Joliet Haunted Prison Needs More Scare Actors To Thrive: Ferak

JOLIET, IL —Unless you're driving around Joliet with your eyes closed, you can't help but notice all the Old Joliet Haunted Prison billboards. These billboards are everywhere, and there's good reason for the hype. This fall marks the first time that a professional haunted house is open within the abandoned grounds of the Old Joliet Prison property off Collins Street.

One of the Midwest's premier haunted theme attractions, Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, made the Old Joliet Prison its newest adventure.

The Old Joliet Haunted Prison has been operating for an entire month. It will stay open through the first weekend in November. The Old Joliet Haunted Prison is located at the old women's prison property off of Woodruff Road, not the 1858-era men's prison where Blues Brothers was filmed.

On Saturday, I ordered two online tickets for the 7 p.m. time slot. I convinced my 13-year-old son to come along for the fun.

I wanted to go earlier in the night before it got crazy crowded around 10 p.m. or 11 p.m.

Turns out, my son and I were able to step inside the haunted prison about 15 minutes early because the line was pretty light between the 6 and 7 p.m. admissions.

What were my overall impressions of the place?

As far as props go, the folks at Thirteenth Floor did a spectacular spooky job. They have created hundreds of lifelike creepy creatures that are strategically placed within the prison, including the old cellblocks on both the first and second floors of the building.

The concept for this prison-themed haunted house is fabulous, and you will definitely feel like you are slowly inching your way through a horrifying insane asylum from 100 years ago, as you enter the Old Joliet Haunted Prison.

The decorations and layout of the prison yard is worth exploring.

Unfortunately, if you are expecting to be constantly scared out of your shoes by howling monsters jumping in front of you every 20 or 30 seconds, the Old Joliet Haunted Prison isn't quite there yet.

Apparently, the Joliet restaurant and beverage industry isn't the only one suffering from a huge shortage of workers at the moment.

There's also a significant lack of people working in the scare and fright field.

In fact, just three days ago, The Old Joliet Haunted Prison posted an announcement on its Facebook page letting everyone know that it still needed to hire more workers.

On Saturday night, it was evident that the Old Joliet Haunted Prison could easily use another 30 to 60 scare actors to roam the cellblocks inside the prison. There were countless times I would peer into one of the dark open prison cells expecting to have a ghost or a crazy axe-wielding madman jump out at me. Instead, cell block after cell block had nothing more than a prop.

In total, my son and I counted no more than 25 to 30 scare actors working inside the main feature. Your admission ticket to the Old Joliet Haunted Prison gives you access to two different attractions. One is called the Ghost Chamber, and the other is called The Forsaken.

The Forsaken is a pretty neat concept. You play a game of laser tag with zombies that are hiding from you behind the dark walls, around the corner and hiding in the fog. Even still, