History of Haunted Houses: When They Started and Why

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The history of haunted houses as attractions runs through English fairgrounds: the oldest one still in use was built around 1915 by fairground makers Orton & Spooner. In America, Halloween haunted houses took off in the 1930s as basement parties, and Disneyland's Haunted Mansion turned them into an industry after it opened on August 9, 1969.

The urge behind them is much older. People paid to be scared by ghost-projection shows in the 1790s, by waxwork horrors in 1802 and by stage ghosts made of glass and light in 1862.

Here is the full timeline, with dates checked against encyclopedias, Smithsonian, Disney and the museum that still runs that 1915 ghost house.

Haunted house history at a glance

About 200 BC to 100 AD: Roman writers Plautus and Pliny the Younger tell haunted house stories.

1770s to 1790s: Ghost-raising séances in Leipzig lead to phantasmagoria shows in Vienna and Paris.

1802: Marie Tussaud brings her waxworks to London's Lyceum Theatre.

1862: "Pepper's ghost" appears on stage in London.

About 1915: Orton & Spooner build a fairground ghost house, now the oldest still in use.

1930s: Halloween haunted houses spread as American families turn basements into scare trails.

1969: Disneyland's Haunted Mansion opens.

1970s: Jaycees charity haunts spread, and Knott's Scary Farm starts in 1973.

1984: A fire at Six Flags Great Adventure leads to new safety codes for haunts.

1991 to today: Theme park Halloween events, big professional haunts and year-round horror attractions.

Before haunted houses: ghost stories and ghost shows

The first haunted house stories

Haunted houses were a joke before they were a fright. The Roman playwright Plautus wrote a comedy called Mostellaria, usually translated as "The Haunted House," in which a slave fakes a haunting to keep a father out of his own home.

The best-known early ghost story is scarier. In a letter (Book 7, Letter 27), Pliny the Younger describes a house in Athens where a chained, bearded ghost rattled its fetters at night.

The philosopher Athenodorus rented it anyway, followed the ghost to a spot in the courtyard and had it dug up. Bones wrapped in chains were found and buried properly, and the haunting stopped. The restless dead with unfinished business is still a favorite haunt storyline.

Phantasmagoria: ghost shows in the 1770s to 1790s

The first shows built to scare paying crowds used magic lanterns. In the early 1770s, Leipzig coffeehouse owner Johann Georg Schröpfer staged ghost-raising séances, probably with lantern projections on smoke, and they inspired the phantasmagoria shows that followed, per the phantasmagoria entry on Wikipedia.

Paul Philidor took the idea public in Vienna in 1790 and later in Paris. Étienne-Gaspard Robertson opened his own Fantasmagorie at the Pavillon de l'Échiquier in Paris on January 23, 1798, then moved it in 1799 to an old Capuchin convent near Place Vendôme, per his Wikipedia biography.

Madame Tussaud's horrors (1802)

In 1802, Marie Tussaud brought her wax figures to London and showed them at the Lyceum Theatre, alongside Philidor's ghost show, according to National Geographic. Her most gruesome figures, tied to the French Revolution, were later shown in a separate room that became famous as the Chamber of Horrors. Tussaud settled her collection on Baker Street in London in 1835.

Pepper's ghost (1862)

On Christmas Eve 1862, a see-through ghost appeared on stage at London's Royal Polytechnic Institution during a version of Charles Dickens's The Haunted Man. The trick was a large angled sheet of glass reflecting a hidden, brightly lit actor.

Engineer Henry Dircks designed it and lecturer John Henry Pepper made it work in a real theater, which is why it is called Pepper's ghost. More than a century later, Disney used the same principle for the dancing ghosts in the Haunted Mansion ballroom.

Where the creepy house look came from

The spooky building itself came from books. Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), set in a haunted castle, is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel, and its secret passages and supernatural forces became genre staples, per Britannica.

The American haunted house look is newer. After World War I, ornate Victorian homes fell out of fashion and came to look old and excessive, art historian Sarah Burns argues, as summarized by JSTOR Daily.

Painters like Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield painted lonely Victorian houses, and in the 1930s Walker Evans photographed abandoned ones. Many sat empty or decaying during the Depression, which is exactly when Americans started building Halloween haunts.

Film locked the image in. Alfred Hitchcock modeled the Bates house in Psycho (1960) on Edward Hopper's 1925 painting House by the Railroad, as Artnet recounts. Disney's Haunted Mansion drew on real houses too, including the Winchester Mystery House, according to Smithsonian. That is why so many haunts today still put a peeling Victorian facade out front.

The first haunted house attraction (about 1915)

Stage and fairground horror grew fast around 1900. In Paris, the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol opened in 1897 in the Pigalle district and became famous for gory on-stage horror, and Smithsonian notes its director judged shows by how many people fainted.

