Pittsburgh — One of the most acclaimed haunted attractions in the country is returning this October after two seasons dark, and the thing it is best known for will not be part of it.
ScareHouse and The Plaza at North Shore announced Halloween Hangout, a month-long takeover of the outdoor venue across from PNC Park running October 1 through 31. It is a multi-year partnership. And in year one there are no mazes and no traditional haunted attraction of any kind.
Creative Director Scott Simmons told HAN directly that the omission is deliberate rather than a limitation.
“Year one doesn’t offer any traditional haunted attractions or mazes, but it will include plenty of thematic environments, original characters, and new experiences. The hope is that we can grow and expand this into something increasingly elaborate in future seasons.”
What Halloween Hangout actually is
The Plaza sits at 151 Mazeroski Way on Pittsburgh’s North Shore, a year-round outdoor venue in the middle of the city’s stadium district. ScareHouse is programming it for the full month with a mix of free and ticketed events:
- Movie nights running from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Hocus Pocus to Halloween
- ScareHouse Haunt Nights, described as more frightful and intense, aimed at older audiences seeking thrills
- Community trick-or-treat and a charity pumpkin patch for families
- “Terror Tailgate” parties before and after home football games on the North Shore
- Haunted Happy Hours
- Themed food and drink from SugarBird, the restaurant at The Plaza
Between headline events, the site stays dressed. Décor, roaming characters, and installations are meant to be there whether or not something is scheduled.
“This month-long celebration is not a traditional haunted attraction but something new and unlike anything ever seen in Pittsburgh,” Simmons said in the announcement. “The same talented team of Pittsburgh-based artists, designers and performers who generated national attention with ScareHouse are thrilled to now partner with The Plaza at North Shore to present Halloween Hangout, a multi-event and multi-year celebration of haunt season in the heart of the north shore. We’re able to customize experiences so that every time you visit this October it will be something new and surprising.”
The partner is Legacy Hospitality Partners, which operates The Plaza. President and CEO Herky Pollock framed the appeal in terms of repeat visits rather than a single ticketed walkthrough.
“Besides partnering with the creators of ScareHouse, what excites me most about Halloween Hangout is that it will be a living, evolving experience throughout the entire season. No two visits will ever be the same. Even on days without a headline event, guests will find incredible Halloween décor, immersive entertainment, roaming characters, and an atmosphere that captures the magic of the season.”
Chef Ed Smith, Legacy’s Partner and VP of Culinary, is running the food program with Amanda Smith, Partner and Director of Fine Dining Operations. Expect cocktails and mocktails built to match the décor rather than a standard concessions menu.
Where ScareHouse has been
ScareHouse spent years as one of the most nationally visible haunts in the United States, with coverage from Good Morning America, CBS News, ABC News, Travel Channel, The Daily Show, and BuzzFeed, and a reputation built on cinematic scenic design and actor performance rather than volume.
The company’s location history is the story underneath this announcement. HAN covered the 2019 hiatus, when ScareHouse moved out of its longtime home and ran only a remodeled version of The Basement plus an escape room, Stalked by a Killer, out of an industrial space Simmons called “The Scream District” on Penn Avenue. At the time he told us the move forced a reset.
“We realized we had to move out and reboot a lot of what we were doing. In doing that, it became immediately obvious that we couldn’t take everything down, pack it up, move it, and deliver the same high-quality show all in one year.”
In 2022 ScareHouse landed at the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills in Tarentum, adding an escape room and a pinball arcade to the main haunt. Simmons leaned into the absurdity of it.
“Sure, it’s kind of weird to visit a haunted house in a shopping mall, but this place has so much room for all our creepy activities.”
ScareHouse moved out of the mall in 2024 and has been on hiatus since. Its own website currently states that both the haunted house and The Basement remain on hiatus in 2026.
The 2023 season at the mall was the last time the traditional haunt operated, and it is the last time HAN spoke to Simmons on the record.
