Halloween Archives - Mom's Guide To Travel

Oct 30 2015

6 Intensely Thrilling Haunted Houses

This post originally appeared on The Hipmunk’s Tailwind blog.

Aside from candy corn, Jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, and ghosts, there’s nothing that screams Halloween more than a haunted house. During the month of October, thousands of small-scale haunted houses crop up around the States, many at local festivals, churches, or schools. However, for those brave souls, there are some truly terrifying worlds out there to explore. Check out our list below for some of the most impressive (and horrifying) haunted houses to see this Halloween!

That is, of course, if you dare.

1. Escape the Great Room at Headless Horseman

Spanning 65 acres of farmland in Ulster Park, NY, the Headless Horseman complex of terrors is a favorite amongst haunted-house-enthusiasts looking for an all outdoor experience. With naturally landscaped forbidden forests, eerie ponds, and darkly expansive cornfields, visitors are never quite sure what’s lurking in the shadows. Plus, they’ve got ten separate attractions, including a dizzying corn maze, a spooky hayride, 7 haunted houses, and the newly curated experience “The Great Room Escape,” in which visitors have to figure out how to escape a room of bolted doors and locked windows.

2. Check Into the Pennhurst Asylum

Housed in an abandoned asylum in Spring City, PA, the Pennhurst Asylum is a wildly popular Halloween attraction. Fitted with high-tech animatronics, digital sound, artifacts recovered from the original asylum, and a bevy of realistic actors, a walk-through this dilapidated hospital is no joke. For those bold (or crazy) enough to make it through the narrow hallways of the hospital, the asylum offers two more haunted experiences in the Dungeon of Lost Souls or the Tunnel of Terror.

3. Explore the Dent Schoolhouse

Touted as Cincinnati’s scariest schoolhouse, the Dent Schoolhouse is the perfect haunted pick for those interested not only in shocks and thrills, but also in a compelling story. As legend goes, the very real schoolhouse opened in 1894 and was celebrated for decades as a top-notch school. That is, at least until 1942, when several students mysteriously disappeared. To find out what happened to those kiddoes, grab a group of friends and spend an evening exploring the spooky nooks and crannies of Dent.

4. Get Lost on the 13th Floor

Based around the mythology of the oft-missing thirteenth floor, Denver’s largest haunted house, 13th Floor, brings together spooks and thrills for an experience visitors aren’t soon to forget. New attractions for this year includeHallow House, a skin-tingling walk-through featuring manic clowns, Undead: What Lies Beneath, an exploration through an abandoned research facility complete with empty labs and shattered test tubes, and Feral Moon, which winds participants through a large and creepy cemetery.

5. Join the Cult of The Summoning

Based out of the Scarehouse in Pittsburgh, The Summoning is about as thrilling as any haunted house walkthrough could be. The experience takes you all the way back to 1932, to a time where secrets, mysteries, and betrayal were rife in the 100-year-old house where The Summoning is set. Visitors will find themselves twisting through darkened hallways, all while the chants of ancient ritual pulse in the background. The question is, are those who visit this house the initiates of some new order or are they instead, the sacrifices?

6. Commune with Freaks at the House of Shock

With live music and a full service bar, this New Orleans horror staple is the perfect pick for the those looking for something rollicking. Occupying over 25,000 square feet, the House of Shock boasts an impressive array of skin-tingling attractions for its 2015 line-up: Bordello of Freaks, Laff in the Dark, and the traditional House of Shock haunted house. No matter the attraction, the special effects at House of Shock are infamously realistic and will leave the fearless quaking in their boots and reaching for a strong cocktail.

Oct 30 2013

Snapshot Of Kids’ Location On Halloween With Glympse Track N Treat App

Every Halloween my 9-year-old goes out with a best friend of his for the night. My girlfriend escorts them through her neighborhood, hanging back a little as they approach door-after-door like big boys. This has been their tradition for the past 4 years. Eventually, she (and I) will give them even more travel independence but today is not the day.

