Darkness Rising, a Long Island haunted house that has run for nearly two decades, has canceled its 2026 season just weeks before opening night. The Copiague attraction will not open this Halloween because of a problem with the building it was set up in, and its owner has launched a GoFundMe to recover the money he had already spent.
On its website, Darkness Rising says only that “our 2026 season has been canceled due to circumstances beyond our control.” The fuller picture comes from owner Kevin Baird and from the Town of Babylon. They agree the building was the reason the haunt cannot open, and they describe that problem in different terms.
The Owner’s Account
Baird has run Darkness Rising for close to 20 years, since it started as a backyard haunt in 2006, and he has rented the Chettic Avenue building since 2019. He says he learned about a building problem too late to fix it. “We found out there was some issues with the building way too late,” he told News12 Long Island, which first reported the closure.
On the haunt’s GoFundMe, Baird lays out more. “After we signed the lease, we discovered an underlying issue involving the building itself that we were not aware of,” he writes. “We met with the Town to determine what we could do to resolve it, but were told the process couldn’t be completed before November.” Because the haunt is a subtenant whose lease ends in November, he writes, there was no way to postpone, so the season had to be canceled.
Baird told News12 he invested about $100,000 in this year’s attraction and now has to tear it down. On the GoFundMe he counts more than $62,000 of that as unrecoverable, spent on rent, labor, and materials, and says he financed much of the season on credit cards. “We had to cancel the haunt and now we have to go back in there and tear the whole thing down,” he told News12.
The Town’s Account
The Town of Babylon described the same building problem differently to News12. In a statement, the town said the haunted house “was operating inside a building with no certificate of occupancy for that use and without the fire protections required of a special amusement under the fire code.” The town added that it “is willing to work with the operators on that process for next year.”
News12 called its report “Condemned before Halloween” and attributed the word “condemned” to Baird. The town’s statement does not use it. Property records list 800 Chettic Avenue as an industrial building, which is the kind of space a certificate of occupancy would have to specifically clear for public assembly and a haunted-attraction use.
The Fundraiser
The GoFundMe, called Save Darkness Rising Haunted House, has a $50,000 goal and had raised about $3,762 from 36 donors as of Friday. Baird writes that he is “not asking our community to make us completely whole,” and that he plans to sell some props and costumes to recover what he can.
He also uses the campaign to make the case for the haunt itself. Darkness Rising began in his backyard in 2006 and, he writes, has grown into an attraction that draws thousands of visitors each Halloween and has helped raise more than $250,000 for local charities over the years. This season’s show was built around two houses, Dead City and Twisted Tales: The Nightmare Realm, on a single ticket. Baird says he is not finished, and told News12 he hopes to find a new location and bring Darkness Rising back for Halloween 2027.
HAN has requested comment from the Town of Babylon and filed a public records request for the building’s permit and inspection history. The town’s statement above was its response to News12. HAN also asked Kevin Baird for further comment and had not received a reply by publication. This story will be updated.
