By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Four spooky joints will open this weekend to kick off the Halloween season in Amarillo.
Amarillo Scaregrounds, which boasts five different haunts at 2736 S.W. 10th Ave., will be open from 7 p.m. to midnight Friday for Crimestoppers Night and 7 p.m. to midnight Saturday and Oct. 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30 and 31. The haunts include Terror ($15 admission), Insanitarium ($15 admission), The Basement ($20 admission), a blackout maze ($5 admission) and the Zombie Apocalypse Training Center ($5 admission).
Admission is $35 for all or $50 for an all-night pass.
Owner Vona Adams said workers have spent the summer tearing out half of the venue's basement and installing a new ride.
"They'll get in a coffin and take a ride into the depths of hell to get down into the haunt," Adams said. "They'll go through a (mock) sewer and a swampy area. ... We've just redone a whole bunch of stuff.
"We've also rearranged Terror and added whole new areas, but I hate to tell everything I know," Adams said.
Chainsaw Massacre, 12851 Interstate 27, opens Saturday and will "keep to its roots of being brutal, no rules and full contact," owner Mike Fisher said.
Hours are 8 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays throughout October.
Admission is $20 or $25 for a fast pass.
The haunt will boast new LED projectors that will screen homemade horror scenes on opaque flaps at the entrance to rooms: "It'll be like you're walking into a scene," Fisher said.
6th Street Massacre, 3015 S.W. Sixth Ave., will be open from 7 p.m. to midnight every Friday and Saturday in October, in addition to its sneak peek night on Friday.
Admission is $20 or $25 for a fast pass.
"I have a new prop ... that I'm trying to keep as secret as possible," Fisher said. "It's the coolest freaking prop I've ever seen. .... I've never had a prop affect me like this. I had chills from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. I thought they hit me with static electricity or something ... but it was actually my reaction to how realistic the prop was."
Elsewhere, the haunt, which is built in what Fisher said was an old movie theater, has been modified so it's more "spacious and more realistic ... as a theater."
"We've made a lot of safety improvements, too, and other small enhancements and changes that regulars will notice," Fisher said.
Van Buren Frightmare, 816 S. Van Buren St., will preview at 7 p.m. Friday and then open from 7 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays in October, plus Oct. 30 and 31.
Admission is $20.
"We are focusing on nightmares this year," owner Matt Hite said. "We've got 20-something scenes that are all nightmare-related. A lot of them are inspired by real-life events."
One new scene — which the young volunteers from the Amarillo Activity Youth Center call "the vortex of the dead" — will temporarily split groups up and put each person on his or her own path.
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.
