For nine nights this October, the lights go out in a corner of Moose Jaw's Town 'N' Country Mall that has been dark for far longer than a power switch could explain. The Shock House, a travelling haunted attraction run by Saskatchewan haunt producer Al Benesocky, takes over the former Zellers retail space at 1235 Main Street North, opening Oct. 16 and running through Halloween night.
The schedule gives visitors three weekends to work with: Oct. 16, 17 and 18; Oct. 23, 24 and 25; and Oct. 29, 30 and 31. Doors run from 7 to 10 p.m. each of those nights. Organizers say this year's edition is bigger than the last, with more live actors, more rooms and, in their words, "more Halloween thrills."
That the haunt is happening inside a shuttered department store is part of the appeal. The Zellers storefront at the Town 'N' Country Mall closed around 2013, and it sat empty for years afterward. A large, empty retail floor with high ceilings and a maze of former aisles is, for a haunted house, close to ideal: room to build sets, room to hide actors, and room to make visitors lose their bearings.
Visitors should enter through the north side of the building, facing the Hillcrest Golf Course. Admission is $25 per person, with a Speed Pass available for $35 for those who want to skip the line. Tickets are sold at the door only, cash only, and no reservations are taken. There are no advance sales and no group rates. Organizers suggest a non-weekend night for anyone hoping to avoid a wait.
The Shock House has been a Saskatchewan Halloween fixture for two decades. Benesocky was born and raised near the tiny town of Waldron, Saskatchewan, and got his first taste of haunted houses at a local exhibition when he was 13. That experience stuck with him, and in 2004 he began producing his own haunted attractions. What started as a local experiment turned into a travelling operation that has drawn horror fans from across the province each October. The Shock House has appeared in Regina, and it also mounts a haunt in Yorkton, in the lower level of the former casino building at 30 3rd Avenue North. The attraction has billed itself as Saskatchewan's largest indoor haunted attraction.
The house is built around a theme each year, carried through the sets, the costumes and the performances. A team of actors works the rooms, crawling, yelling, lying in wait and generally doing whatever it takes to get a reaction. The walk-through is the point; you have to go through it to see it.
The rules are strict and the organizers are upfront about them. Actors are instructed not to touch visitors, though they caution that accidental contact can happen in the dark. Phones, flashlights and any other light source are banned inside, and photography and video recording are prohibited. Anyone caught breaking those rules may be escorted out without a refund. Refunds are not available for any reason, including if a visitor gets too frightened to finish the house. As the FAQ on the Shock House website puts it, if the house scares you too badly to go through, you have gotten exactly what you paid for.
All ages are welcome, but the attraction is not recommended for children under 11, and parents are left to use their own judgment about younger kids. Pregnant visitors are cautioned that later stages of pregnancy may not be a good fit, largely because a startle could send someone into a wall. Wheelchair accessibility is a partial answer: the website says yes and no, and asks anyone with questions to call ahead for an explanation of which parts of the route are accessible.
The mall is getting in on the act. Town 'N' Country Mall announced a draw for two pairs of Shock House tickets in an Oct. 8 Facebook post, with the draw set for Oct. 15 at 1 p.m., the day before opening night. To enter, participants like and share the contest post and follow the mall's Facebook page, and they can earn extra chances by tagging friends in the comments. Shoppers who bring a receipt from any mall store can collect 25 additional votes toward the draw. More details are available by calling 306-693-1711.
For the full schedule, admission details and visitor rules, the Shock House points people to TheShockHouse.com, with updates posted to its Facebook page. The ticket draw details live on the mall's Facebook page.
There is something fitting about a haunted house setting up shop in a retail space that has been sitting empty for more than a decade. Department stores like Zellers and Sears were, for a long stretch, the anchors that gave a mall its identity. When they left, they took the foot traffic with them, and the big boxes they left behind became the most visible evidence of a changing retail landscape in small Prairie cities. For nine nights in October, one of those empty boxes gets a different job: not selling anything, but scaring people on purpose.
It is a short run, and the final stretch lands on Halloween itself. For anyone in the Moose Jaw area looking for a scare, the door on the north side, facing the golf course, is the one to watch.