HAUNTED HOUSE features over 800 unique newspaper advertisements for American haunted houses of the 1970s and 1980s, the golden age of the local haunted attraction. The book spans twenty years and all fifty states and includes all manner of haunted attractions: haunted house, haunted hayrides, haunted forests, haunted alleyways, haunted theaters, and even includes other seasonal ads for drive-in spook shows and costume shops.
As an 80s Halloween kid, printed haunted house ads were an essential and core memory of the Halloween season. I would race home from school every Friday in October, grabbing the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper on the kitchen table. In it was the Friday weekend entertainment section, filled with pages of these local haunted house ads. I can still remember the smell of the black ink as it rubbed off onto my fingers and the crinkled feel of the newsprint paper in my hands as I quickly checked off the houses we had already visited and those we begged our parents to hit next. The spookier the ad, the higher on the list it went.
This is a must-own for those of us old enough to remember all those great old ads and an essential history lesson for those who aren't.
