Frightmares (Reno Hilton)
The forgotten casino haunt of 1999.
Some haunts die famous. This one died so quietly that its only surviving trace is a single line in a Nevada Appeal business story: New Century Entertainment Group “operated another haunted attraction, Frightmares, at the Reno Hilton last fall.” That fall was 1999.
New Century was Mike Hyams’ production company, the same crew running the Haunted House of Horror at Carson City’s Ormsby House those same two seasons. For one October, the biggest hotel in Reno and the most famous hotel in Carson City both held haunted houses built by the same shop, and by the next Halloween, both were gone: the Ormsby House closed for its endless renovation, and New Century’s team moved on.
The building had more Halloween in its future. As the Grand Sierra Resort it later hosted Battlefield Live Z, the zombie-shooting attraction, making 2500 East 2nd Street quietly one of the most haunted addresses in Reno’s commercial history.
No photos, ads, or firsthand accounts of Frightmares have surfaced online. If you walked it, worked it, or can prove what was inside, you’d be its first historian. Not to be confused with Frightmare, the unrelated Victorian Square haunt of the 2010s, which somehow makes this one even easier to forget.