He told us this was coming
We recorded that 2023 conversation on location at Pittsburgh Mills for Hauntathon. Asked where the format was headed, Simmons said the era of the very long, very intense, hardcore haunted house was fading fast, and that audiences were increasingly after a total package and something they felt an emotional connection to rather than a maximum-intensity walkthrough.
He also described deliberately abandoning conga-line design, saying the math worked out just as well at much lower hourly throughput, and trading big animations for better actors and quieter moments. He talked about dance parties, weird programming, and a giant Taylor Swift skeleton out front, and about being mildly rebellious toward the old-school view that a haunt’s only job is to be scary. His stated position was that the purpose of haunted attractions is to entertain.
Asked directly what came next for ScareHouse, he said he didn’t know.
Three years later, the answer is a month of movie nights, tailgates, a pumpkin patch, and themed cocktails, with the mazes explicitly deferred.
The format shift this fits into
Halloween Hangout is not an outlier. It is the latest and most prominent example of a pattern HAN has been tracking for several seasons.
The clearest precedent is Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary, also in Pennsylvania, which retired Terror Behind the Walls after 29 years of linear walkthrough haunt in favor of a festival-style event with themed bars, a speakeasy, a vampire lounge, a dance troupe, food vendors, and fire pits. Director Erin Davis told us the reasoning plainly: people kept telling her they couldn’t come because it was too scary, and now there is something for everyone.
Cedar Fair made a blunter version of the same move in 2022, killing Halloween Haunt at California’s Great America and ValleyScare outright and replacing them with no-maze fall festival programming. And the Haunted Attraction Association’s 2025 State of the Industry seminar named the trend directly, pointing at value-based attractions where guests can spend a whole evening on site as a way to raise the perceived worth of a ticket.
What is new here is the venue. ScareHouse is not converting its own building. It is taking over somebody else’s entertainment district for a month, in a partnership where the hospitality operator supplies the site, the kitchen, and the bar, and the haunt supplies the creative. That is a fundamentally different cost structure than owning or leasing a haunt building, and given how often buildings and insurance are what end independent haunts, it is worth watching whether it works.
Needs More Fog
The announcement carries a second piece of news that has gone mostly unremarked: the ScareHouse creative team has launched Needs More Fog, a Pittsburgh experiential design and production company led by Simmons.
Its stated scope covers haunted attractions, escape rooms, themed entertainment, dark rides, immersive experiences, branded content, and social campaigns. The company says it has collaborated with Universal Studios, Legendary Pictures, Weta Workshop, museums, and attractions.
Read alongside the hiatus, it reframes what ScareHouse now is. The brand is no longer primarily an attraction that a company operates. It is one client of a creative studio, and Halloween Hangout is that studio’s first public project under the new structure.
What we still don’t know
- Ticket prices and which events are free. The announcement confirms a mix but no pricing.
- The full event calendar. Dates for specific movie nights, Haunt Nights, and Terror Tailgates have not been published.
- Whether The Basement comes back. It has not operated since 2019, and ScareHouse lists it as on hiatus.
- When mazes return. Simmons says the hope is to grow the concept in future seasons, without committing to a year.
The Plaza is directing people to its social channels and email list at plazaatnorthshore.com for first-chance tickets. More on the creative studio is at needsmorefog.com.
More HAN coverage
- Inside Halloween Nights 2025 at Eastern State Penitentiary
- Two Theme Parks Transition Away From Scary for Halloween
- How Haunted Attractions Are Breaking Free from Halloween Season
- ScareHouse Moves to the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills
- ScareHouse Opens 2 New Experiences in Pittsburgh for 2019 Halloween
- When Do Haunted Houses Open in 2026?
Simmons’s comments on year one were made to HAN by email. Remaining quotes are from the July 14, 2026 announcement. Our 2023 on-location conversation with Simmons is available as a podcast episode.
