In just a few short years, Fear Columbus has gone from an excellent revamping of a former 13th Floor location to one of the most up-and-coming haunts in the country. They presented two superb attractions the last time our team visited a couple of years ago; now they have expanded to three, and they all deliver top-of-the-line entertainment:
In Dearly Departed – Echoes of the Exhumed, a mortician searches for a way to bring back his lover from beyond the grave. A teen power couple resorts to extreme measures to secure their prom court victory in Fearwood High – Rhinestones and Rituals. And the after-hours party thrown by a crowd of killer carnies might be the last bash you ever attend when you get stuck in the frightful festival of Oddballs – Kill the Spotlight.
The sets are all-caps WOW, and the effects rival the best the industry has to offer – especially the sound system for which it is well known, and that we think sounded better than ever. They also enlarged and improved the outdoor/midway area this year. If you haven’t been to Fear Columbus yet, consider it a bucket-lister and make plans to go soon!
Total overall scores for each attraction –
Dearly Departed: 9.35
Fearwood High: 9.2
Oddballs: 9.38
The number of actors seemed to be about right for the half-hour length, perhaps a little short, but the speedy pacing, the astounding sets and effects work, and the fact that actors kept circling back and hitting us multiple times made any perceived shortfall in personnel a triviality.
Clowns, freaks, and zoo animals fleshed out the Oddballs carnival. Cult members, supernatural cemetery denizens, and a hideous mad doctor populated the funeral home and environs in Dearly Departed. The characters in Fearwood High were a bit nondescript compared to the other two attractions, consisting of teen punks, murderous prom attendees, and various psychos in areas outside the school.
Given the frantic pace and mostly short, small rooms, most interactions were of the quick-hit variety. Actors would pounce out of a hidey-hole and spring at us or swipe with a weapon, hiss, or deliver a fast line of dialogue, then retreat. Many scenarios also made use of what has come to be known as the Universal Halloween Horror Nights style, wherein the character explodes out of their hiding spot, accompanied by synchronized flashes of light and a booming sound and/or recorded dialogue, sometimes preceded by a cinematic rising crescendo of music.
With dialogue limited by the style of encounters and probably also by the at times thunderous sound system, cast members threw themselves into a strenuous physical workout: performing dramatic lunges, writhing sinuously on walls, running around, and moving with unnatural and unnerving herky-jerky spasms; in the prom attraction, we think some of these gyrations were supposed to represent zombie dancing … or at least we hope so!
The costume displays were good for the pop-in & pop-out nature of the actors. We noticed some sneakers beneath robes as well as street clothes exposed by unzipped up or unbuttoned down costumes in the back, which took away some flair from the presentation.
Dearly Departed: The looks here predominantly came in flavors of cultists in red or black robes with weird, misshapen masks (or were those supposed to be their real faces? but then again, many of them had exposed mask lines on their necks; these are the questions that keep reviewers up at night) who sprang out of every wall brandishing long daggers or finger clackers, interspersed with undead-appearing citizens of the cemetery, someone in corpselike makeup and pearlescent white contacts wearing what we took to be a black mourning dress, and the bug-eyed scientist in a stitched-together skin mask.
Fearwood High: Much like the characters themselves, the costumes here seemed more generic than in the other two attractions. Some of the prom attendees really looked the part, decked out in formal wear and masquerade masks. Teen toughs wore grungy flannel shirts and leather gloves. They waved all sorts of weapons in our faces: hammers, spiked bats, and one beardo brandished a baton.
Oddballs: The clowns frolicked about in their jolly, exuberantly colored circus outfits, a little cleaner and less distressed than we’re used to seeing in violent psychopathic clowns. A few freaks, like some kind of human-sized dreadlocked doll in a white dress, made an appearance. The best costumes were animalistic. A rollicking baboon in a surprisingly snappy and somewhat incongruous vest and trousers ensemble tried to get at us through its cage, and a bat-headed figure in black and white striped get-up resembled Weekly World News’ Bat Boy, if a little furrier.
Fear Columbus is located at the Northland Mall in Columbus, Ohio. GPS gave us success in getting to the mall parking lot. Search lights, colored lights hanging in the large midway, blasting music, and an enormous, inflated jack-o’-lantern erased any doubt we had arrived.
We found staff members to be helpful and friendly. The ‘Fear Gear’ store carried a bunch of awesome stuff, with plenty of cool clothing plus a wider selection of goods than just things to wear.