The oldest walk-through haunted house you can still visit is English. Hollycombe Steam in the Country says its Haunted Cottage was built by Orton & Spooner around 1915, probably for a showwoman named Flora Collins, and calls it "the world's oldest haunted house."

It is one of the earliest purpose-built haunted attractions on record, not necessarily the very first. It traveled the fairs with later owners, including John Thomas Cooper of the Showmen's Guild and "Pepper" Biddell, until Hollycombe bought it in 1991, restored it and put it back on its Liphook, Hampshire fairground in 2017.

Want to see it? Hollycombe opens from spring through October, with Glow Night events on select autumn evenings. Check the Hollycombe calendar before you travel, since the fairground is not open daily.

Ghost trains and dark rides

Rides took the same idea on wheels. Blackpool Pleasure Beach in England imported a "Pretzel" dark ride from the US in 1930 and renamed it the Ghost Train, after a hit London play. It was the first ride to use that name, per Wikipedia's history of the ride.

When did haunted houses start in America?

Amusement parks already had dark rides and ghost-themed funhouses, and Arizona newspapers described Halloween parties with haunted houses as early as 1910, per Phoenix's Heritage Square museum. The tradition really spread in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. Halloween pranks had grown into real vandalism, and towns looked for ways to keep kids busy, Halloween historian Lisa Morton told Smithsonian magazine.

"They came in about the same time as trick-or-treat did," Morton said. Families decorated basements and ran "house-to-house" parties, so kids could walk from one scary scene to the next.

A 1937 party pamphlet quoted by Smithsonian describes a "trail of terror" with raw liver on the walls, damp sponges hanging from the ceiling and a dark tunnel to crawl through. Swap the liver for animatronics and you have a modern haunt.

Disney's Haunted Mansion (1969)

The haunted house became a cultural icon when Disney built one. Artist Harper Goff sketched the first concept in 1952, and the mansion's exterior in New Orleans Square was finished by 1963, per the Disney Parks Blog.

Then it sat empty for years while Imagineers worked on the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. The Haunted Mansion finally opened on August 9, 1969, the first major Disney attraction to open without Walt Disney's direct supervision.

Within a week, Disneyland set what was then its highest single-day attendance. Lisa Morton told Smithsonian that many professional haunters point to the Haunted Mansion as "the start of the haunted attraction industry," because its moving, singing ghosts made sheets in trees look quaint.

The 1970s: Jaycees haunts and Knott's Scary Farm

Within a few years of the Mansion, haunted houses spread across the country through the Jaycees (the United States Junior Chamber). Local chapters built haunts in empty buildings to raise money for charity, and Smithsonian notes the idea was popular enough to get its own how-to guide.

The WSAI Haunted House in Cincinnati, run by the Sycamore-Deer Park Jaycees in 1970, is often cited as the first verifiable Jaycees haunt. That is the line Wikipedia's haunted attraction history draws, crediting the Jaycees national office.

Theme parks joined in 1973. Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, ran its first Halloween Haunt for three nights, October 26 to 28, 1973, and it sold out nightly the next year, per Wikipedia's Knott's Scary Farm history.

That first Haunt also points to the biggest design change in haunt history: live scare actors. Wikipedia's account says ride operator Bud Hurlbut decided static props were not enough and put on a gorilla suit to scare people himself.

Not every 1970s haunt was secular fun. Smithsonian notes that Jerry Falwell and Liberty University introduced one of the first "hell houses" in 1972, a church-run walk-through meant to warn rather than entertain.

The 1980s: slasher films, a fire and new safety rules

Slasher movies fed haunted houses all through the 1980s. "If you went to a haunted house in the 1980s and 1990s, you would've seen a lot of Freddy Krueger, Jason, Pinhead," Haunted House Association president Larry Kirchner told Smithsonian.

Then came the worst day in haunt history. On May 11, 1984, a fire in the Haunted Castle at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey, killed eight teenagers, as CBS New York recounts. The building had no sprinklers or smoke detectors, per Wikipedia's account of the fire.

New Jersey and other states passed new fire-safety laws. The 1988 edition of the national Life Safety Code (NFPA 101) added rules for "special amusement buildings": sprinklers, smoke detection in dark areas and exit markings that show up in an emergency, per this fire-protection explainer.

Local rules vary, and very small haunts can qualify for exceptions. The tougher rules also squeezed the volunteer Jaycees haunts, which were already being outspent by new professional haunts, Kirchner told Smithsonian.

The 1990s to today: how haunts changed

Big theme parks turned Halloween into a season. Universal Studios Florida ran its first Halloween event, Fright Nights, in 1991 and renamed it Halloween Horror Nights in 1992, per Universal's own blog. Movie-licensed houses, built around famous horror films, became a calling card.

