HellsGate Haunted House Review (2026)

Hellsgate has a very clever way for guests to start their adventure for the evening. On the website as well as markers in the surrounding area, you’ll find the address 301 W 2nd St, Lockport, IL. This is where guests park their cars and wait in line for a bus that will take them into the woods to the attraction. The buses run until the show ends, so there is no fear of being left in the woods for the night.

Hellsgate has a very strong social media presence. All the information you need is on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and all other social media platforms. The facility is run like a well-oiled machine. From the moment guests step onto the haunt grounds. There are plenty of event staff, bus guides, crew members, and line actors to get visitors where they need to go. Signage is visible for everything, including porta potties, the ticket booth, food, and beverages. The staff is extremely friendly and ready to answer questions. Security presence is super visible, leaving guests safe from everything other than the darkness.

The tent and queue are legendary. As soon as guests are off the bus, they will encounter the residents of Moorstone Manor. There’s loud music pumping in the tent and lots of wandering actors to chat and interact with. A lot of the actors are fan favorites, and they all have a unique way of engaging with new and old fans.

Tickets are available online as well as at the ticket booth on site. There are multiple ticket options to choose from: General admission, VIP, Instant Entry, and All access. These options can be explained on-site as well as online. If you do not want to wait the GA time, you can always ask a staff member to upgrade.

The school bus turns onto a dark, bumpy road (some call it “Murder Road”) deep into the forest, leading to the infamous haunted house you heard about growing up. The actors don’t give you time to breathe, as they bombard the crowd with shenanigans. Notable characters affected by the darkness come out and play and interact with the crowd, with some speaking of the horrors that await past the entrance to the trail.

The scare actors keep the theme of the darkness takeover and take it to the next level. On the trail, multiple actors gave us safety checkpoints to follow to keep away from the darkness’s reach, such as the cabin and shed, and the mausoleum, which we were unfortunately not safe in, and we had to move along. Inside the mansion, we were welcomed by the twins, who tell the tale of their father’s choices that led us to what is now HellsGate. The house staff quickly usher you between different rooms, using the halls as transitions to keep you away from the twins and the darkness that controls them. Fun fact: this mansion was built from the ground up, and the rooms are beautifully decorated to represent their respective themes, such as the kitchen, library, twins’ bedroom, and even a carousel room?! The infamous slide leads to the basement, where the secrets of experiments have gone wrong and the source of where the darkness seeped through. The rooms left us immersed and in awe, especially that new carousel room. Words could not describe how breathtaking it was to experience the new addition.

Hellsgate is a prime example of what a heavily immersive haunted house is, with its excellent storytelling and characters that just do not quit. With the rooms already properly furnished and filled with oversized props to create real rooms, the actors play their respective roles and deliver dialogue that warns the guests about the horrors that are coming up. The actors are strategically positioned to have you looking up and down, making it easy not to miss all the small details.

Run, do not walk, to Hellsgate’s gift shop and get the newest shirts that ZAP has dropped featuring your favorite characters. After a little retail therapy, the midway has a few food vendors, a bar, photo ops, a mini escape room, and carnival games. Characters roam around the beautifully decorated midway, getting into crazy shenanigans. The midway is worth staying and decompressing before heading back on the bus.

Where do we even begin!? HG has continued to evolve in recent years and produces some of the most impressive scenes, with extensive detail layered throughout the entire visit. The scenes are incredibly detailed, well thought out, and add additional layers to the storyline. Everything feels very immersive and movie-scene-like.

The outdoor trail combines a bit of classic haunt spoofs and animatronics with very detailed scenes. Some of the creative scenes, the cabin in the forest as well as the Mausoleum, tend to be fan favorites. The cabin feels like some classic 80s campy horror movie. The moment we entered the mausoleum, it almost felt like a spiritual moment. Once inside, we witness the tribute statues of those who have perished, and for a brief moment they are somber and heartfelt. With just a few steps, we are drawn back into chaos that is delivered through intense scenes and actors.

The Clown Carousel scene is this season’s new scene and is fantastic. The walls are all mirrors, which gives the room an almost infinite feel, and the carousel is dead center and operational. The horses on the ride are a weird hybrid of human and horse. One would think something as mystical as a centaur, but they seem tortured, like some inhuman creature. The ride slowly moves and is the walkway to get to the other side of the room, and is layered with clowns and props throughout.

For other staple scenes, the team at Zombie Army continues to add and build to help improve visuals. For example, the experimental science rooms now have hanging lights throughout that look as though electricity is running through various wires. It helps make the rooms feel as though we are walking into live experiments. Considering the haunt was built from the ground up, HG can take liberties and extend scenes and ideas they conjure up and make them realities. With what they continue to deliver, we can’t express how excited we are to see what they have in store for the future.

The actors at HG provide every guest with immersive experiences as they take the adventure of a lifetime through the woods and into the Moorstone mansion to survive…. The Darkness.

