Baxter Avenue Morgue in Louisville, KY Delivers the Scares

September 22nd, 2009

(0 votes)

 Loading ...

After hitting Nightmare Haunted House in Lexington, I drove over to Louisville to visit the Baxter Avenue Morgue Haunted House on September 12th and it was worth the drive.

The haunted house was a little hard to find thanks to the street festival that blocked off the street I wanted to go down (apparently my GPS was not notified). When I got to the event, I saw the ground was littered with decaying corpses. Not sure if they were props, people or a combination I stepped gingerly over them. Shortly after that, Thriller began to play and at the appropriate part of the song, the corpses rose to their feet and began to do a great rendition of the Thriller Dance. Performed by the Terpsichore Dance Company, the show livened up the line as the crowd got into it.

I went into the haunt with a group of eight. We were led into a small ante-chamber where we got an overview of the rules for the Haunt. During this audio, a couple actors appeared from behind us looking nice and scary! One is the bandaged chain guy you see in the pic above – Pongo was his name though I thought it was Congo. The other was a buff looking dude with a machete. They scared the hell out of one woman in the group and I have to admit that the guttural growl that Pongo could do was very creepy and the way he drooled was more than enough to unsettle the people in the group.

After the initial rules, we exited into another section where an actor gave us some additional tips. Warren Vanderdark is the character’s name and he has become a bit of a celebrity thanks to his eerie performance at Baxter. The scenes were well decorated and lit just right. The space is fairly tight and dark which is obviously a great combination. The Haunt depends on its actors for the scares with little animatronics and the actors did a fantastic job (pretty amazing given it was opening weekend). Costumes, make-up and scenes were all just really well done.

I got to meet Jeff and Laura Bryant who are Directors at the show and have been with for four years (the event is nine years old) and had a nice chat with them. They love their event (which is obvious) and put on on a great show. I highly recommend visiting Baxter Avenue Morgue if you are ever in the area.

[Edit: change name to Pongo when I found out I had it wrong]