Independent haunts got huge. Reign of Terror in Thousand Oaks, California, fills 35,000 square feet with 145 rooms and 12 themed sections, per its official site, and it even runs a "Lights Out" night where you walk through in the dark.

Dark rides kept upgrading too. On October 31, 2024, the Dutch theme park Efteling opened Danse Macabre on the site of its old Spookslot haunted castle. Its seats ride an 18-meter turntable that rises, tilts and spins "like a coin," per Efteling.

Year-round haunts are growing too. Universal opened Universal Horror Unleashed at AREA15 in Las Vegas on August 14, 2025, as a permanent haunt with four houses; its Scarecrow: The Reaping house is rated Very Positive on Morty.

Visit the history yourself

You can still walk through several chapters of this story. Here is how each landmark connects to the timeline, with how Morty users rate it.

The white-columned Haunted Mansion at Disneyland under a stormy purple sky

Disneyland's Haunted Mansion (1969). This is the ride that turned haunts into an industry, and its ballroom is the 1862 Pepper's ghost trick at full scale. It is rated Overwhelmingly Positive on its Morty page, and it is included with park admission.

Going this fall? Disneyland runs the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay, Haunted Mansion Holiday, from August 21, 2026, through early January 2027, so the classic version returns early in 2027. The ballroom ghost trick is still there under the decorations.

The Magic Kingdom twin opened with the park on October 1, 1971, and is the top-rated haunted attraction on Morty: Overwhelmingly Positive. Watch the ballroom from your Doom Buggy and you will see the glass trick in action.

Phantom Manor's Victorian mansion on its hill at Disneyland Paris on a sunny day

Phantom Manor, Disneyland Paris (1992). Disney's darker European version opened with the park on April 12, 1992, and its house is the Victorian haunted mansion look in one picture. It is rated Very Positive on its Morty page.

A green-faced monster scare actor reaching toward the camera in Ghost Town Streets at Knott's Scary Farm

Knott's Scary Farm (1973). The first theme park Halloween night is where roaming scare actors took over. It runs select nights from September 17 to October 31, 2026, per Knott's. The Ghost Town Streets scare zone is rated Very Positive on Morty, and the Cinema Slasher maze, the park's top-rated, is Very Positive.

A werewolf figure lunging through a curtained window under red light at Reign of Terror

Reign of Terror (today's pro haunt). This is what the professional era looks like: 145 rooms under one roof in a shopping center. General admission runs $39.99 to $49.99 in 2026 depending on the night, per its official site, and it is rated Very Positive on its Morty page.

Costumed zombies follow a lantern-carrying actor past a stone mausoleum at HellsGate haunted house

HellsGate, Lockport, Illinois. A mansion in the woods southwest of Chicago, it keeps the old haunted-house-on-the-hill idea alive with live actors. It runs select nights through November 1 and is rated Very Positive on its Morty page.

Find a haunted house near you on Morty

As of October 2026, Morty lists more than 6,000 haunted houses, trails, mazes, hayrides, scare zones and yard displays. Each shows how Morty users rate it, so you can see how a haunt lands with people before you drive out.

Browse haunted houses near you, or start with California's haunted houses, where Knott's started the theme park Halloween night. Rate the ones you visit in the Morty app.

FAQs

Who invented haunted houses?

No single person. Schröpfer, Philidor and Robertson pioneered ghost shows, fairground builders like Orton & Spooner made walk-through ghost houses, Depression-era parents built basement versions, and Disney's Imagineers set the modern standard.

Are haunted houses older than escape rooms?

Much older. The first real-life escape game ran in Japan in 2007, almost a century after Orton & Spooner's ghost house. Read the full story in when did escape rooms start, and if horror themes worry you, see are escape rooms scary.

Are haunted houses safe today?

Commercial haunts are much safer than before 1984. Since the 1988 Life Safety Code, haunted houses count as "special amusement buildings" that generally need sprinklers, smoke detection and emergency exit markings, though local enforcement varies.

What was the first theme park Halloween event?

Knott's Berry Farm's Halloween Haunt, now Knott's Scary Farm, first ran October 26 to 28, 1973, in Buena Park, California. It is widely described as the first and longest-running theme park Halloween event.

Do haunted houses still use Victorian stage tricks?

Yes. Pepper's ghost, the angled-glass illusion from 1862, still makes the ballroom ghosts dance in Disney's Haunted Mansion.

Final thoughts

Pick one era and go see it this October: a Disney mansion, a theme park scream night or a local pro haunt. Find one near you on Morty, then rate it so the next group knows what they are walking into.