5 Halloween Parties Too Badass to Be Real (That Totally Are)
#2. The White House Halloween Party
Remember when we said you can arrange a kickass party literally anywhere? We weren't kidding. This is what you get at a White House costume party:
nytimes
Surrealism and massive balls.
While you may not immediately think of the White House for your list of "best party places in the world," people tend to forget that it is one of the best-equipped places for most occasions -- up to and including getting wild. In 1975, Gerald Ford's daughter, Susan, held her high school's senior prom there, and for good reason: the White House has everything anybody would need for the best freaking party ever. It features a movie theater, a ballroom, plenty of bedrooms, its own bowling alley, a basketball court and a swimming pool ... hell, there's even a hot tub.
What's more, as you can see above, the festivities are now hosted by a President of the United States who is an unabashed Star Wars and comic book nerd. This translates to the exact thing you'd hope for and expect:
The White House
That's a fantastic President of the United States costume.
Hey, look at this! It's somebody dressed up as Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter:
fanpop
Hang on ...
Yeah, that person would be Johnny Depp. Also at the party in 2009 was Tim Burton and Deep Roy (the guy who played all of the Oompa Loompas in the Willy Wonka remake).
fanpop
Sasha looks adorably terrifying.
See, this is why you want to grow up to be president, kids. You get to use your status as the most powerful man in the world to have R2-D2 stare down an Ent.
nytimes
"Could have used you on Endor, beep beep."
#1. The Queen Mary's Dark Harbor
As you leave the trick-or-treating stage of your life behind and enter the beer-and-wacky-dick-costumes phase of Halloween celebrating, you tend to be less about the candy and more about the partying. Woe is you, however, when you find out that Halloween parties tend to be pretty much the same as your regular Friday nights, only everyone wears even dumber clothes than usual and there are little plastic bats everywhere.
Yet with the right mindset (and some cash to burn), you can arrange a kickass Halloween at the Queen Mary at Long Beach, California.
queenmarydarkharbor
That's the one where they refuse to let out Cabin B340 because of the murdered little girl living there.
It's your average retired ocean liner that's been converted into a hotel/museum. And while that might seem more or less like the trifecta of lameness to most, the owners of the Queen Mary took a double take on their property and realized that what they had was a creepy-ass giant ship (that looks a bit like the Titanic for good measure) that is also a creepy-ass hotel.
nerdsociety
Using a corpse as a mattress? Eh, we've done worse.
So they have taken to annually converting the Queen Mary into a giant Halloween complex for an event called the Dark Harbor. The end result is the lovechild of The Shining's Overlook Hotel and a giant ghost ship and HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!
nerdsociety
He's there to take your bags, don't be rude.
Yeah. The Halloween-ready ship features, among other things, three onboard and two onshore mazes, some 160 monsters, all the special effects you can eat and some big ass pyrotechnics.
nerdsociety
It's not a holiday without pillars of fire.
The horror action that takes place in and around the "damned" ship -- which, as they helpfully remind you during the event, is rumored to be haunted in real life as well -- follows a different script every year. This year's story revolves around a trio of she-demons who make it their mission to hunt the shit out of everyone entering the boat after sunset -- up to, including and especially you.
nerdsociety
The service is impeccable in that respect.
Oh, hell yeah. This is the kind of haunted house you get when the people setting it up have some serious money behind it.
pitchengine
We hope they also have some serious firepower.
And in case you still think this is kid stuff, please note that there will be boobs there (video NSFW).
Happy Halloween, indeed.
queenmarydarkharbor
Sleep tight.
For more Halloween fun for the whole family, Jacopo asks that you pick up a copy of Little Goblins Ten, a cute little children's book by the very same Pamela Jane that Jacopo is currently writing a Cracked-inspired children's book with.
If you're going as Batman this Halloween, be sure to check out The 5 Most Impractical Aspects of Superhero Costumes. Or check out Slutty Girls in Slutty Halloween Costumes: A Tribute.
say what u want about obama, and they do, but the guy sounds like he'd be the s**t to hang out with.
Replywouldn't be so bad if it wasn't at the expense of the taxpayer
I'm normally into Halloween thriller attractions with guys in scary costumes paid to terrorize you, but I'll definitely make an exception for the steampunk attraction in New York. I'd like to see the imaginative outside-the-box concepts they came up with in action.
ReplyIsn't House on the Rock the place in Neil Gaiman's American Gods? I had no idea it was an actual place, much less a terrifying one.
ReplyWell Neil Gaiman did mention it being real in the novel. But it's kinda unbelievable that someplace that makes you trip balls can exist in our dimensional plane of existence without summoning an elder god.
I love the House on the Rock, but it can be a little creepy at times. Still, always fascinating.
Reply"Taint-curling horror?" That's incredibly foul, even for Cracked.
ReplyAnd in totally unrelated news-#1 so that's where the 1 eyed shark fetus wound up.
Wow in an misguided attempt to be humane the Quakers sure created hell on earth with Eastern Pen. The conditions were basically enough to push all the prisoners to insanity and turn the guards and wardens into sadistic monsters. If anywhere is haunted that prison certainly is. The article doesn't even begin to cover the horror.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI absolutely agree. I click a link to see what a "mad chair" was. The hellishness just oozed off the page, and I have NEVER seen so many typos in 1 article supposedly professionally written in my life. Was it to add to the horror?
