time; to see what the camera missed”.
There’s also a way of tackling and “maybe to dispel the horror by seeing such locations as they normally are,” Spencer said.
But excursions like the Blair Witch Experience aren’t unique to horror films. Japan has a bustling “anime tourism” industry, where fans visit the temples, cities, and even bus stops that inspired their favourite works.
Both these offerings, beyond the tactile feel of the places, also offer the feeling of being included, of taking part in a movement with other like-minded people, all offline.
Reviews for horror movie tours online are filled with stories of fans connecting with new people who share a taste for the macabre. And really, there’s no better way to make new friends than to be wrapped around each other in pure terror.
Even horror aficionado Dave Spencer uses these events to catch-up and hang-out with friends from the local area.
Most of these tours — including the non-profit Blair Witch Experience — are run out of affection for the films themselves, rather than profiteers or savvy business folks looking to exploit the demand.
Because really, there’s no better way to make new friends than to be wrapped around each other in pure terror.
For some venues, being associated with gruesome horror flicks left a bad taste that took a while to get over.
Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco — known to horror fans as Camp Crystal Lake — is a functioning Boy Scouts summer camp in the lush forests of New Jersey. The camp was the setting for the slasher classic Friday the 13th Part 1, in which hockey-masked Jason Voorhees first terrified moviegoers.
After the film came out in 1980, the Boy Scouts bristled at the unwanted attention. Desperate hordes of fans came uninvited to Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, trying to take photos and visit the sights, and disrupting the kids’ camp in the process.
But in 2011, the Boy Scouts of America decided to work with the Sand Pond Foundation — a camp alumni group — to create Crystal Lake Tours, allowing fans the chance to visit the cryptic camp.
Over the past eight years, the tours have grown dramatically. Some of their biggest events, which featured actors from the original movie, have sold out in eight seconds. And fans have been universally pleased: the Facebook page has over 3,500 followers, with a 4.9/5 rating.
The demand is so large that now fans have to enter a randomly-drawn ticket lottery, just to get the opportunity to bid on tickets for upcoming tickets. Once selected, they have a brief window to bid on tickets, leading to pretty pricey vacations. Tickets for this year’s April tours ranged from USD $135–175.
Over 50,000 fans entered the lottery for this year’s September 13th tour, which marked the 40th anniversary of Friday the 13th Part 1. Of the few hundred winners, many had to travel thousands of kilometres, coming from 42 states and 7 countries.
Jason Gibson (41) was one of those ‘eight-seconders’ to get his hands on Camp Crystal tickets, travelling about 777 km from his home in Ohio.
“It was so close and personal; way more than a horror convention.”
According to Gibson, there were “400 people there Saturday, and 300 people on Friday”. He had a chance to tour the filming locations — the creeky cabins and vibrant forests — before settling in for the night and watching the film with the other tourists as one big horror family.
“It was amazing,” Gibson said. “It was so close and personal; way more than a horror convention… This was such a positive experience, so much positive energy for a movie about killing.”
The Boy Scouts of America’s change-of-heart has been a positive experience not just for fans, but also to others in the community. Beyond repairing and renovating the campsite, profits from the tour go to local charities. The September tour, for example, raised USD$6,089 for Happiness is Camping, a kids’ cancer charity.
The tours provide an incentive to keep a properties horror movie history alive, which couldn’t have come at a better time: as the films age, so too do the real-world places where they were filmed. There’s a risk many are becoming too decrepit for even horror fans.
The decaying Americana of indie horror masterpiece, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, sent shivers down the spines of audiences in 1974 by depicting a group of teenagers hunted and preyed upon by a family of cannibals, who own the local gas station in the vast and barren Texas interior.
The kitschy station alone — busted down, complete with decomposing wood panels and an old-fashioned Coca-Cola vending machine — captured an America rotting from the inside; the feel-good feelings of the past falling apart.
Ironically, the blight depicted in the film became a reality for the real-world gas station, which sits on a largely abandoned highway 53 kilometres from Austin, Texas.
With few customers, the station fell into disrepair and, if allowed to continue, would have been the end for this piece of horror history. But like the valiant sheriff in a gaudy B-movie, Roy and Lisa Rose came to the rescue.
“The original [Texas] Chainsaw has been my husband’s favourite movie since he was 10 years old,” said Lisa. The Ohio couple partnered with Ari Lehman — the actor who played Jason Voorhees in the original Friday the 13th — and spent three years convincing the owner to sell.
“It’s amazing to own this great piece of movie history,” Lisa said. But the couple didn’t just want to possess a ‘piece of history’. They had bigger plans.
After two years of restoration and renovations, the Roses opened the now carefully decrepit horror fan destination in 2016, ‘The Gas Station’. It features a barbeque eatery for fans to feast on (human not on the menu); a handful of wood cabins at the back for the daring to spend a night; and a souvenir shop, because, everyone needs their own Funko-pop of a fictional murderer.
A night in a cabin will set you back about USD$130. Yet fans seem hungry for the opportunity. Since reopening, the Gas Station gets busier every year, according to Lisa, especially during their peak season, which runs from spring break through to October.
“Fans come from all over the world and the US,” Lisa said, hinting at its global appeal.
The state of horror tourism looks gruesomely thrilling. More and more businesses are profiting from their horror connections. Most recently, travel firm Civitatis is cashing-in on the Netflix series Stranger Things by offering guided tours of the shows filming locations in Atlanta, Georgia.
Most of the new industry for horror tourism comes from old horror classics: films like Halloween (1978) and The Exorcist (1973), that have spent decades in the public zeitgeist.
But if the Stranger Things tour turns out to be a success, the (creeky) doors could open to more experiences from recent horror films. The current crop of high-brow, high-quality horror films like Get Out and Hereditary, quenching a thirst for scares and smarts, seem like perfect horror movie tours.
In the not-so-distant future, horror aficionados could be taking a silent, shoeless tour of A Quiet Place and its sets, or waiting in line for half an hour to post next to the sewerage drain from It.
Where do I sign up?
