Perdition Home Haunt: 2016 Review

Perdition Home, Yorba Linda, CA

I know... I know... it's been a week since Halloween, so why are we still seeing spoopy things on Westcoaster?  Shouldn't we already be moving onto peppermint spice eggnog Christmas carol warm snowmen hug latte cider-cino's?  No.  No we shouldn't.  For one, there's an entire holiday in the way of Christmas, and for two, this is Westcoaster, and Halloween never ends!!

Well, not yet anyway.  We've got some final haunts to check out before we close the coffin to the 2016 Halloween season, and today, we venture to North Orange County and visit a well-known home haunt that wasn't even planning on doing a home haunt this year... until they did.

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No big deal for this haunted yard display. They only just, I don't know, CONSTRUCTED A WHOLE FREAKING FACADE FOR IT!!

Perdition Home Haunt is a fantastic home-made haunted attraction that has, over the years, gained a reputation for being a gory, detailed, highly impressive haunted attraction that can compete with a lot of professional haunts.  On the home haunts list, they're definitely right there at the top of most haunters' targets.  The brainchild of Brandon Spletter and Trevor Nielsen, this haunt comes up with a unique theme each year and attracts plenty of Halloween enthusiasts looking for an intimate and intense experience.  Last year, they built a whole freaking spaceship for their haunted house maze, and they even took it on the road to Midsummer Scream this year as part of the Hall of Shadows!

For the 2016 Halloween season, though, Brandon and Trevor had originally planned on taking a break, thanks in part to that pesky little thing called life.  With "life" milestones taking time away from their spooky passions, the kids over at Perdition quietly planned a yard display that would still provide some form of haunted display for Halloween but would be a far scaled back effort compared to their major haunted maze undertakings of previous years.

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Creeping up the steps on the side of the property to the entry porch of the mini-haunt.

If you've ever interacted with haunters, though, you know that a project never stays at the scale it's initially planned.  The "yard display" slowly grew and became a "yard display with some scare elements," and then that became a "yard display with a small walk-through," and then that became... well... ultimately, it proved to be a yard display.  It's just that what ended up being on display was an actual mini-haunt.

Perdition was only open for Halloween night, plus a bonus night the following evening that served as a last minute de facto "Haunter's Night" for people who were working Halloween.  For such a low profile offering this year, the folks at Perdition attracted a pretty decent number of visitors.  But those who didn't come missed an original full fledged creation that was pretty impressive, especially given the limited time spent on the actual endeavor.  Fortunately, if you missed this (and most of you probably did), here's a photo tour of this year's Perdition Home [Mini] Haunt! 

(Warning: What follows is NSFW due to extreme simulated blood and gore.)

The first thing guests will notice in here is that it's rather gory.

Red bathes the interior and really conveys an environment of blood and murder and intensity.

Yeah, that doesn't look too pleasant.

The theme seems to center around some Satanic rituals and lots and lots of murder.

Hopefully, no Satanists are offended.  (Spoilers: they aren't Satanists don't get offended.)

Some people might feel uncomfortable, though.  Brandon and Trevor actually mentioned that the ambiance provided some discomfort for a few Halloween night guests.

But hey, all that red lighting is pretty intense.

It's not just gore, though.  There are some nice props and details that go into this.

Candles, graphics, photographs, and book pages all contribute to a creepy vibe.

It's not just a static walk-through.  There are monsters lurking too!

What was actually cool to learn was that the entire mini-haunt could be (and was) operated by only two actors.

Creative use of pass-through's allow more coverage with less people.

That... looks painful.

The mini-haunt is just a few rooms.

But it feels longer.

And it's pretty photogenic too!

If there seem to be similarities in tone between this and The Fleshyard, it's because Adam from The Fleshyard used to be a part of the Perdition Home Haunt team.
 

So clearly, they all share some common, demented inspirations!

But it's all good stuff.

And it's a wonderful little attraction for fans of scary shingdigs!

After my visit, I ended up chatting with Brandon and Trevor for probably an hour and a half.  It was great getting insight into their minds for how they put this together in limited time with basically just each other's resources.  There's a chance that this might end up making a trip to next year's Midsummer Scream's Hall of Shadows.  It's certainly fit for such a destination, measuring about the correct square footage for the mini-haunted house attractions there. 

Having seen this great offering, I definitely understand why Perdition has been lavished with so much hype over the years.  If this is a their equivalent of "not trying," it will be exciting to see what happens when they return to a full effort next season!  Great job to the Perdition team for this year's lovely little haunt!