I live 20 minutes away from them so I’m never entirely sure where they’re going and I rely on my friend’s call or her text when she’s on her way to my house to drop my son off. This year we might just simplify the whole process and give Glympse’s Track N Treat app a try.

Glympse is a temporary location sharing app that allows invited users to see your location in real time. It’s GPS meets Maps meets “Where you at!?”

It’s a neat app to track someone’s movement but I gotta admit, it’s a bit NSA. Guess you can call me Jack Bower. For Halloween, that’s exactly what I want.

On October 18th, Glympse unveiled their Track N Treat app for iPhone, specifically to enable parents, guardians, and friends to keep an eye on children this Halloween. Parents can set the app to share a location and send their phone with a child or other adult and watch in real-time as their kids go from house to house. The company also has a main tracking app that CEO Bryan Trussel says “is perfect for travelers and travel scenarios where you want to find your companion or share your location with one person or many, for up to four hours at a time. Often we find people using it on road trips, in amusement parks, or sharing it with others while they travel abroad, so someone always knows that they are safe. We inadvertently share our location on a daily basis — either via phone or text message — and we want to make it simple, easy and interactive, so others can watch where you are while you travel from destination to destination.”

My husband and I tested the app out as I was leaving to make a grocery run. After downloading the app, I had to complete four steps before he was able to track my movements.

Step 1: Let people know who I am.

Step 2: Input the number or email address, manually or from my address book of who should be able to track me.

Step 3: Send them an invitation.

Step 4: Enable location-sharing for Trick or Treating in this case. You have to allow Glympse access to your locations. iPhone will ask that question almost immediately after Step 2.

The recipient will get a link that they can click on through their phone or their computer, through a web browser and see where you’re at! Now my husband can “see” me and watch all the little detours I make when I say “I’m going to the grocery store.” But the good thing is, I can go to Step 4 in the app and pause location sharing if I want.

Criticism: There needs to be a Step 5: Stop Glympse. Other than shutting out of the app or pausing location sharing, it’s not intuitive how you stop someone from being able to track you or stop the app from running.

Also, the app is similar to any GPS app as far as draining your battery, so you’ll want to shut it down once you’re done with your trip.

Overall, the Glympse Track N Treat app is pretty cool, simple to use, and can give parents a little piece of mind on Halloween as their little goblins take on the neighborhood for the night. If you want to get the free app for yourself for your iPhone, you can download it on iTunes. Hope you and your kids have a safe night out.

Oct 11 2012

Trick or Treat With a Purpose Thanks to UNICEF

When my youngest son got sick with cancer, my oldest was quick to say that he wanted to do something for him to raise money for his care and the other children on the Pediatric Oncology floor. His idea for the summer was to start a lemonade stand and sell different flavors of frozen lemonade. I loved his idea and was so proud that he took a moment to not only think about his little brother but to also think about the other kids he saw. He is a natural helper so the UNICEF Trick or Treat program is right up his alley.

Our household isn’t really sold on Halloween. It’s an annual debate between my husband and I about how much we should let the kids do and as much as we’re not into the “celebration” of the trivialities of the day, we recognize how much joy it brings our kids to dress up. Shoot, my oldest doesn’t wait to dress up for Halloween. I get my money’s worth for his costumes – he dons a mask and cape monthly.

The UNICEF Trick or Treat program is a happy medium. He can dress up in his costume of choice and raise money for peers in developing countries. The program has been running for 62 years and “has helped motivate kids to become active global citizens while teaching the fundamental value of helping others.” What a productive way to trick or treat and an easy way to show kids how they can raise money for others. I have a great idea to help my son be successful in this fundraising activity: work through our church and recruit some other kids to help in the efforts. We might even get that frozen lemonade stand up and running as well.

If you’d like to motivate your child as well and get them trick or treating with UNICEF, click here to see how your family can participate. Hopefully, this will squash the debate in our house about Halloween and change it into a meaningful giving-holiday instead of a cavity-filled receiving one.

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