Help Keep Darkness Rising Alive
There are haunted houses you visit once, have a good time, and move on.
Then there are the ones that become part of your October.
For us, Darkness Rising Haunted House is one of those places.
We’ve been routine patrons for years. When haunt season rolls around on Long Island, Darkness Rising is always one of the stops we look forward to. Not because we expect the exact same experience every October, but because we know we’re going to notice something new.
A different room. A new character. A set piece that wasn’t there last year. Some ridiculous little detail tucked into a corner that somebody probably spent hours building even though half the people running through the room will never consciously notice it.
That stuff matters to us.
Haunt Season exists because we love this world. The sets, the actors, the builders, the makeup, the props, the people standing in a warehouse in August figuring out how to make something terrifying by October. Darkness Rising has always felt like it was made by people who care about those things too.
You can see the work.
You can see the years of learning what works, taking bigger swings, and trying to make the next season better than the last.
That’s why hearing that Darkness Rising will not open for the 2026 season hit particularly hard.
According to owner and creator Kevin Baird, months had already gone into building this year’s attraction when an inspection brought an underlying issue with the building to their attention. As a subtenant, resolving the problem was largely outside of Darkness Rising’s control, and the necessary process could not be completed in time for Halloween. The Town of Babylon has said the building did not have the certificate of occupancy for that use or the fire protections required for a special amusement attraction. The end result is the same: a haunt that was already well into construction now has to come down without ever opening to the public. (GoFundMe)
That is brutal.
Not just creatively, but financially.
Darkness Rising says roughly $100,000 was invested into preparing for this season, with more than $62,000 spent on rent, labor, and other costs that cannot simply be recovered by selling props or equipment. Much of that investment was financed personally. (GoFundMe)
And this is not some attraction that appeared last year trying to cash in on Halloween.
Darkness Rising has been haunting Long Island since 2006. Over the years, hundreds of actors and staff have been part of it, thousands of guests have walked through, and the attraction says it has helped raise more than $250,000 for local charities. This year, for the first time, they are the ones asking the community for help. (Darknessrising)
A GoFundMe has been created to help Darkness Rising recover from the loss of the 2026 season and give the team a real shot at rebuilding and coming back.
We’re sharing it because places like Darkness Rising are part of what makes Halloween culture special.
It is easy to see the finished attraction in October and forget how much happens before opening night. Months of construction. Late nights. Payroll. Lumber. Paint. Costumes. Lighting. Sound. Advertising. Rehearsals. Actors. Custom props. Thousands of decisions made before the first guest ever walks through the door.
Then, if everything goes right, we get to walk in for 20 or 30 minutes and enjoy all of it.
This year, they did the work and never got that moment.
We want to see Darkness Rising get another one.
If you’ve been through the haunt before, if it has ever been part of your Halloween tradition, or if you simply believe independent haunted attractions deserve to survive setbacks like this, please consider throwing something into the fundraiser.
And if donating isn’t possible, share it.
Halloween is better when the people building weird, ambitious, terrifying things are still around to do it next year.
We want Darkness Rising back.
Haunt Season
Forever October.