Ghostly Manor Haunted House in Sandusky, Ohio

September 29th, 2009

(4 votes)

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On a Monday night this early in the season I couldn’t find any Haunts to visit until Bill and Jayme Criscione offered to open up Ghostly Manor just to give me a chance to see his show. I am glad he did because Ghostly Manor is an impressive Haunt and I really enjoyed my visit.

Ghostly Manor is actually a family thrill center with a skating rink, arcade, XD motion theater and the Haunt. I have visited many year round Haunts and have come to expect less from them, but Ghostly Manor completely breaks the stereotype. The show isn’t just good for a year round show, its just flat out good!

The first thing you notice at Ghostly Manor is the facade. Hands down, the best facade I have ever seen. You can see a few shots of it in the gallery below but trust me, it is even more impressive in person. I’m going to talk to Bill about doing an article about it for the magazine in the future because it is a piece of art. The Dragon is massive and is integrated into the building beautifully. The Nethercraft panels look great, the Scarefactory climbers are a nice touch, and Creative Visions even chipped in and helped integrate some elements. Bill also added a light show set to some Midnight Syndicate tracks and the whole production is a world class show.

But Ghostly Manor is much more than a gorgeous facade. The Haunt itself has amazing set decoration with a great deal of detail throughout. The scenes are lit with great care so that the detail is highlighted but still dark to keep things scary. The sound is also fantastic which is a combination of a great sound system and a good choice of music and effects. The Haunt has a lot of animatronics in it so that it can run with fewer staff in the non-Halloween season but still provide plenty of scares. For the Halloween season though, Ghostly Manor deploys many actors through out the Haunt to give an even more intense experience.

One thing that is obvious when you go behind the scenes is that Bill runs an organized Haunt. You also notice that the actor areas are designed to allow actors to perform multiple scares and even move to other zones and scare again. It seems like Bill has come up with a very efficient layout and system to function with less actors without the guest realizing it. I thought there were 2x to 3x the number of actors he actually had because it was so effective.

While the Haunt has plenty of animatronic, I can’t remember for sure but I think each room had at least one actor scare. They came from drop panels, closets, doors, and even from above. The actors had perfect timing and great make-up and costumes.

I liked the variety of scenes that Ghostly Manor had and was surprised how long the show was – Bill packed a lot of Haunt in a small footprint.

You can see from the facade to the attention to detail in the Haunt that Bill cares a lot about putting on a quality show. They have done a fantastic job on the Haunt and the comments form customers show their customers feel the same way. Haunters will be impressed with the sets and decoration and will also appreciate the efficient design Bill has that allows him to maximize what he gets from his actors.

Ghostly Manor is a gorgeous Haunt but also a unique situation because of the year round nature of the business. But take it from me, Bill has managed to create a year round attraction without sacrificing anything in the show. And on top of all that, Bill and his wife Jayme are fantastic hosts and great people.

Thank you for going to all the trouble you did to let me see your show!