Now in its fourth year, the Gorgas Street Horror is a fun ‘n’ funky haunted trail situated in a municipal park. Like so many others in the industry, the owners/showrunners cut their teeth on home haunting.
That sort of background often makes for an entertaining show. You know they’re doing it because they love it. The same applies here on both counts!
Their home-brewed effects and props, a comprehensive costuming aesthetic, and effective and zesty performances by a committed cast, have all figured into our two very enjoyable visits here.
The theme changes year to year. This season’s theme is The Final Hour. The story of our trip through the trail involved a top prison facility broken apart by unspeakable experiments performed by an insane doctor. Good luck getting through the former inmates and other ferocious test subjects.
This is an extremely actor-driven haunt. Good thing, then, that the cast showed up wired from the get-go to engage and interact.
The acting troupe brimmed with dynamic energy this evening. They cavorted, capered, and crowded around us. They subjected us to bouts of screaming, chainsaw chasing, torrents of crazed laughter, twisty crab-walking, cackling fits, threats and aggressive movements, and lots of entertainingly wacky dialogue. And that was all before we got to the turbo-charged clowns!
Besides that gung-ho gang of clowns, we met inmates, cryptids, vampires, woodland spirits, heinous nuns, crazy campers, scientists and their subjects, pig-heads, and backwoods brutes intent on making us part of their next meal. Quite the diverse roster of looney-toonies.
One of our first assailants declared they would create a soup out of us and serve it up with “mashed organs on the side.” An especially electric and manic goofball yukked it up and bounced off the walls like Daffy Duck on uppers. We want to call out the jumpsuited maniac who tried to break a record for repeat appearances – B. Wright, as the name tag read, blasted an air horn, pursued us while crawling on the ground, and just generally harassed us throughout the whole trail.
Mama Mae welcomed us into her shack of horrors, where a massive family member stuffed a live victim into the fridge. We did not stay for dinner. A cryptid, apparently one of the poor test subjects, said: “Get out of here before they find you, you could end up like me …though I could use a friend.” Aawww! Even monsters can get bit by the loneliness bug. The clowns seriously whooped it up, laughing, misdirecting, and quickly approaching and retreating as we walked in circles under the big top.
We walked in on the evil doctor doing some impromptu surgery on their sister’s ex-boyfriend Jerry – the doctor seemingly did not display too much pickiness for experiment subjects, as it looked like the sister was caged up and waiting for her turn at advancing science. She wailed about Jerry, at which the doctor threw her Jerry’s foot as a ‘chew toy’ and told her to get back in the cage. The doctor wanted us to stick around, saying that they could find some jugs of acid to play with, or take our eyes to throw in some containers, or even make a cake out of Jerry’s brains. Plenty of good options there, but it was time to move along.
The church scene paired up a vampire priest and a parishioner that was clearly out of their mind. The bloodsucker called us demons and sinners, demanded we be gone from this unholy house, and ended up shrieking at us: “I banish you from my church!” While the weirdo partner kept up a litany of bizarre comments like “Beware the curse of the intergalactic fallopian tubes!” and “Why did you put so many jellyfish inside the turbine combustor?” Fantastic stuff!
Gorgas Street Horror did a good job cloaking its game actors in horrific and/or stirring looks. The vampire priest looked quite impressive in white robes and with a cross marked on the forehead. The cryptid similarly made a visually bright impression with a thick coat of long white hairs. Moving toward the opposite end of the spectrum, a cultish-looking creature wearing an antlered animal skull donned black robes to blend in with the night.
Two creatures with rotting faces completed their looks with, respectively, a tattered suit and a jumpsuit possibly of the prison variety. Definitive inmate outfits were represented by a chainsaw psycho in the traditional orange duds and a bendy gymnast type donning the old cartoonish black-and-white-striped costume, with a makeup job matching that color scheme and set off by some blood streaks.
Mama Mae dressed up like a traditional southern matriarch, while her fridge-stuffing relative intimidated with a muscular frame in shirtless overalls and a disturbing skin mask. A wicked nun appeared suitably atrocious in the habit and visage to which we have become accustomed. The handful of clowns at the end each sported a different look, with significant degrees of differentiation to make them all stand out from the group.
Gorgas Street Horror is located in Louisville, Ohio, near Canton. GPS took us right to its plot at Metzger Park.
Free parking is available on the relatively well-lit asphalt lot at the park, and it looked like some people had parked across the street; it’s probably a shorter walk from there, but we wanted to be next to the awesome full-service restrooms provided at the park.
Following lights, music/noise, and other customers led us to the ticketing/merch kiosk, just past a food truck. GA and VIP lines were clearly marked from the ticket tent. Friendlier folks we could not hope to meet.