A comprehensive website told us everything we needed to know to enjoy our visit. The attraction also keeps up a presence on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
Safety seemed to be paramount. A much-appreciated recorded message played in the entrance area announcing things like no bags allowed inside. We noted several security team members during our visit. Waiver signature and passage through a metal detector are required for entry. We detected no obvious or unusual circumstances that would compromise patrons’ well-being inside the attractions. The entire facility is ADA accessible for wheelchairs of standard size.
Please note that Fear Columbus sells its tickets for specific dates and time slots and can sell out on busy weekends.
Fear Columbus was off the charts great. It all started with the party-centric midway, adjacent to the entry area. The festive, happening atmosphere dazzled us with bright colorful lights, funky dance music, roaming actors having a blast with customers, a gaming area with cornhole boards and jenga tables, snack and beverage kiosks, food trucks, and photo ops – much bigger and more of a spectacle than anything we’ve seen here in the past.
The entry points for each attraction looked out of sight and really pumped us up to get in there. Dearly Departed is set on Halloween night, and the funeral parlor facade was in the spirit, surrounded by pumpkin-headed scarecrows, shimmering jack-o’-lanterns, and kitschy seasonal decorations like tissue ghosts. Fearwood High’s forest lead-up – situated in the Pacific Northwest, based on Charlie Swan being the police chief on duty, according to a sign in the police station – featured trees, a park ranger’s car, and a bulletin board of notices, an old vending machine, an outhouse, fencing, and a giant bat creature flapping away above our heads. On the way into Oddballs, we passed freak show posters and game booths filled with distressed, dingy stuffed animal ‘prizes.’
Inside the attractions, the immersion kept up with fast sequencing and frequent action, all-encompassing sets where every surface was decorated, detailed, or distressed, terrific effects including the boomin’ sound system, and lively actors. About the only things that could serve to distract us were the minor costuming snags, a few instances where we could see the ‘real’ infrastructure, like ceiling tiles, and a couple of confusing spots in the high school attraction – were we still in the school or did we go into town? But that is being awfully picky when the whole place almost entirely held our attention for the duration.
Dearly Departed took us through a fully realized story as funeral director John Spencer tried everything from Frankensteinian science to dark magic in a bid to bring back his partner. A radio report announced the police were after him for grave robbing and other crimes against humanity, recorded dialogue relayed a conversation between Spencer and an otherworldly ambassador about completing a presumably forbidden ritual to bring back the dead, and the walkthrough led from the funeral home into a cemetery, what we took to be the underworld, and perhaps even straight to Hell as represented by a flaming red tunnel inhabited by infernal beasties.
The other two attractions were somewhat less successful in relating the stories of the vain prom king and queen looking to cut out their competition and the envy of the supporting carny cast that led clown-stars of the show Scraps and Spurs to throw a fiesta honoring their grumbling colleagues. We got the broad strokes inside the attractions and the details from the website’s backstories. But also, we’re not sure knowing or not knowing the stories would have taken away our enjoyment.
The exit put us into the excellent gift shop, where we had to pause for a moment before browsing to catch our breath after the thrilling end of Oddballs!
As we’ve already noted, the sets were next-level awesome. Everything was 360-degree immersive; they used every inch available, and no matter which way we turned, something was there to look at, sometimes marvel at! The hyper-detailing led to super-realistic scenes.
We break down music and sounds in each attraction below, but know that Fear’s notoriety for its audio is justified, and we felt like this year it sounded better than ever. It’s also had a reputation for being painfully loud in the past, and we’ve sometimes felt like we had to check our ears for bleeding or popped drums after leaving. It seemed like there was more of a peaks-and-valleys approach this time that resulted in better dynamics, more of what we will call listenability, and less distortion.
Fear Columbus also excelled at setting up color schemes to match the themes. The broken-hearted mortician’s depressing funeral home was mostly cast in drab shades of gray, brown, and earth colors, occasionally shot through with blasts of reds, oranges, or electric blues. The high school opened a wider palette and brightened things up with striking use of whites and silvers, well-suited to the celebratory event at its heart. And then, Oddballs very aptly looked like they just dropped a fully loaded Sherwin Williams truck in the middle of things to explode everywhere.
