By Charly SHELTON

Halloween haunt season in Southern California is crowded. Universal has its movie monsters, Knott’s has more than half a century of experience filling the fog with original monsters and Six Flags Magic Mountain has been frightening guests on and off for decades.

But this year there is an interesting connection between the latter two. Following the 2024 merger of Cedar Fair and Six Flags, Knott’s Berry Farm and Magic Mountain are now sister parks. And after visiting both Knott’s Scary Farm and Fright Fest this season, I think we are starting to see what that relationship can mean.

Knott’s Scary Farm remains, unsurprisingly, the king of haunts. Not only did Knott’s originate the theme park haunt takeover concept in 1973, the park routinely brings some of the best mazes of the year to the SoCal scene to keep their crown shining. The event has 10 mazes this year, including two new additions, Inked and Unearthed, and both demonstrate different sides of what Knott’s does particularly well.

Unearthed is enormous. Guests become part of a search-and-rescue team entering an excavation site where the discovery of ancient tablets has awakened something that should have stayed buried. The scale of the sets and props is incredible with massive underground chambers and creatures that make the maze feel much larger than the theatre lobby containing it.

All it was missing was more monsters hiding inside all of it. Many of the performers I encountered were essentially showpieces: snake people rising from beneath a smoky laser effect or towering stilt-walkers creating impressive silhouettes. They looked fantastic but there were fewer traditional scares than I expected. Adding a few more monsters lurking in those gigantic sets as the season progresses could turn an already impressive maze into something genuinely memorable.

Inked takes almost the opposite approach. Its story follows washed-up 1930s cartoonist Mortimer Morbid discovering he can bring his creations to life with a blood sacrifice and walking through the maze feels like stepping into an old cartoon come to life – like if Toontown was scary. It’s goofy, colorful but not necessarily scary. That’s fine; not every maze needs to leave you curled up in the fetal position.

What fascinated me was the technology. Projection effects blend animation with physical scenery in ways I haven’t seen anyone attempt at this scale before. More importantly, it feels like the beginning of something. The technology being demonstrated in Inked could be applied to future scares and I am sure we will see increasingly clever – and probably much scarier – uses of it in coming years.

Then there is Fright Fest.

Longtime readers may remember that I have not been particularly fond of Magic Mountain’s Halloween event in recent years. But two of my favorite mazes ever were found many years ago at Fright Fest when the event was the best in SoCal. Neither maze involved elaborate scenery or expensive effects. One was essentially chain-link fencing, a strobe light and asylum inmates who could disappear completely in a wide-open room. Another used only fake hedges, plant trellises and performers in ghillie suits (according to the Internet, a ghillie suit is “a 3D camouflage garment covered in loose strips of burlap, jute or synthetic fibers that break up a person’s human outline and blend into foliage”) and it was the scariest maze I’ve been through anywhere.

Fright Fest has traditionally been at its best when it remembers that you don’t need a giant animatronic demon or a million-dollar intellectual property license. You need darkness, fog and someone hiding exactly where I don’t expect them. This year, they remembered.

Carnage at Magic Mountain is just a basic clown maze but its real strength is old-fashioned haunted house craftsmanship. Carefully placed lights obscure performers until the last possible second. Passages double back so monsters can strike repeatedly. Shadows hide openings. Misdirection sends your attention one way while the scare comes from another.

I walk through a lot of haunts and generally see scares coming a mile away. Carnage got me repeatedly – on two separate trips through the maze. My hat is off to them.

But perhaps the most interesting attraction at Fright Fest this year is Wolves’ Blood because it demonstrates what the newly combined Six Flags organization could become.

The maze was designed in collaboration with Knott’s Scary Farm designer Gus Krueger, whose work includes Eight Fingers Nine, The Dead of Winter and Trick or Treat. For Wolves’ Blood, Krueger headed north to Magic Mountain with a high-concept premise: Guests travel through the town of Daylight’s End on their way to see an underground metal band called Wolves’ Blood. Unfortunately, the band members actually are werewolves.

The journey winds through ransacked shops, a record store, a bar and backstage areas before reaching the concert itself, where werewolves are shredding on electric guitars – and on human flesh.

It feels unlike anything I have seen Magic Mountain attempt successfully before. There is a coherent story, detailed environments, humor and a payoff. It has the kind of place-building Knott’s has spent decades refining, transplanted into a park that has historically been stymied by attempting that.

The combination of Scary Farm’s detail and story alongside Fright Fest’s back-to-basics pure scare engineering is exciting. When Cedar Fair acquired Knott’s Berry Farm in 1997, Scary Farm creatives helped spread decades of Halloween experience throughout the other parks across the company. Now Knott’s and Magic Mountain are part of the same Six Flags family, and Wolves’ Blood shows what can happen when those creative resources begin crossing corporate boundaries.

Magic Mountain should not become Knott’s Scary Farm North. Its best haunts have their own identity built around darkness, misdirection and wonderfully simple tricks. But combine those instincts with some of the storytelling and production expertise down the freeway in Buena Park? Now I’m very interested to see what next comes out of the fog.