Guests are surrounded by many faces, all consumed by the darkness in their own unique way. Every character has an outstanding and amazingly thought-out costume with crazy details. The number of queue actors is amazing, and each one provides a unique experience. It’s enough to keep guests engaged long after they leave, thanks to the high level of entertainment and interaction. During our visit, we encountered such characters as McMouse, who can only say their name and loves bananas. Kick Rocks greeted the buses as they arrived and remained entertaining throughout the evening. Pro tip: do not ask Kick Rocks for portrait drawing… let it happen naturally. Bruises stalked us plenty and worked crowds with killer intent. Sharky introduced us to their new sidekick, Rambo the horse, and even rode them around like a real cowpoke. Nurse Gerkins proceeded to diagnose and recommend treatment for Nancy. We would be foolish not to mention the fan favorite, Fluffy! It’s so heartwarming to see families lined up and patiently waiting for their younglings to give Fluffy various victi…erm…teddies. All of the previously mentioned happened outside of the actual haunt! As we said, there are plenty of reasons to hang out for the evening.

Inside the haunt, the actors are highly active and provide the same level of scary entertainment. They provide dialogue throughout scenes to help further progress storylines and such, but they deliver lines and scares equally as creative for their respective scenes. Throughout the forest trail, we saw many lost souls trying to escape the darkness, telling us to find the cabin and stay there as it was deemed “safe”. We managed to escape the woods only to find ourselves at the gates of the Moorstone mansion. At the gate, we were greeted by the Captain and Mother, along with plenty of the groundskeepers and house workers.

Gertie the Birdy stated they could lead the way if her wing wasn’t broken. This made us a little uneasy, but we followed everyone to the front door. The mansion staff threw us off with an overwhelming amount of interaction. It was as though each person in our group was being pulled in various directions, trying not to miss a moment. One of us became best friends with Cinnamon while the other befriended Gertie. We had fun until things took a dark turn as we were told the rest of the staff were waiting inside. Once inside the mansion, we found ourselves running from room to room, trying to escape the very thing that took over the Twins. The actors here are super committed and provide great scares throughout every turn.

Hellsgate is a story-driven house from start to finish. The level of scares is amped up by the set designs, sound, and lighting; however, this is set up for the actors to take center stage. The trail up to the mansion door has plenty of actor and prop scares that are set up with amazing scenes throughout the trail. Each sets up the next, and this is thanks to the actors’ dialogue and interaction. Once past the gate and at the façade of the house, the plentiful characters there to greet guests are such a whirlwind of chaos. Every one of them demands attention in some fashion, and it makes us not want to miss a moment with any one of them. Inside the mansion, there is an onslaught of disorder in such a fun and frightening way.

Hellsgate has so many angles and different setups in each room, which provide unique ways to scare for each scene. Since there are all sorts of hidey holes, actors can time it so they are able to get scares for everyone in a group, and set up for the next scene as well.

HG provides scares for everybody in a group when walking through, regardless of their position in line. The trail is a great example of this because of the natural landscape mixed with literally walking through a dark forest. There is just enough light on the trail to guide guests through, which in turn gives actors a pinpoint of where we were in our walkthrough (easy pickings). The actors utilized several methods for scares, such as startle scares, statue scares, variations of dialogue and storytelling, pop-outs, and unsettling body movement. They also utilized the rooms they were in to build on the scares and make the story flow. The new carousel room is packed with clowns, and not all of them are real. The room is a fantastic way of showing how they provide the statue scare and set-up scare. In some cases, there will be a clown that can easily be mistaken for a prop, and then BOOM, a clown is breathing down our neck. The sewer is a great example of using the room to scare. There is so much going on with the experiments, nurses, and medical equipment that every inch of the room is used to scare. The actors also use ominous dialogue to weave the story into the different areas of the manor that you’re currently in.

The ending scene is a scene below the manor that spawned the darkness. We were finally able to witness what took over the Manor and nearly escaped ourselves. The visuals and design of the room leave us filled with uneasiness. Guests are then led into a gift shop with themed merchandise, some pieces made by Hellgate’s own Anthony Glen and his company Original Sin, as well as various other merchandise. The gift shop leads to the midway, which is a masterpiece on its own and is still filled with some scary characters mixed in with all the fun. The midway is full of games, food, and beverages, and photo ops; maybe you can get lucky and take some photos with various characters.

Our walkthrough totaled a whopping 37 minutes of complete fear and anxiety. The night of our visit (Saturday), GA tickets were priced at $45, giving HG an MPD of 0.82. While this is a bit below the average, this haunt proves that this attraction is valued for quality, not quantity.

Ticket tiers are General Admission, VIP, and Instant Access. Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights are recommended days to check out with less wait and lower prices for all ticket tiers. For the braver souls, a Hell Pass is available to one lucky guest, who gets a personalized visit with information given by a friend or relative. All ticket prices include access to the midway, which offers activities for everyone.

The bar offers themed alcoholic drinks such as the Sharky Attack and the new Fluffy drink, which was yummy. A hot dog and mini donuts food truck is also on site, offering delicious food. The fun doesn’t stop there! Themed photo ops are set up all around, and you might get lucky and snap a photo with beloved roaming characters who are dying to squeeze one last scare out of you.

This haunt always raises the bar for what an exceptional attraction should look and run like. Every year for the past decade has been a pleasure to see something new that ZAP has worked tirelessly on come to fruition. We wish them another successful 10 years!