What better way to start the spooky season of October than with a visit to a haunted house? Luckily for those of us who enjoy getting scared by people dressed up in abnormal costumes that are just creepy to look at, Basement of the Dead in Aurora fulfills the dream of the Halloween period perfectly.

According to Buzzfeed, Basement of the Dead is America’s No. 1 haunted house, with numerous visitors every year. Recently I had a chance to visit Aurora’s amazing haunted basement, and I can safely say I was wonderfully covered with horror.

You’ll find Basement of the Dead in downtown Aurora at 42 W. New York Street. Rumor has it there is a specific reason for this location. Based on “illinoishauntedhouses.com,” in the late 1920s Walker Laundry opened at the same address on W. New York St. and became Aurora’s largest laundry company until 1964, when the boiler exploded, maiming two engineers. Basement of the Dead now belongs to these same two engineers, who make sure to scare, horrify and shock every living thing that makes the mistake of entering their basement.

But Basement of the Dead is more than just a haunted house. I was amazed by the fact that the DJ of the night, a creepy skeleton with long blonde braids, amused people who were waiting in the long line with great music while they were getting scared by a punk inmate, a human-sized lizard, a creepy Harley Quinn and a pumpkinhead monster on stilts. And it all happened next to the stand where you could buy pizza and soda drinks. That’s definitely something you don’t see every day, or every Halloween season for that matter.

However, the inside part of the basement caught me off guard. As a Halloween fanatic and an experienced person of Halloween-themed activities, I was expecting a haunted house with few actors dressed up in costumes that would just try to scare you. That was not the case. The Basement of the Dead was the scariest, most horrifying and shocking place I have ever been to. 

From the first moment you step in the basement the lights go off and everything is so dark that you have no clue where you are heading to. The little things you can spot in the pitch-black rooms are horrifying characters who scream, laugh and yell right in front of your face while they keep following you around.

Each room has different themes, such as doctors who are performing abnormal surgeries on patients, zombies who try to bite you every time you walk by their room, creepy nuns who are praying to dead people and more. This was purely the most horrifying haunted house I’ve ever experienced.

Besides the spooky parts, Basement of the Dead offers four different types of tickets. The basic General Admission ticket, costs $35 and includes the Basement of the Dead Haunted House and the Shattered Haunted House, a VIP-Skip the General Admission line that costs $45, a General Admission which costs $55 and includes two Haunted Houses at Basement of the Dead (Aurora, IL) & Disturbia Haunted Houses (Downers Grove, IL) and lastly a VIP-Skip the General Admission line costs $75, by which you can skip the line for the two Haunted Houses at Basement of the Dead (Aurora, IL) & Disturbia Haunted Houses (Downers Grove, IL). You can purchase the tickets on their website ( https://basementofthedead.com ) or in person. Along with tickets, visitors can also purchase a Basement of the Dead face mask, which is a nice themed option they provide to help guests stay safe and adhere to local masking requirements.

Basement of the Dead is just one of the great local haunted places worth visiting this fall. Others include Disturbia Haunted House in Downers Grove, Massacre Haunted House in Montgomery, Midnight Terror in Oak Lawn and Statesville Haunted Prison in Crest Hill.