The season of screams and scares is officially upon us, and what better way to celebrate that than to go to a haunted house? Students can visit Scarefest! Or Hush Haunted Attraction, Abandoned Acres, DarkSyde, Rotten Manor or any of the 74 haunted attractions in the state of Michigan, but you certainly can’t go to them all. This begs the million-dollar question: which to choose? There are many options, but I’ll focus on the new and elusive: Eloise Asylum.
If you’ve lived in Michigan since 2021, there’s little chance you haven’t heard the name Eloise Asylum. Located in Westland, this haunted attraction promises cutting-edge, high-tech scares in what was once an asylum with a troubled history. There’s an unavoidable ten-dollar parking fee, as Eloise Asylum only permits visitors to park in their designated parking lot— park anywhere else, and you’ll be ticketed. Speaking of tickets, I strongly suggest that anyone who intends to visit Eloise Asylum purchases their tickets online. If you don’t, you’ll end up in a line stretching far behind both the general admissions and VIP lines. Though, even if you purchase tickets online, you should plan to arrive quite some time before your experience starts to ensure that you’ll be admitted at that time.
Eloise Asylum gives visitors four options: the Haunted Attraction (split into two parts: The Asylum and The Basement), the Eloise Escape Rooms (Escape the Asylum and The Heist), Paranormal Investigations and History Tours. For my visit, I chose the most popular option: the Haunted Attraction. When you arrive at the front of the line, you’re directed to whichever attraction is stamped on your ticket. You enter the asylum through the large doors for the Haunted Attraction, once you take a left turn at the door, you’ve begun your experience. The first part of the haunted attraction— the Haunted Asylum— was terrifying. The interior is just as intricate and realistic as they’ve advertised, with the place looking exactly like the set of a horror movie.
Each room you enter and hallway you pass through has its scare, whether it’s a worker hiding in the shadows, crawling on the floor behind you, or just getting up close and personal in horrifying make-up and costume. The employees are allowed to touch you, but you’re not allowed to touch them back. The workers will alert you of this while you’re waiting in line, and if you do not want to be touched, you can request a glow stick bracelet so the scare actors know not to touch you. However, if you forgo the glowstick, the employees will brush your hair and cheeks; they’ll grab your shoulders and ankles, and at one point, one of them even tickled my ribcage.

The asylum is great. But, around the midpoint of our time in the asylum, we caught up with the group in front of us, and consequently, the group behind us caught up with us as well. This ruined the rest of the asylum for all of us because you can’t be jump-scared or feel any suspense when you watch the workers scare the group in front of you and know when they’re going to do it to you as well. However, my spirits were renewed as we exited the Haunted Asylum and entered the line for the second part of the haunted attraction: the Haunted Basement.
Unfortunately, my spirits quickly plummeted from disappointment as we walked through the Haunted Basement. I would say that the asylum was scary, however, I don’t believe that the Haunted Basement was scary at all. Eloise Asylum boasts high-tech scares, and that technology was part of the reason why the asylum was scary— the moving sets and props increase the horror— but that’s because the technology was used sparingly. That was not the case for the Haunted Basement. It was almost like a completely different haunted attraction, as the scares went from primarily scare actors with the support of sets and a few animatronics, to mainly sets and animatronics with very few scare actors. Another scare reducer was that the basement was fairly bright, much brighter than the asylum, and it was also more crowded. I’d say that the basement was more like a museum.
Subpar is the word I think best describes this entire experience. I had hope after leaving the Haunted Asylum, but that wasn’t because I was hoping that the basement would be like the asylum; I was hoping that it would be better, but it wasn’t. The asylum was average, the basement was below average, and this is an experience that people pay a 45-dollar ticket plus tax for, not to mention the ten-dollar mandatory parking fee. The cost was nowhere near worth the experience; thinking of the money I spent was the most horrifying part of that night. The tickets are more expensive than those of other haunted houses, yet the experience isn’t all that different. If you’re interested in the options Eloise Asylum has besides the haunted house, then it’s reasonable to give them a chance; as I’ve said, the asylum, the basement— all of it looks amazing, and I did enjoy looking at all of the different sets and animatronics, but I wanted to be scared, not impressed. If you strictly want a scary haunted house experience, I would not suggest this one.