Forbidden Woods Cemetery: 2019 Review
Forbidden Woods Cemetery, North Hollywood, CA
From this point on, we’re playing catch-up on covering all the fantastic home haunts and Halloween yard display we visited this past Halloween season. And while many people have already jumped straight into Christmas carols and yuletide merriment, we like to take a little longer to decompress and get over the fact that Halloween season is over (even if this was an extended season due to how Halloween fell on the calendar, and how many attractions opened past Halloween into the first weekend of November). What that means is that—similar to last year—you can expect a few retro-updates that will be put to use for next year.
Sinister characters lurk within Forbidden Wood Cemetery.
Today’s focus is Forbidden Woods Cemetery, a fantastically rich and enchanting haunted maze walkthrough in North Hollywood that crams an awful lot into a small frontyard footprint! The haunt is the brainchild of Aldo Fragale and his girlfriend, whose parents have been gracious enough to volunteer their home for neighbor spooks the past couple of years. Incorporating a spooky, semi-fantasy theme that includes witches, spooky spirits, spiders, skeletal creatures, and Gothic structures, this haunt is a visual feast of Halloween goodness. A zig-zagging layout covers a lot more ground than one would expect a NoHo residential front yard to offer, and the abundance of props and furnishings and animatronics and theming present an almost infinite series of scenes to take in.
The visuals are the most striking aspect of Forbidden Woods Cemetery, with eerie lighting and a blanket of fog covering this macabre realm with an aura of the supernatural. The multitude of hanging drapes and netting and overhead elements really create a wonderfully immersive space that transports guests far, far away from Southern California and into some mysterious, Old World enchantment.
This maze is layered with incredible theming and atmosphere.
The actors are fun too, offering a mix of soft scares to eerie stares that are generally tame enough for children to enjoy but just exciting enough that adults might receive some startles as well. I wouldn’t label Forbidden Woods Cemetery a completely family friendly affair, but I would say that it’s a bit of a “training wheels” maze that offers good test to whether a young guest is ready for haunted houses with actual scares.
Perhaps the only disappointing part of Forbidden Woods Cemetery is its availability. This year, it ran two nights—up from last year’s one—but there is no weekend offering that might allow more than neighborhood residents or extreme diehards to come. That’s only a shame, because more people need to see this Halloween feast that Aldo has served up, with help from his family and friends. Forbidden Woods Cemetery is a more enveloping and mystical experience than a humble home haunt has any right being, and it’s immediately landed onto our list as a can’t-miss attraction for next autumn. We can only wait to see what new addition will come to Forbidden Woods next year!
There are jump scares, but they’re more soft scares than hard scares.
Forbidden Woods Cemetery is located at 11238 Califa St., North Hollywood, CA 91601 and was open October 30 and 31 this year. Parking on Califa Street is pretty tight, so possibly plan to park a block or two away and walk over—unless good fortune is present.
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