The funny thing is that the mad chair was one of the less disturbing on the list too. That was pretty sick.
Easter Pen probably doesn't even need any horror effects and actors to scare you s**tless. Just a simple tour with the guide graphically explaining every f**ked up thing that went on there combined with the atmosphere provided by the eerily dilapidated and rusted out husk of your surroundings may be more than enough to haunt your psyche for many nights. Oh, and then there's all paranormal phenomena that happens there. Yeah. By that time, you'll probably be too busy struggling with the mental image of prisoners being tortured by sadistic guards and/or slowly losing their sanity while in complete isolation to even care about the guy in the $15-dollar costume jumping out to try and spook you.
"...please note that there will be boobs there." Officially worth it now.
Replynever thought i'd have a reason to visit wisconsin.
ReplyI live about an hour away from THOTR. Trust me, it's worth it. Oh, we have great cheese too.
AND Jelly Belly factory tour! Harleys! .... and Madison, which makes the Tenderloin district heyday in SF look like a Disney picnic.
There's a haunted house type thing called Netherworld near where I live that's been consistently rated in the Top 13 Scariest Haunted Houses in the US. I've been there several times and each time was both amazing and horrifying. My favorites of their haunts (they have three each year) are the ones that also mess with your perception using mirrors, sets that move, and other things like that. One year there was part of a haunt that gave me some serious vertigo, and I've never had that kind of trouble before.
ReplyThat kid in the 2nd to last picture (with the shipping containers).... I think he likes turtles.
ReplyOn Saturday I went to a rave on the USS New Jersey, one of the most decorated battleships in the US.
ReplyAs a philly resident, I've been to ESP for the day tour and terror behind the walls. Hands down, the day tour is way more creepy. What the article neglects to tell you is that there's no real break in the groups let in-you end up seeing half of whats coming as it happens to the group ahead of you. Scary maybe if you're afraid of being led like cattle, but otherwise it's ok at best(Bates Motel not too far away is great,but the whole "they can touch you"factor is used more by the actors to feel up girls.real classy)
ReplyWent to the Steampunk Haunted House last night. It was awesome, but you oversold it a little bit. It was really really cool but not actually scary. That being said, I wish I'd found it earlier so I could go again!
Reply#3 has boobs
Replythat is all i was looking for
g'nite
Id definitely want to party at the white house :)
Reply"Halloween at House on the Rock." Hell f*****g yes. The place is amazing on any day of the year.
ReplyI love it around Christmas. The Infinity Room is so badass with snowy trees all around.
I loved going to Eastern State on Halloween. Scariest? Nah, even Field of Screams is scarier, but the atmosphere is perfect. Letting the gravity of where you're walking sink in makes the actors and effects inconsequential by comparison. I'd love to see it without all of the decor.
ReplyOh my God! People got to RIDE THAT CAROUSEL? The House on the Rock is one of my absolute favorite things about my state, and I would have LOVED to have ridden on that thing.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesSeriously, House on the Rock IS pretty creepy, but mostly just fascinating and fun. While some of the items there are definitely junk, or fake, there's plenty of stuff that has lots of historical significance, like music boxes, burma shave signs, newspaper articles. There's just no place quite like it on Earth, and I love it.
It is pretty creepy. The Infinity Room is the worst part, it moves up and down under your feet like a rope bridge. I couldn't do it and stayed near the beginning and listened to a robotic violin. My grandma also went to the Christmas celebration and got jealous. I guess they got one of the biggest collections of Santa statues in the world and stick them all over the house.
I finally visited House on the Rock this summer, and could *not* go into the Infinity Room (very afraid of heights). Altogether I thought the first two (out of three) tours were quite fascinating, and kept forgetting that this was all set in a *house*. However, by the third tour, I was like, "Okay... this is a bit excessive. There isn't anything else this guy could've done with all his money?"
It is a pretty cool place to visit. Note to self, bring out of state friend there at some point.
@erb816
Well he was going for an architectural degree, but...
And I have to say, he even stuck it to Wright in the title of the house. I just hope that FLW didn't preference his style, and that place was built with some integrity in the structure!
this list is backwards
ReplyNo it isn't. There's really nothing scary about supposedly haunted places, because ghosts aren't real.
The House on the Rock has to be the least scary place on the entire world. It's whimsicle and fun. The only mildly scary thing is the infinity room, and that's only because it messes with your perception. And the fortune teller machine creeped me out when I was little. As In a child. You're really reaching here.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesSo you're telling everybody a 200-foot sea monster isn't scary?
Yes, and there's plenty of bona fide penitentiaries that host haunted houses. In my neck of the woods there is the Mansfield Reformatory (in Ohio) that not only has a haunted house each year, but is also the setting to the Shawshank Redemption, Tango and Cash, Air Force One, and was the setting to the music video for Godsmack's Awake.
The House on the Rock is one of my favorite places in the world. You don't think the naked manikins hanging from the ceiling are creepy? What about the horsemen of the apocalypse hiding in the corner of the carousel room? Or the fact that the giant ass carousel is somewhat unsettling? Oh, and the creepy doll house room.. and the weird ass unmanned musical instruments room.. the place is f*****g bizarre. It's creepy if you have the right mindset. Obviously you haven't been there in a long ass time.. or you lost all of your imagination when you grew up.
When I was a kid the self playing instruments kinda freaked me out...