Halloween Horror Nights: Difference between revisions

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[[Halloween Horror Nights]] is quite simply one of the largest annual Halloween events in the world. Hosted from the end of September to the end of October (occasionally extending to the first day or two of November), Halloween Horror Nights is hosted by [[Universal Studios]] theme parks in Orlando and Hollywood (including Singapore as of 2011) every year. While the Orlando event is the biggest, all three revolve are several key similarities: haunted houses (sometimes referred to as mazes, though they all have a predefined path), scarezones (sections of the park themed with props and effects and populated with actors), and shows (with [[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure|Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure]] being a perennial favorite). The houses and scarezones are populated with "scareactors", dressed in costumes and makeup and positioned to scare the bejeezus out of passerby.

The event has only grown since then: in 2011, for Halloween Horror Nights 21, there arewere 8 houses, 6 scarezones, and 2 shows. The event has gone from a few nights to 5 nights a week every week from September 24 to October 31. The biggest competitor at the moment is Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens.

'''The Caretaker''': Dr. Albert Caine was once a respected surgeon who worked as the caretaker of the Shady Oaks Cemetery in Willamette Valley, Ohio. Converting his Victorian-style mansion into a funeral parlor and mortuary, Caine became obsessed with the concept of the soul, digging up bodies to experiment on. He began tricking homeless people into staying at his mansion so that he could perform live autopsies. He grew more and more insane, performing experiments on fear, pain, and the limits of the human mind. His family held grisly dinner parties with the corpses and his psychotic assistants stole body parts to make into dinner ingredients. One night, some teenagers walking through the graveyard saw the Caines dancing with bodies in their parlor, and they were placed under house arrest. An angry mob of local families burned down the house with the family in it, but the bodies were not recovered.

'''The Storyteller''': Elsa Strict has the least backstory out of all of the icons, to the point where the actresses playing her in 2010 would threaten anyone who asked of her past. What is known is that she was the icon for 2005, with the park transformed into the world of Terra Cruentes from one of her storybooks; in the [[The Lord of the Rings]]-meets-steampunk world, she appeared only in a house completely unrelated to the world.

'''Bloody Mary''': Originally Dr. Mary Agana, Mary was a phobia therapist denied funding for her extreme method of immersive therapy: exposing patients to the extreme of their fear to cure them of it. She continued on with her own money in a small office in or near New York City in 1958, but only succeeded in sending two patients to the hospital and causing one to commit suicide. As her own fear of death was subdued by seeing death, she began purposely killing her patients while becoming obsessed with her reflection and mirrors. A private investigator, Boris Shuster, began investigating the disappearing patients and made an appointment with her. On the night of the appointment, Mary was murdered by a patient and ex-con who escaped the electric chair he had been placed in; no body was recovered. Schuster founded the Legendary Truth paranormal research team to investigate various paranormal activity, especially the legend of Bloody Mary, and during an investigation into the destroyed office in 2008 the team disappeared.

The Usher was the icon in 2009, though he was overshadowed in advertising by [[The Wolf Man]], [[ChildsChild's Play (TV series)||Chucky]], and [[Saw|Billy]]. He reappeared with several other icons in 2010.