Tahoe Terror Haunted House

South Shore has casinos, snow, and 47 years of the Freaker’s Ball, but it never had a real haunted house. That ends this season. Tahoe Terror opens October 2 inside the Opal Ultra Lounge at Bally’s Lake Tahoe, the casino floor’s old nightclub turned into a first-year haunt.

The pedigree is a Reno export. Final Hour owner Kyle Walters asked Chris Setser, who grew up on the lake and spent 15 years as a scare actor, to design and run a haunt at Tahoe, and Setser set the tone plainly for the Tahoe Daily Tribune: “I think people are going to come out crying, hopefully.” The theme leans on the lake itself, with a casino-sized nightmare and the legends of Tahoe’s past.

The schedule leans into casino hours. Friday and Saturday nights run 8 pm to midnight through October, and Halloween night stays open late (the Tribune reported until 3 am) so the Freaker’s Ball crowd can stumble straight from the party into the haunt. November 1 closes the season with a Lights OUT night, the whole attraction run in the dark. Tickets are $28 online, $38 at the door, and $40 for front-of-line VIP, and every ticket carries five dollars off the crew’s holiday light maze in Sparks this December, which is a strange and delightful bundle. The first 50 guests on opening night go into a raffle for four VIP tickets to The Final Hour.

It’s about an hour and a quarter from Reno, so this one’s a destination night rather than a whim, and it’s too new to have the 25 Google reviews our rankings require. Its early posters listed a 7:30 pm start and all ages, while its latest posts and ticket page say 8 pm and Bally’s lists ages 5 and up, so check the ticket page before you drive.