Dearly Departed: In the funeral home, we walked through a room with a rattling coffin lid and down a hallway of windows whose curtains were being blown about by a storm. Spirits floated on the walls, apparently the same apparitions that rearranged chairs into untidy stacks. Mr. Spencer had been neglecting maintenance in favor of his necromantic experiments, evidenced by the state of disrepair with exposed wall slats, broken windows, and tattered old-fashioned heavy draperies used as room separators. Standout sets included the science lab with brightly sparking electrical coils leading into a cadaver and the cemetery with statues, gates, and ivy and skeleton-covered walls. The soundtrack here included selections of old-timey jazz/big band/torch song music, and toward the end gave way to operatic chanting.
Fearwood High: The home of the Devious Devils contained a locker room, trophy room, nurse room, an art room featuring several grotesque pieces, a car that crashed through a wall, and two dance floors, both with disco balls and one with a girl who floated into the air a la Carrie. We also took a tour of the town, into stores, and through the jail. The fun and awesome sounds here included PA announcements for the students, class bells, a student who maybe drank too much from the flask declaring “somebody call me an Uber!” in recorded dialogue, a thrumming bass we could feel in our bones, and dance hits like Toni Basil’s Mickey and David Bowie’s Let’s Dance – from 1982 and 1983 respectively, so we figure this was supposed to be set in the early 80s, seemingly confirmed by the old-school Galaga console video game stuck in a corner of one of the stores.
Oddballs: The wacky carnival kept us busy and entertained while visiting a sickening snack stand with rotting caramel apples, a cannonball act belching smoke, an ‘exploding’ box of TNT straight out of a Wile E. Coyote toon, a giant crocodile chewing up a little kid, and a dressing room full of colorful costumes and hiding places. Pro tip: This is the last place you’d want to visit the kissing booth, you’re welcome. The no-less-outstanding soundscapes in this attraction centered on carnival music played on a calliope, replaced near the end by a pounding rock version, a fun snacking song whose chorus was ‘yum yum yum,’ and cartoonlike bonks, squeaks, and cannon fire, plus a fine assortment of screams and yelps.
Overall and accounting for everything, Fear Columbus put on a jaw-dropping tour de force of effects masterwork. Look (and listen) upon it and be amazed.
21. How scary was it? (35% of score): 9.23
22. How well did they provide scares to everyone in the group? (15% of score): 9.7
23. How predictable were the scares? (25% of score): 9.43
24. How well did they provide a wide variety (types) of scares? (10% of score): 9.17
25. How strong was the ending / finale? (15% of score): 9.33
Considering what we’ve already covered, you shouldn’t be surprised to know we weathered a lot of scares and most of them of the jump variety. That’s what this place is set up for and what they deliver, whether through actors or animatronics.
For the actors, scares were often achieved through application of the Universal style scares we discussed in the Cast section. The cast also got significant mileage out of the twisty layout and devious passageways that allowed them to circle around and zap us again and again. Seriously, it got a little embarrassing to jump back from the same character for the sixth time in two minutes.
Special mentions by attraction:
Dearly Departed: Several instances of robed cultists popping out of hidden doorways with a crash and a flash, the epitome of that Universal style; the gruesome and wide-eyed scientist coming at us from behind the transparent operating curtain; an evil presence in the cemetery grasping after us with enormous talons; overhearing the creepy dialogue about the ritual.
Fearwood High: Ambush attacks expertly executed all over the town; the spastic space-invading moves of the zombie dancer; a photo op scene with the prom court that made us jump out of our shoes and still has us wondering if that was a real person or a prop.
Oddballs: Clowns above us on a high platform stabbing and grabbing down; the truly bonkers ending channeling Looney Tunes chaos, with multiple actors coming after us, swinging an axe and wielding a ridonkulously humongo-sized chainsaw – we came out the exit feeling quite shell-shocked.
Fear Columbus took us for 30 minutes of thrills: 12 minutes of Dearly Departed, 10 minutes for Fearwood High, and 8 minutes in Oddballs. Compared to the $29.99 cost of general admission, the MPD (minutes per dollar spent) hit the bullseye on the 1.0 ratio we typically like to see. It’s a fantastic value for the top-notch experience both outside and inside.
Pricing ranges from $19.99 – a stone-cold bargain – on some weeknights, to $29.99. Even better? Look out for the pre-season sale in the summer, where we bought our tickets and basically received $10 off each one. If we had ordered a bit earlier, they would have been about half off!
Special events include a Krampus show in December, Love Is in the Scare for Valentine’s Day, and Nightmare Combat (where you get to shoot the monsters) in May.
Fear Columbus is a highly recommended no-brainer. Go and enjoy it and feel the fear.
2605 Northland Plaza Drive, Columbus, Ohio 43231