‘It’s OK to be Scared’: Taking it step by step through Skokie’s Scream Scene haunted house

What’s your nightmare: a maze with bloodied clowns? A butchershop with carved-up cadavers? Misshapen dolls and giant insects that lurch in your direction, screaming and howling as you shuffle from one room to the next?

A version of all of the above are a reality as you wind through the Skokie Park District’s 28th annual Scream Scene Haunted House.

The annual Halloween attraction, which drew more than 5,000 people in 2024, is already on track to finish another busy season enticing folks from all over Chicagoland to the abandoned Skokie Water Playground. 

If you haven’t braved it yet, have no fear: Skokie’s signature haunted house is still welcoming visitors for two more weekends this fall. Doors open at 7 p.m. on Halloween night Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, Nov. 2, Nov. 7 and Nov. 8. Tickets cost $14 for general admission or $23 to skip the line. 

Note: Lights inside the Scream Scene will be shut off during its last weekend and guests will be provided with one glow stick per group to navigate the haunted house in darkness. 

On a Friday evening, The Record creeped through the local haunted house to get a behind-the-scenes look at the terrors and frights that make this park district operation work.

‘I know adults that are too scared’

The first thing you’ll likely hear after parking in front of the Skokie Water Playground on a crisp Friday evening in October is the sound of children’s shrieks.

The sounds are encouraged in part by one monster (or actor wearing a scarecrow mask) who runs in front of the humongous neon-lit “Scream Scene” sign and skids across the pavement on his gloved hands and knees, sending sparks flying and kids running.

“I’m kind of nervous, this is her first haunted house and she says she’s not going to be scared, but we’ll see,” said Corrie Tucker, a local mother who brought her 9-year-old daughter, Delilah, to the Scream Scene on Oct. 24.

Corrie Guynn, Skokie Park District’s superintendent of parks, planning and facilities, is the creative force behind the Scream Scene. Designer of each year’s layout, he said the park district recommends attendees be 10 and over, but it does not enforce restrictions. 

“I know adults that are too scared to go through any haunted house and I know kids that are able to handle it,” Guynn said. 

“You just hope that the parents have good judgement with the kids they want coming through and how much they want to deal with nightmares at the end of the night.” 

‘I was crying’ (Warning: Spoilers below.)

When the light above the Scream Scene’s entrance finally shines red, it’s your turn to enter.

But there is no door to this haunted house.

Rather, (claustrophobes beware) an inflated tunnel you must squeeze through spits you out into near total darkness. The effect is immediately disorienting, and you may find yourself reaching around wildly in the dark for the friends you entered with.

The theme of the first leg of the Scream Scene changes each year. In the past, the locker room of the waterpark has been transformed into a horrifying hotel or insane asylum. This fall, it was a house — which becomes apparent when a ghoul springs out of a refrigerator. 

As you walk through room after room, scary figures are eerily awaiting, their ghastly faces flickering in the strobe lights as they ask you to stay. Others leap out from the wallpaper and picture frames. 

You’ll know you’ve reached the middle of the haunted house when the shadowy corridors give way to rubbery red and white pinstripes. You’re now in the clown maze, where a bridge inside a spinning tunnel of neon dots is bound to leave you trembling. 

Eventually, the blood-splattered clowns give way to a smorgasbord of creative terrors, like a meat locker full of swinging bodies and a cobwebbed bug’s den. Then, a large man in a jumpsuit jumps at you. He has a chainsaw, and it’s a race to the exit.

Stand outside long enough and you’ll see wave after wave of sprinting screamers — their faces relieved to escape into the night.

“It was so scary, I’m sweating. I’m literally sweating right now. I was crying, they actually just scared me,” said Harry Vences, a teen outside the haunted house. “When we first got in there it was pitch black; I didn’t know what to do.”

“Great time, very traumatizing, very terrifying, but great time,” said Ronan Riddick, an 11-year-old, adding he found this year was more scary than last year’s Scream Scene. “Scary spiders, chainsaw guys, I went last year and it was very, very fun too.”

‘A fun way to just kind of be crazy’

The masked man with the chainsaw is John Jaminski, who assembles the Scream Scene every year with Guynn. The park district has three semitruck-sized storage containers that house all of the Halloween decorations — half of which are simply its temporary walls. 

Guynn said redesigning the Scream Scene every year is a creative outlet. That’s part of what makes it special: While many of its more than 30 volunteer actors return every year, the Skokie haunted house layout changes each Halloween. 

Some volunteers love scaring guests, while others work behind the scenes. Cameras set up inside the maze allow one volunteer sitting behind a switchboard to trigger a variety of remote devices, like air cannons, fog machines and a thrashing animatronic werewolf.

(Some of the Halloween actors can be seen from the cameras having little dance parties as they wait for the next group of guests to reach their room.)

“If you’re scared you should go in the front because that’s probably the safest place for you,” Adela Isovic, a volunteer who paints makeup on actors, recommended. 

A former Scream Scene actor herself, she opts for grisly detail for those stationed in bright rooms and high-contrast looks for the ones who jump out of the dark.

“But also, let yourself be scared. It’s OK to be scared,” Isovic added. “Keep walking, one step in front of the other, your fastest way out is if you just keep doing that and if all your friends are behind you, nothing can get you from behind.”

Ellie Bollinger, a volunteer actor dolled up with a cosmetically slashed throat and tattered circus-clown clothes, said she enjoys figuring out the strategy of how to scare both the middle and the back portions of lines working their way through the haunted house.

“I love Halloween, like obsessed,” Bollinger said. “I love the environment, it’s a fun way to kind of just be crazy without any sort of judgement. It’s a good de-stresser for sure, I think it’s just fun interacting with people, seeing people having a good time getting scared.”

Back outside, Bollinger did a backbend and walked on all fours as she and other actors kept the waiting guests frightened as they stood in line. 

“These niche little events, they make everyone just want to combine into one spot,” Tim Walsh, one Skokie teen said as he prepared to get in line. 

Tucker, the mother who brought her 9-year-old for her first Haunted house, stood near the exit. Despite her fears, she said Delilah wasn’t scared “one bit.”

“It was so funny!” said Delilah, just as another group came running out screaming.