Corona Haunt presents Tales of Halloween: 2021 Review

Corona Haunt, Corona, CA

We’re double dipping today, because we have so many haunts to cover. Such is the life of a haunt enthusiast and media person who really wants to showcase the fantastic home haunts throughout Southern California.

Our second review of the day takes us back to Corona for another haunt that has been a long time coming for us. Corona Haunt has been operating years, but we have never explored this top-notch home haunt until this past weekend, when we finally were able to stop by and experience the magnificent production that creators Mason Legerski and Joseph Roath have crafted.

Mason and Joe are both in their twenties, and both of them have been haunting since they were in their teens, placing them in the group of precocious young haunters that have been gaining more and more of a spotlight over the past several years. That’s a group that started with Sam Kellman at Opechee Haunt but has since expanded to include the likes of Aurora Persichetti and Kyle Warner at Murder House Productions, Zion Fenwick at Twisted Haunts, David Coleman at Exquisite Corpse Horror, Jacob Larson at The Pirates Cave, and more. These talented young designers have mixed technology, media, and theatrical effects into their haunts to produce professional-caliber haunts, and Corona Haunt is right up there among the best of the SoCal young haunter talent.

Trick or treat! There be many tricks ahead.

Although they’re new to Westcoaster, Corona Haunt has actually been around for a long time—longer than most of the haunts listed above! This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Corona Haunt—a remarkable achievement for any haunt. It all began back in 2012, when Mason was only fifteen years old. Visiting Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights for the first time, Mason was immediately enamored by the immersive atmosphere and worlds of horror brought to life and knew that he wanted to create something similar (though obviously nowhere near as extravagant) at home. With his dad’s support, Mason created a “Klowns” themed haunt that first year, and though it was very much in line with what the average person imagines a home haunt to be like—PVC piping and black plastic tarps and basic lighting and minimal detail, it was the spark that would lead to the splendor that Corona Haunt is today.

Mason met Joe a few years later, in 2015, also on a trip to Halloween Horror Nights. That year, he invited his new friend to act in Corona Haunt’s “Freakshow: 3D” maze, and the two discovered that they shared a remarkable chemistry and mutual passion for Halloween and haunted attractions. This led to Joe switching sides the following year and partnering with Mason on set design, maze build, and technology integration. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Cemetery is full of rich Halloween atmosphere.

Since then, Corona Haunt has continued to craft new and different haunted experiences each year, telling their own stories while fine-tuning and improving the sophistication and presentation of their maze. The haunt has a clear influence from Halloween Horror Nights, retaining a similar, fully enveloping, theatrical aesthetic that is also very prominent in Murder House Productions’ mazes. The difference is that Corona Haunt, with the advantage of being able to occupy the garage, side yard, and back yard of Mason’s residence, has been able to create haunts that are longer than MHP’s, while still maintaining a similar level of quality through the maze!

An encounter with the witch is harrowing.

This year, Corona Haunt has sculpted a beautiful love letter to all things spooky and horror in the form of “Tales of Halloween.” Taking guests through traditional themes and settings prominent in scary stories all around, “Tales of Halloween” is Mason and Joe’s tribute to the very passion that has inspired them year after year.

Guests enter through the side gate and immediate find themselves in a trick or treating neighborhood, passing by a house lit up for the fall holiday. As they pass by, a HHN-style trigger scare lays the ground for the experience that is to come ahead. Ducking into a dim, candle-lit passageway, guests navigate their way toward the back of the property, where they come upon the first proper scene of Tales of Halloween, the Haunted House. A creepy doll sits on a little ledge, seemingly innocuous, but this is simply a distraction for another scare.

Hope no one going through Corona Haunt this year has arachnophobia!

The maze opens up to an outdoor setting for the Cemetery. Here, tombstones, trees, and a full moon set the scene for an eerie night at the graveyard. Look closely, and one might even spot references to Corona Haunt’s previous productions, including the 2019 favorite, Sweet Tooth. Guests then duck inside a creepy crypt, with burlap hanging overhead to create a dingy and somewhat cave-like effect. Here, coffins have spilled open, revealing their grisly contents of decay inside.

Then, it’s onto the Witch, where guests come upon the abode of a practitioner of the dark arts. Severed heads on pikes warn against trespassers, but undeterred, the visitors move on, where they encounter the witch herself! A lit cauldron and a table of potions and effects and mutilated body parts speaks to the atrocities that this witch has been conducting.

A quick escape back out into the forest then transitions into a spider cavern. Here, cheese cloth spiderwebs drape all sides, and hanging bodies of prior victims give warning that this lair is no friendly place. As guest poke through the hanging gauze and unnerving environ, they suddenly come face to face with the arachnid herself, eager to feast upon a new victim!

Fortunately, there’s an outlet to the cave that leads to a cornfield lit with orange Halloween lights. Sheets of cloth, scarecrows, and cornstalks accent the passage, which glows with the holiday lighting. Then it’s onto the final scene of this lengthy haunt, featuring a pumpkin monster nightmare and gourd innards splattered across a winding path. Guests are seemingly swallowed into the giant jack-o-lantern and forced to navigate through its guts in order to find their way back outside to the safety of the driveway.

An agricultural feel stretches through this portion of Tales of Halloween.

The net result of this experience is jaw-dropping wonder. It’s absolutely incredible how much Corona Haunt has managed to pack into a space-constrained residential property. Tales of Halloween is an idea that Mason and Joe have wanted to do since 2018/2019, but they’ve struggled to realize their visions onto built reality until this year. Unsurprisingly, their build for this year’s production was their longest ever, starting in late July. But the results are well worth it, and they’re even more impressive knowing that the build was literally just the two of them working together.

Besides the beautiful atmosphere and theming of this year’s maze, Corona Haunt also utilizes HHN-style frights with flashing strobes, sudden loud sounds, and pop-out scares. Mason and Joe have leveraged their networking within the young haunter community to learn from their fellow haunters, with Aurora from Murder House Productions teaching Mason how to program and create the Horror Nights trigger scares and Jacob from The Pirates Cave providing insight into DMX lighting and programming. These skilled members of the future of SoCal haunting are wonderfully supportive of each other, and their influences and efforts all combine to create some really fantastic haunts.

An awesome puppeteered pumpkin monster is one of the highlights of this year’s maze.

Mason and Joe also couldn’t accomplish Corona Haunt without a large network of very supportive friends and family members who also help work the haunt as scareactors and support staff. Everyone volunteers their time to help the passion project that is Corona Haunt, and the team effort of such an undertaking clearly shows in the fruits of everyone’s labor.

Corona Haunt is another prime echelon home haunt that has made its way into our regular future rotation. We’ve gone ten years prior to actually visiting it, and clearly we have been missing out. This year’s Tales of Halloween maze kindles the magic and joy of Halloween, providing a thrilling but also captivating and joyous experience that celebrates Samhain and the communal celebration that it entails. We love Mason and Joe’s story and their journey, and while they have designs on eventually going commercial with Corona Haunt, they've already demonstrated via their “amateur” haunts that their mastery of the spooks is professional quality.

Joseph Roath (left) and Mason Legerski pose for a photo in their spectacular maze this year.

Corona Haunt is located at 3161 Nutmeg Dr, Corona, CA 92882 and continues to run this Thursday through Sunday, October 28 - 31, from 7:00 - 9:00pm on Thursday and 7:00 - 10:00pm on Friday through Sunday. It’s amazing that they have been doing this for ten years, and while we’ve definitely been late to the party, we’re glad to have experienced this fantastic home haunt—among the top home haunts in Southern California!