The Mack Manor Haunted House in Fox River Grove Illinois Has Hit a Dead End

For the last 10 years I have seen signs for a haunted house posted all over the place and covering several different suburbs advertising a haunted house. I had always been curious about the signs and the haunted house they refered to but my kids were kind of young for that sort of thing. When I read in the paper that this haunted house that I had seen advertised for years would be closing this year after 10 years, I wanted to go.

It was time for my 2 older kids to experience their first haunted house anyways. So I got my mom to babysit my little one and my husband, 2 older children, a friend of ours and his younger cousin headed to the Mack Manor Haunted House in Fox River Grove, located in Lions Park on Friday night. Today October 26th the Haunted House we enjoyed so much will be torn down for good. It seems I will no longer see those signs all over the place next year.

We had a good time at the haunted house. First of all it was 50 degrees and pouring. We didn't know if we were going to stay or not because of the rain, but they actually had the area where you wait in line covered. That was a nice surprise. It goes to show how nice it is to go to a haunted house that is more permanent and that more thought has gone in to. The ground however was still pretty wet.

We paid our $9.00 per person at the door, and waited for the Haunted House to open. We arrived at 7:00 but the scarry haunted house did not open until 7:30. They had a non scary haunted house from 7 to 7:30. We were 2nd in line so that was nice. Since there were not a lot of people there for the non scary. In front of the haunted house while you were waiting you could read all of the silly sayings on the tombstones in the graveyard out front. Soon some of the tombstones started shooting fire from them, it was pretty cool.

Soon we were allowed to go in. Before you go in you have to work yourself through a maze that will lead you to the haunted house. The entire time you are trying to work through this maze there are people dressed in scary costumes read to pop out and scare you. We went through the maze and ended up back in the begining like 5 times before we finally figured out how to get to the haunted house. Once we made it inside the waiting area, where we were entertained by the guys who made sure not to many people entered at once. There were two seperate doors where they did not allow more than 3 at a time to enter per door. Not to worry though you could reunite with your party after the first room.

Of course all fo the children were scared and the 2 brave men pushed me up to the front to lead the group. The first room we came to had several dummies resembling boddies hanging from the ceiling. You had to manevour yourself through the dead bodies to get to the next room. It was there I tripped and fell on a wooden stool that one of fhat one of fhe workers must have left there by accident. I bumbed my knee pretty good but was fine. But it was difficult to get up because people were jamming in behind me, and then there were all the dead body dummies hitting me in the head. It was actually quite funny though. Then we went through a couple of other hallways with scary walls, and gouls and such popping out at us.

We are having a good time laughing and such when we enter this little tiny room, where a little girl dressed like a vampire told us we had to wait. Then I looked and saw a small tunnel. Then it was our turn to go in and she gestured for me to go. I started to go when I heard people screaming, "We are stuck!" I backed out immediately. Thinking I am not going in there if people are stuck. I told the little vampire girl and she went in and helped the people through. I have a bit of a panic disorder when it comes to those kinds of things, and my heart started pumping really hard. The rest of my group went in first while I talked myself out of freaking out and got my blood pressure back to normal and then headed in. This tunnel got smaller and smaller as you went along and you had to crawl in complete darkness, it was not pleasant, and I think everyone just really wanted to get out of there. you heard peopel screaming at the people in front of them all through the tunnel to go. We all just wanted to get out of there. Finally you saw the light and there was a slide at the end for you to go down before you continued through the haunted house.

Next you had to walk through the expanding walls, where the walls expanded as you walked through. You had to walk with force to get through them. Then you walked through a haunted movie theater. After the haunted movie theater you would walk through a caged area where a demon scared you from above. Then we went through an area with a shaky bridge. My son slipped and fell on the bridge, it seemed like a little of the rain was getting inside a little in that area. He got right back up and was fine.

Then we went on this other bridge that had this optical illusion. The walls were spinning around you, but it was done in such a way that you thought that you were spinning and that the thin bridge you were walking on was spinning. It was really freaky and cool.

Then we got to this other area, which we thought was the end, and we were told to wait a moment. Then they let us in to this little room. We were told to remove any loose articles and put them in to a bucket, and sit down. We did not know what was going to happen, we were given a few instructions, and then we were completely covered in balls. They called it being buried alive. It was kind of freaky yet kind of cool. The balls only remained on us completely covered for about 30 seconds, I think any longer than that and I would have freaked out.

Then we were released to the outside. We were all laughing, and teasing each other. We had a really good time.

I contacted the lady of the Mack manor Ms. Mack, and she said that the reason the Mack Manor is closing down after 10 years. Is because they are having trouble finding volunteers to help with the Haunted House. Their kids who have been helping for years are going off to college, so they will be losing the help from them. I can only say that it is a real shame, because it is or was a really well done Haunted House. At the end we al lhought it was worth the $9.00 admission fee.