The Nest Haunted House Backstory: Queen Creek, Arizona

The Nest is a haunted house on the outskirts of Phoenix, out in Queen Creek to be exact and if you're looking to be scared, it's well worth the drive. I went with my girlfriend right after a day at Schnepf Farms, it was about a 2 minute drive to a different parking lot and before we had gotten out of the car, my girlfriend was on edge. The area was dark and truly creepy. There were large trees looming all around and you just parked in a huge grass field. As you walk up to the haunted house itself it looks like an abandoned homestead and there are broken down farming buildings all around. One of the creepiest things about The Nest is the fact that it is based on a true story from Arizona's past, a 15-year-old serial killer named Jacob Kell.

When I first went to their website and read over the short story of it all it caught my attention enough to look around the web for more information and sure enough, the legend was real. Jacob Kell was a mentally handicapped individual that had a hormone problem as well that caused him to be incredibly large (tall and stocky, not fat). He grew up just outside of Queen Creek in the small town of Clifton right around the time of World War II. His father died when he was very young and his mother remarried a drunk that beat and mistreated him, forcing him to sleep in a barn instead of the house while saying "Only people can sleep in the house, you stay in the barn!"

hKell was said to have voices in his head that told him to do things, a family trait that his younger sister had as well, but she could manage her voices. When the voices got him riled up, "Sissy" Kell was the only person that could calm Jacob. Then one night as Jacob was coming out of the barn he saw his stepfather run out the door after Sissy, knocking her to the ground so violently that she was killed as her head hit a rock.

In a fit of rage Jacob's pent up years of mistreatment bubbled forth as he went on a three day rampage killing 37 people while carrying his sister's corpse over his shoulder. He was finally taken down by a vigilante group on the third day and after that he was never really spoken of again, even today the older folks of that town have very little if anything to say about him.

So having researched this, I was all geared up to go to a haunted house based entirely on Jacob Kell. The Nest takes you through 3 attractions, The Nest (meant to be the barn Jacob lived in), The Cemetery (where his victims were buried), and The Carnage (where Jacob performed unspeakable acts). Admission to the Nest is a bit steep, $25 per person, but from what I've seen of other haunted houses it's just about par for this type of attraction. If you go online to their website (the picture at the top of this entry is a link) you can download coupons to lighten the blow by $2.

Total for this trip : $46.00 (2 admissions @ $25 - $2 per person coupon)

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