Dark Harvest & Pirates Cave Productions present Shady Pines Asylum: 2022 Review

Dark Harvest, Anaheim, CA

Today’s update is a story of homecoming, rebirth, and revitalization via an unexpected partnership of two haunters with opposing styles who turned unexpected dilemmas into a fantastic and surprisingly synergistic brew that has resulted in one of the highlight haunted attractions of the season. The setting is Anaheim, on the corner of Imperial Highway and La Palma Avenue, on a lot where The Fleshyard once unleashed its gory and gritty frights. And the players are Dark Harvest and Pirates Cave Productions—two outfits that were in completely different environments in 2021.

Last year, Dark Harvest was the name of the haunted corn maze created by Brandon Spletter and Trevor Neilson of Perdition Home Haunt and Adam LeBlanc of The Fleshyard, located at Frosty’s Forest and Pumpkin Patch in the city of Chino. This attraction had been called Harvest of Horrors the year before, during a relatively quickly assembled haunt that ended up being one of the few actual walkthrough mazes in Southern California of the 2020 pandemic-impacted Halloween season. But following Halloween 2021, Adam departed from the Frosty’s haunt, which rebranded itself to The Haunted Harvest this year.

Meanwhile, the end of last October saw the Pirates Cave enjoying its most successful and spectacular season yet, with its production of The Curse of Calico Jack topping home haunt lists (and even some haunt lists period) from countless media outlets and haunt reviewers. This jaw-dropping, professional haunt caliber maze stunned guests with its theatrical and lighting effects, embrace of technological integration, gorgeous theming and sets, and amazing storytelling. Creators Dave and Jacob Larson set about one-upping themselves this year, but as the summer set in, a series of unexpected challenges made it clear that the Pirates Cave had outgrown its residential domain.

These two unplanned circumstances led to a chance encounter and partnership, as Adam, looking to continue his professional haunter endeavors, and Dave, seeking to scratch his haunter itch and explore the next level in his haunting progression, came together to develop a new, collaborative haunted attraction that would be conveniently located at Adam's old Anaheim stomping grounds. The fruition of those efforts has been unleashed this Halloween season in the form of a new haunted house called Shady Pines Asylum, featuring the combined efforts of Dark Harvest (the new rebrand of The Fleshyard) and Pirates Cave Productions (the slightly tweaked identity of the Pirates Cave Haunt).

Readers who have followed along The Fleshyard and The Pirates Cave in the past might ask an understandable question: how do these two haunts, which utilize noticeably different and arguably opposite styles and aesthetics, manage to produce something that can be cohesive and well flowing and not look like just two parties jamming their creations together? Fortunately, in this case, opposites have attracted, resulting in a harmonious and interdependent production that uses both haunts' strengths to create a well connected, thrilling haunted experience that results in an exciting, fun, and impressive haunted house that's among the top independent SoCal haunts of the season!

Any good haunt starts with a good narrative, and after The Fleshyard's tale of the gruesome slaughter of the Kearny family during its five season run and the Dark Harvest of Horrors multi-themed variety maze with no actual overarching story, this year's production features a new backstory:

Shady Pines Asylum is quietly nestled just outside of the national forest. Its rustic design and walking trails through the forest provide a comforting aesthetic for guests to recover and receive therapy. It’s that time again when once a year, investors are allowed to tour the facility. Dr. Bodkin, with his new Aspiration Therapy, has made great strides in our cancer serum research because of your investments. With your additional support, we hope to bring that product to market by the end of the year. We are also excited to show you our newly renovated west wing. Be sure and make your appointment now as spots fill up quickly.

The premise, then, is a visit to a local mental institution where the staff has been testing a new technology that promises groundbreaking health advancements. Guests are here to tour the facilities and see the scientific breakthroughs taking place. Of course, as with any asylum, things immediately go wrong, and as the patients take over the sanitarium, guests now have to fend for themselves and try to escape this twisted, manic psychiatric hospital. It won't be easy with a whole cast of depraved, unstable subjects out for blood!

The flight from Shady Pines Asylum takes visitors through a series of scenes in a surprisingly lengthy haunted house experience that blends in elements of immersive theater, synchronized special effects, programmed lighting and audio effects, and a tireless and enthusiastic cast of scareactors who engage, scare, and entertain guests from multiple and sometimes recurring angles. After the check-in-gone-wrong in the lobby, guests are shuttled through the infirmary and a strobe-filled solitary confinement ward, by a messy dissection room with a plethora of mutilated and severed body parts, past a hall of horrific corpses being stored in grisly laboratory vessels, and through an occasionally dousing shower area.

The arrival into a hazardous storage space sees guests met by a pair of inmates pacing and jumping with raving energy, rambling and screaming and being quite unwelcome to their new company. These two don’t seem to hold any care of anyone or anything else outside of their delirium. In the pandemonium of their wild behavior, guests may not notice that one of them happens to hold a lit cigar. Wiith barrels of highly flammable liquids scattered about, it seems almost inevitable that something disastrous will happen.

Unsurprisingly enough, the lax safety practices result in an explosion that guests narrowly escape by rushing into an elevator. An attempt to escape to higher ground is thwarted by the accident, which sends the car crashing down to the dusty, catacomb-like basement of Shady Pines. This underground level is glowing with red ember and hazy smoke from the conflagration the two reckless patients above have caused. Guests looking to dodge this dangerous dilemma may have enough wherewithal to just notice the rotting bodies that are impaled along the walls of this subterranean passageway—past subjects of what appear to have been horrific experiments of torture conducted by Dr. Bodkin in the pursuit of science. In addition, not every resident of this burning tunnel appears to be dead!

Fortunately, guests manage to find their way out of the premises, but that doesn't mean the peril has ended. It seems some inmates have also escape out of Shady Pines Asylum, and one final evasion through the misty forest outside the institution, dodging horrific creatures and dangerous predators, is required before guests find themselves truly outside and safe—at least for now.

Shady Pines Asylum is a surprising triumph of two unlikely partners whose differing styles have somehow worked together to take this haunt to a new level. We've written before that The Fleshyard's old school, gritty, graphic style is a throwback to the Knott's Scary Farm aesthetic of yesteryear but isn't as polished as many of the technology-laden, story-rich, theatrical haunts gaining popularity both in large-scale haunts like Knott's Scary Farm or Halloween Horror Nights and independent productions from a new generation of haunters. The incorporation of the Pirates Cave technology, theming elements, programming, and pacing raises the bar and the feel of the former Fleshyard ambiance and brings a dynamic and more engaging and immersive track of immersive storytelling.

At the same time, the gritty and bloody set aesthetic and maze scenes aren't sacrificed in favor of all slick and sophisticated theming and decor. The carnage in the asylum rooms, the moodiness and fog-filled disorientation of the wilderness finale, and the elaborate home haunt feel still echo Adam's past projects. But what Dave and the Pirates Cave factor have introduced is a deliberate and story-driven pacing that was so vital in last year's Curse of Calico Jack attraction, as well as familiar set pieces like the elevator and mine shaft elements that were highlights of the Pirates Cave 2021 haunt. The coordination and timing of the soundtrack and lighting beats and the special effects triggers create an enhanced spectacle of the experience, not unlike what we loved this year at Hauntington Beach Manor's Midnight Shadows. In fact, both haunts' incorporation of calculated pacing controlled by climactic theatrical moments are part of what make them so dramatic and astounding this year.

In addition, major kudos goes to the talent of Shady Pines Asylum, which reckon the wonderful scareactors that Adam has had in his Fleshyard haunts in the past. Full of boundless energy and attitude and passionately convincing in their roles, the cast does an excellent job of maintaining both urgency and interest. The two ladies in the barrel room just before the elevator were particularly noteworthy for their jarring menace and unstable activity and even physical contortions and engagement with the set. The patient in the strobe room was delightfully demented, babbling about his butchering brutality. The clowns in the maze were marvelously psychotic and intense. And it was very evident that the team had developed a great chemistry in timing and scare camaraderie that helped lead guests from one startle to another, serving up the frights on a metaphorical platter.

This Dark Harvest and Pirates Cave collaboration has produced a true hit for the Halloween season, and Shady Pines Asylum is definitely a destination that haunt fans need to check out—regardless of their past opinions on Dark Harvest and The Fleshyard. The teamwork has produced a terrific haunted attraction that is invigorated and unique, and the fun experience is everything that haunted Halloween should be—lively, chilling, ghastly, and engrossing.

Shady Pines Asylum is located at 5702 E La Palma Ave, Anaheim, CA 92807 and continues its run tonight; next Friday through Sunday, October 21-23; and the following Thursday through Monday, October 27-31. Hours of operation are 7:00pm - 11:00pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 7:00pm - 10:00pm on other nights. Tickets range from $25 - $30 depending on the date, with Express Queue priced at $48, and guests can purchase them online in advance or in person (on site is cash only). Though the pricing may seem a little steep for a single attraction, given the quality and experience and today’s economy’s going rates, this is actually a fair rate and comparable to other favorites of the haunt season like Hauntington Beach Manor and Prism Haunt. Limited parking is available in the gravel lot on site and is free, but on busier nights, parking at a neighboring shopping plaza and walking over may be needed.

All of this information communicated, go make a reservation to check into Shady Pines today. It’s sure to be a scream!