Clacton FEAR Review (2026)

Arriving at Clacton FEAR, you’ll need to make use of one of the local parking lots, as the event itself doesn’t have dedicated car parking. There is plenty of free parking after 6pm, but make sure you read the signs carefully to ensure a charge is not incurred. Visiting on opening night, we did notice some line flow issues, with the queues to the two events converging in the theatre itself and the entrance to the two different mazes located at the top of the same set of stairs. This meant alternating groups were allowed up the staircase, which did take time. Other than some moving yellow spotlights, and rumbling ominous music, there wasn’t any line entertainment save for an occasional roaming actor from the “Hotel” maze who we saw very seldom.

Queue flow itself wasn’t bad, chiefly because they were trying to ensure you didn’t run into other groups. The only issue was that this led to larger groups on average, which were sometimes rather tight in the smaller maze spaces.

Clacton FEAR takes place within a repurposed auditorium, exploiting its current design to make an unusual location for its haunts. You line up within the theatre itself before entering each haunt at the top of a staircase on either side, transiting through red curtains that lend the proceedings the feel of an old-fashioned theatrical routine. Some uncanny clown faces in large scale supplemented the outside in a little hint of the terror to come. It is somewhat rather fitting entering a series of nightmares through the entrance of a theatre, though the venue’s original purpose occasionally shows.

In “Laughing Gas”, a clown and toxic/narcotic ether theme prevails, but the exact storyline that caused this madness is slightly less clear, although the website outlines this as an explosion of the boiler in the theatre leading to a toxic gas leak and the disappearance of all within. In the main, the strange and surreal environment draws you in, but the seams of the place do on occasion show, especially in the long corridor at the end. Meanwhile, over in “Mourning Manor Hotel”, Mrs Grady insists on her hotel remaining completely unchanged after the death of her husband. This is a much more identifiable premise, making the hotel appear frozen in time by the grief of the proprietor – who also refuses to let you go as guests.

Both haunts eventually deposit you back at the top of the theatre stairs into the wider venue.

Leaning into the theatre in which it is based, “Laughing Gas” uses the backstage areas, with assorted unsettling circus-style props and a piano providing a foreboding setting. Outside of this, the scenic design is relatively simple, using flats and hanging cloth, with a good deal of the eponymous gas distributed from the ducts above you. There’s some effective sound design here, starting with a whimsical, piano-circus-like quality, before becoming more industrial and heavier as you proceed deeper within to a cage maze section, with plenty of strobes.

Offering a considerably more diverse set of environments is “Mourning Manor Hotel”, with rooms including a garden with tree outside, a reception area, a kitchen, a parlour, a bedroom, a luggage room filled with suitcases, and a hall of numbered doors, behind which people can be heard banging violently and warning you not to enter. The result is surreal, with each space adding increasingly to the hotel’s strange atmosphere which borders on immersive theatre. Sound design is unique within, with an old-timey soundtrack referencing Mrs Grady herself (we hear that both soundtracks were specially composed for the mazes, which is a lovely touch), while each room seems to have a different soundscape, some incorporating ominous rumbling and some more ethereal moments. Smell is present here too, from antiseptic and foul-smelling meat in the kitchen area, to the peculiar plastic smell in the rubbish room.

Two sets of characters populate these mazes: clowns in “Laughing Gas” and hotel guests and staff in “Mourning Manor Hotel”. The former relies heavily on masks rather than facepaint alone, and there’s variety in the designs. The clowns’ looks are quite unique, and once the gas is released they don brightly painted gas masks that make their appearance even more frightful. But it’s not only clowns here. A cymbal monkey laughs and chimes maniacally at you, and a Raggedy Anne masked character lunges for you.

The masks at “Mourning Manor Hotel” are a definite highlight. They’re difficult to describe, being grotesque, and yet oversized for the actors’ faces, creating a bizarre whimsical quality that makes them feel genuinely unique. Larger actors are present as well, whose physical presence complements the exaggerated designs, with an evil chef being particularly shocking in this regard. Costumes are decrepit, making total sense for a hotel that has fallen into disorder. One strange encounter features a man in a bathroom in a full-body latex suit. Performance-wise, the bellhops stand out for their activeness and urging you on, as does Mrs Grady herself, who introduced the maze most theatrically. Some of the other actors are less receptive to such interaction, apparently instead moving through their routines like spectres. This does suit the eerie ambiance, though the variation in engagement means that not every encounter feels personalised.

Outside the haunts, “Mullins & Sons: Deadwood” provides a different kind of character experience as a scare zone populated by roaming performers wielding chainsaws. Meetings take place up close and this family was particularly keen on having us for dinner, and ran up to us multiple times as we traversed the pier, always on the attack!

There are some very different kinds of scares at Clacton FEAR and for a brand-new event they really tried to hit hard, but much more with menace than shock. “Laughing Gas” shapes its scares around the threat and strangeness of its jokers, who are sincerely eerie. There is a lot of stalking, with performers running up behind you and even using an airhorn at one point to catch you unawares. Once trapped in the cage maze with them and the laughing gas, you find yourself scurrying to escape and get cornered in the most unexpected spots.

“Mourning Manor Hotel” is more about foreboding menace than outright horror. The actors were inclined to shadow the person at the front of our group, sometimes leaving the two at the back out of the action, so although everyone was occasionally scared, the direction of scares could have been more effective. The chef was the most horrifying here, brutally cornering us for slaughter before we escaped. And the finale was very unusual and disorientating: exiting down a slide into a rubbish heap, right out of the kitchen!