Erebus Haunted Attraction in Pontiac, Michigan, opened its 2026 season on September 18 with a new attraction, Primordium, that tells the origin of the time-travel mythology behind the haunt. Primordium is set in the first laboratory of Dr. Colber, the fictional scientist at the center of the Erebus story, where an organism recovered from the Antarctic ice of Mount Erebus becomes the key to his time-travel experiments.
Inside Primordium
For years, Colber chased the impossible, dissecting time and sacrificing everything to reach the past, and every experiment failed. Primordium, Latin for “the beginning,” is the breakthrough that finally worked, staged as the moment his discovery turns on him. Guests enter his original lab as it spirals out of control: frozen containment chambers fracture, experimental machinery convulses with unstable energy, and ancient tissue regenerates, mutates, and spreads through the facility until the line between prehistoric life and modern humanity begins to rot away.
The organism at the center of it was recovered from Mount Erebus, beneath miles of Antarctic ice, where it had stayed preserved for millennia. Its cells survived without aging and reacted to events that had not yet happened, and that impossible link to time is what made it the key to Colber’s technology. The attraction blends the isolation of Antarctica, the volcanic menace of Mount Erebus, and the machinery of that first lab.
The Erebus backstory
Erebus opened in downtown Pontiac in 2000 and runs as a four-story haunt with more than a half-mile of indoor walk-through, named after the Greek god of primordial darkness. The haunt fills its floors with built sets and special effects, and its crews work year-round on new scares.
Erebus says it held the Guinness World Record for the largest walk-through haunted house from 2005 through 2009. Colber’s mythology, built around time-travel experiments that ripple across past, present, and future, carries the attraction from year to year, and Primordium fills in where the story began.
When Erebus is open
The 2026 season runs on these dates:
- September 18-19 and 25-26 (Friday and Saturday)
- October 1-4 (Thursday to Sunday)
- October 7-11 (Wednesday to Sunday)
- October 13-18 (Tuesday to Sunday)
- October 20 to November 1 (daily)
- November 6-7
Erebus is at 18 South Perry Street in Pontiac, Michigan. Timed-entry tickets are on sale by date at HauntedPontiac.com, or by phone at 248-332-7884. The haunt warns of strobe lighting, fog, low visibility, damp conditions, and moving floors, and it lists health cautions for guests with heart conditions, asthma, or claustrophobia.
Erebus also runs daytime, lights-on Fun Without the Fear tours for guests who want the sets without the scares. For when haunts open across the country this season, see our guide to when haunted houses open.
