The Dark Hour - Best Haunt Ever!

I discovered The Dark Hour in March, at St. Patrick’s Day of all times, and I fell in love. I don’t have the skills to work there, but I think if I could just secretly sneak in and live there, I would. I’d be like that weird guy from the movies who lives between the walls somehow, and you hear him rummaging around in the fridge at night. Just hope I don’t get caught! Cause you know, awkward.

Dark Hour is a haunted house in Plano, Texas. It is one of the premier haunted houses in the nation, in fact — open year round, with shows every month aside from August and November. No show in August, because it takes extra time to prepare for the BIG show in September/October. (And by the way I AM SO EXCITED for the big show!) And no show in November because they’re recovering from October; that’s how much they throw themselves into it.

I refer to them personally as “shows” and not “haunts”, because to me it’s Vegas-quality spectacle. You get sets, lights, costumes, makeup, story, acting, music, dancing — the whole shebang. Their level of professionalism, the attention to detail, is just awe-inspiring. These guys love what they do and they are proud of what they do, and it comes through in every aspect of their productions.

To give you an example from a recent show, at the Summer Spirits event TheVCubeSolver and I were wending our way through the roughly 30,000 foot “path” that takes you through the three distinct sections of the haunt - the Dominion of the Dead, Coven Manor, and Voodoo Vengeance, when we passed through a kind of kitchen pantry area leading to a cafeteria lunch line filled full of some pretty gross stuff. As I scanned the scene my eyes settled upon a shelf lined with Calumet baking powder, an obscure reference to The Shining that I only caught because I had recently watched the documentary Room 237! That kind of blew me away, that somebody would go to that much trouble to incorporate such a minor, but incredibly satisfying little detail for folks “in the know”. These guys not only know their craft, but their audience as well.

I discovered Dark Hour almost by chance, while Googling for something interesting to do while my friend Brian from reviewtheworld.com was in town from Ohio. When I found out there was a haunted house open that weekend it seemed like a no-brainer. Little did I expect, though, a haunt on the scale of Dark Hour.

As soon as you enter the building it’s a full-on sensory assault. The first thing you notice is this incredibly pungent aroma — like an overpowering dark incense or something. I have no idea what that scent is, but I remember hoping by the end of the night that it would seep into my clothes so I could take it home with me.

The lights are the next thing you notice, because everything inside is done up like a Dario Argento flick. Although it’s basically dark as a cave in the entrance (it takes your eyes a second to adjust), strong colored lights accent a few animatronic greeters in the lobby, all dominated by this amazing 20 foot golem that stands over a smoking cauldron. I thought I had stepped into a black magic Chuck E. Cheese. My first instinct was just to stand there and gawp at the thing, and on return visits when it wasn’t too busy we’ve loitered a bit at the front just to take a closer look at everything they have going on there. Turns out there are a lot of little details that contribute to the basic story of the haunt. It’s really well done.

The music is the next thing that hits you, and they like to switch that out from haunt to haunt, but it’s never failed to bring a smile to my face. On occasion I’ve caught some cool soundtrack stuff, like the unsettling synth of Italian prog-rock band Goblin. It was their theme music from Suspiria, that show about a girls’ boarding school secretly run by witches, that greeted you in the lobby the night of the aforementioned Summer Spirits show. A pitch-perfect nod right in the door that set the stage for what was to be a show crammed with movie and other fictional references.