Scaring San Diegans for 23 years

By Alex Owens

It’s Halloween season and there’s more than a ghost of a chance you can get spooked in San Diego if that’s your desire.

For the 23rd season, the Haunted Hotel is open for business on Market Street, offering guests more than their fill of zombies, ghosts or vampires. Its sister attraction, Balboa Park’s Haunted Trail, has been open since 2000.

Both haunts are the creation of Greg DeFatta and Robert Bruce, who got into the haunt attraction business after DeFatta decided to get out of a job career that was even scarier: being a Hollywood agent.

“I was working in Los Angeles at the William Morris Agency and I wanted out of the business,” DeFatta said. “I started doing spook attractions in Louisville, Kentucky, before adding more around the country, before deciding to just focus on the ones in San Diego.”

As scary as it sounds, DeFatta said running a haunted house is very satisfying.

“The enjoyment comes when you hear the screaming, the laughing — every kind of emotion — and people having a good time,” he said.

Besides the Haunted Hotel and Haunted Trail, DeFatta and Bruce also run the Scream Zone at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. The season for all haunts runs until Nov. 1.

All told, DeFatta says 300 people will be working at the three haunted attractions, including those doing the scaring and behind the scenes.

It takes a special kind of person to be a professional scarer.

“When we audition a person, we give them a character,” DeFatta said. “The key is, are they able to be creative and can they drop their persona in front of a stranger?”

But working as a spook can have its own scary moments since no one can predict how a person might react when scared.

“We’ve had people hit our employees,” DeFatta said. “When that happens, we remove those people.”

Although some professional haunted houses are located in allegedly haunted places, DeFatta doesn’t believe either the Haunted Hotel or Haunted Trail have any real spooks scaring people for free.

“I haven’t seen any at the Haunted Hotel, even though the building is 140 years old,” DeFatta said. “We used to run a different attraction called FrightMare down the street and I got creeped out there. I’d hear strange noises all the time.”

On the other hand, DeFatta said the Haunted Trail is naturally spooky because of its location outdoors.

“The trees and surroundings help people get immersed in the whole environment,” he said. “Honestly, the area where the Trail is used to be a little sketchy. I think things have improved since we’ve been there — even during the other 11 months of the year.”

Haunted attractions play on primal fears, but DeFatta said the attractions do change with the times.

“We do pull from what’s popular,” he admitted. “Zombies have been popular for a while, but even they have changed. Twenty years ago, zombies were slow. Now they’re fast. Vampires have changed too. Thanks to a show called ‘The Strain,’ they’re now more vicious.”

DeFatta expects big crowds this year because Halloween falls on a Saturday.

“The two weekends before Halloween are always the most crowded, but the fact that Halloween is on a Saturday means people will be talking about the holiday,” he said.

Although haunted hotels can be subjective, DeFatta said there is one way to know if his customers were really scared.

“You know you’ve done a good job when you can tell they’ve peed their pants,” he said, laughing.

Admission for the Haunted Hotel is $18, $28 for a Fast Pass that allows you to go directly to the front of the line. The Haunted Trail costs $19, while a walk through the Experiment Maze is $25, $10 more for the Fast Past option.

Both the Haunted Hotel, located at 424 Market St., Downtown, and the Haunted Trail, in Balboa Park’s Marston Point near the corner of Juniper Street and Sixth Avenue, are now open, and operate every day but Monday and Tuesday through Nov. 1. Hours for the Haunted Hotel are Sunday – Thursday, 7 – 11 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 6 p.m. – 1 a.m. The Haunted Trail operates Sunday – Thursday, 7 – 11 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 6:30 – 11:30 p.m. For more information, visit hauntedhotel.com and hauntedtrail.net.

—Alex Owens is a San Diego-based freelance writer. He can be reached at [email protected].