The trail felt pretty smooth, even, and relatively free of roots and the like. Maybe that sprang out of being in a city park instead of a more remote area. Whatever the reason, we gladly welcomed the relative ease of the walkthrough.
The attraction’s website covers pretty much everything needed for a visit. The only thing missing that might be nice to see would be an FAQ. They also have a page on Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.
We must also mention the resident food truck here: DJ’s Snack Shack. Named for a child who passed from cancer, part of the proceeds from your purchase go to cancer research. We fed our party of two for just over $15 and got a single-serve deep-dish pizza, sloppy joe sandwich, coney dog, cinnamon sugar pretzel with sweet cream dip, and a can of soda. That’s an outrageously low price, and it was all good food. You can’t go wrong with this truck!
The approach let us know we were in for some spooky scenarios. Creepy music, throttling chainsaws, and the screams of patrons could be heard from the lot. We crossed a face-cut-out photo op on the way to ticketing, and could see the entry facade from there.
Queue actors, in the form of the orange and black-and-white outfitted prisoners, engaged us while we waited for food truck eats and neared the entry point. Wire fencing, faux stonework topped with skulls, and eerie violet lighting marked the entrance. The queue performers saw us off through the doorway with screams, shouts, and chainsaw roars. A promising beginning!
The opening section took place in a dark, claustrophobic tunnel where we endured sudden attacks from creepers inside and out.
The winning group of actors made the biggest contribution to immersion with their engagingly amusing or scarifying antics. The biggest hindrances were spots where we could easily see the bright entrance area lights, and a couple places where we had a little difficulty figuring out which way to go next.
The exit led us out into a rather dark, bare spot about halfway between the parking lot and the entrance area.
One of the things we love about places like this – meaning attractions that grew out of home haunts – is the lovingly homegrown look and feel of the handmade props and sets. Gorgas Street Horror ladled their own special sauce over everything here with a fairly heavy hand, and we gobbled it up.
The long, dark tunnel at the beginning gave us an unexpected opening bid when we anticipated a wide-open outdoor trail. The varied, eerie soundtrack at one point included the Halloween theme music. We also heard evil distorted laughter and a lot of horns.
Some of the best effects moments included: the chaotic clown area with its vibrant dayglo colors and disorientating circular set-up; neon-painted skulls and skeletons hanging off trees; the unfortunate Jerry, laid out on an operating table with the top of his head sawed off and his brain on open display; a way cool lit-up cobweb tunnel, and shortly after a spraying spider animatronic; and the sinister church, which they pulled off really well in an open-air environment.
21. How scary was it? (35% of score): 7.7
22. How well did they provide scares to everyone in the group? (15% of score): 8.9
23. How predictable were the scares? (25% of score): 8.6
24. How well did they provide a wide variety (types) of scares? (10% of score): 7
25. How strong was the ending / finale? (15% of score): 6.6
Gorgas Street Horror delivered a steady helping of scares, mostly of the jump or sudden loud noise kind, but they also mixed in some effective creep-outs. Given the good number of little kid customers we’ve noticed here tonight and during our other visit, we must assume the actors are adept at ratcheting their scares up and down depending on the clientele.
The initial tunnel area gave us a few good fright frissons from freaks pounding on windows from outside and appearing out of dark corners inside. Soon after, we were invited to sit in Old Sparky the electric chair and expected to be zapped around where the head restraints came into play (to be clear, we were not locked into it in any way) – and then walked away surprised by the where and how of the scare.
The silent, stalking nun provided a super-creepy presence matched by the antlered creature who told us gruffly to get out of their woods and then pursued us to make sure we did leave. The big brute from Mama Mae’s house supplied another great stare-down. After stashing the victim in the fridge, they followed us out of the house and stood there glaring at us a long time after we left.
Other good scares came courtesy of ground crawlers and several skillfully applied prop-or-actor? moments. Our walk through a gnarly campground featured campers popping out of tents at us and body parts cooking on the grill. We jumped at B. Wright’s air horn more times than we’d care to admit.
We took on the trail in 20 minutes. The general admission cost was $15 (fast pass also available for $22), which equated to a minutes-per-dollar (MPD) ratio of 1.33. We consider 1.0 as the baseline for good value evaluation, so that definitely checked out.
The price had gone up by $5 since last time, but we also spent 7 more minutes on the trail, so the value calculation actually went up a little bit in the positive direction. It’s still one of the more affordable ticket prices we see on a regular basis.
And who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned, actor-fueled, Halloween-spirit-oozing haunted trail? If you answered “me,” we don’t want to know you!
To finish off the season, they are open from 7-11 on Halloween night. What better way to celebrate a bewitching evening of the hallowed holiday! To quote our own review from our first visit:
Gorgas Street Horror checked off our two most important questions for any attraction: did we have fun and get some scares? Done and done.
1420 S Nickelplate Street, Louisville, Ohio 44641
