Haunt Tour 2012 - Day 5

Graystone Haunted Manor
www.GraystoneHauntedManor.com
Longview - Texas

Graystone Haunted Manor is 3 haunts plus a midway.  Graystone manages to pull off low budget ambiance which makes this attraction work.   The venue is located outside of Longview in a semi rural area of low rolling hills.  The result at night is a much darker dark than a city boy like me is used to.   They use this darkness to great advantage.   The site is grassy with a few huge old oak trees.  Add to this real burning torches as the primary source of light and layer of light fog everywhere and you've got a great backdrop to build a haunted attraction.

The midway, which acts as a hub to the 3 attractions has a photo op station, a fortune teller and an outdoor movie theatre complete with concession stand.   (Young Frankenstein was playing on the big screen.)

Oak Raven Cemetery is an outdoor walk-though attraction.    The trail meanders around tombstones and tombs while the occasional zombie and ghoul molests you.   There are a couple of animatronics that are well place.   I like the use of 8 dollar LED solar lawn lights sprinkled around the haunt.  The chopped off the mounting stem and just tossed them on the ground behind small features as accent lighting.

The Manor is the highlight of the trip.  This is mostly an indoor 'granny has gone crazy' walk-though.   The tour starts with an introductory visit with a projected talking head bust.  The level of detail was good, the passageways a bit narrow.  It almost felt like a trailer haunt size wise.  You exit the Manor via the back door and have to walk around the house to get back to the midway.  The best  scare was the guy in a camo suit that rustled around in the crawl space of the house and burst out after a distraction from the other side.  Nicely done.

The Labyrinth of Time is an outdoor black wall walk-through.  I was disappointed with this attraction.   It was a lot like walking through a Spirit Halloween store.   Walls were made with 4x8 sheets of OSB painted black.   Periodically you'd hit a room or open area full of props from Spirit.   The young couple in front of me repeated exclaimed how not scary it was.  In a year of two with some polish this can become  a stronger element of the haunt.

The overall vibe was a fun family friendly event.  At $16 for general admission it was a deal.