Fairbrook Manor: 2022 Review
Fairbrook Manor, Long Beach, CA
Happy #ShriekySunday, folks! For this update, we’re headed toward Long Beach—home of famous haunts and horror events like the Queen Mary and Midsummer Scream—to check out a home haunt that we discovered during the abnormal, pandemic-altered 2020 Halloween season. Fairbrook Manor is fantastic, creepy front yard attraction run by Robert Duck, who just so happens to be a very longtime Westcoaster reader—that has been thrilling the local neighborhood for the past three years, conjuring up the legend of Victoria Fairbrook every fall to bring screams to kids and families and benefit a local charity.
Fairbrook Manor welcomes guests to its haunting abode again this year.
A yard display during its first year of operation in 2020 that made the transition to a full-blown walkthrough maze last year, Fairbrook Manor tells the story of [the fictional] Victoria Fairbrook, a Long Beach resident in the early 1900s who became fabulously wealthy with her husband, James, during the oil boom of the 1910s. Buying up land in east Long Beach, Victoria and James built a lovely mansion named Fairbrook Manor and started a family and a happy life. Unfortunately, James and their two children tragically drowned in a lake behind the house, and the resulting grief drove Victoria into delusion and madness. To fill the void in her heart, she started kidnapping local children and holding them prisoner, gifting them dolls and games to try to keep them happy, but confining them in fear from her unstable and grief-stricken emotions. Eventually, Victoria took her own life, leaving the children to fend for themselves. Unfortunately, without anyone to provide nourishment, the children also died, and the manor itself burned down. Naturally, every Halloween season, the home and its spirits reappear to haunt the local neighborhood.
The story of Fairbrook Manor, as shown in front of the queue.
After a huge expansion last year from yard haunt to maze, this year’s Fairbrook Manor is less dramatically different. For 2022, the maze features a layout that is sort of reversed from last year, with a footprint that has grown more onto the driveway and now consumes the entire front of the property. While last year’s maze was set in the 1930s, with Victoria Fairbrook still alive and terrorizing her unwillingly adopted children, this year’s maze seems to shift forward a little bit in time, to the period after Fairbrook’s demons drove her to end her life.
Dark and foreboding spirits lurk around Fairbrook Manor.
The maze begins in last year’s swampy lake area behind the house and then transitions into the residence itself, taking guests through Fairbrook Manor’s menagerie of creepy dolls, eerie portraits, abandoned manor spaces, and finally out through a laser vortex portal that returns visitors to the present day. A little less theatrical than last year, the haunt nonetheless retains moments of storytelling from some of the scareactors who ramble elements from the story. The maid in the dining room was particularly creepy and unnerving as she repeated her role in helping Victoria Fairbrook poison her self, shifting from huddled guilt to malevolent glee. Her energy was incredible and brought a visceral sense of dynamicism to the experience.
The swampy lake scene is one of the better laser swamps we’ve seen.
Like creepy dolls, anyone?
The maid scareactor was incredible in this scene.
The cast of the maze is comprised of mostly returning talent from last year, school-aged volunteers from local schools, including Wilson, Millikan, St Anthony's, and McBride High Schools and Patrick Henry and Stanbridge Middle Schools. Their cohesion and familiarity with the maze were on display on opening night a couple of evenings ago, as screams and shrieks and disconcerting gestures and movements filled the maze with a wailing of forlorn despair and haunting helplessness.
Help the children. All the dead children.
Try not to be entrapped by Victoria Fairbrook like all of the other children.
As the maze progressed, the tone shifted to something more sinister. A sighting of the spirit of Victoria Fairbrook conjured up connotations of unnamed bride in the Haunted Mansion attic before she was replaced by the murderous Constance Hatchaway. Transitioning into the house brought more intense scares, including some from behind the walls, quiet creep scares coming out of a fireplace, and even voyeuristic startles from within the walls. A small set of haunt enthusiasts might even recognize some of the wall sets from this past summer’s Within Our Walls immersive haunted theater experience, which sent its flats to some of the Southern Californian haunts for good reuse.
The interior scenes of Fairbrook Manor are quite spooky!
Within Fairbrook Manor’s walls…
Ultimately, Fairbrook Manor once again thrillingly captures the fun frights and effectively narrates its chilling backstory to bring Halloween joy to its local community. In just a short amount of time, this haunt has built up a very nice, supportive following through its beautifully designed sets and scenes, spirited cast of passionate scareactors, and level of scares that are appropriate for those transitioning from family-friendly Halloween attractions to more intense haunted destinations like Knott’s Scary Farm and Halloween Horror Nights. Though there are certainly hard jump scares, there is no gore and a limited amount of grisly imagery. The latter half of elementary school age and up feels like the appropriate audience for this maze, with everyone’s individual sensibilities varying, of course.
We also really appreciate Fairbrook Manor’s community service connections, as the haunt is once again fundraising and holding a food drive to support the Long Beach Rescue Mission this year, just like it did last year. Last year, the team raised over $1,000 and eleven barrels of food to support the local charity. They certainly hope to best that amount this year, so bring a generous heart when visiting!
Come out and also support a great cause at Fairbrook Manor!
Fairbrook Manor is located at 5426 E Fairbrook St, Long Beach, CA 90815 and continues its run tonight and next Friday through Sunday, from 7:00 - 10:00pm. The haunt is not open on Halloween night and will run only as a yard and sidewalk display. Please park on adjacent streets like Daggett or Garford to mitigate traffic around the immediate neighborhood. Admission is free, but canned food and monetary donations are highly appreciated.
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
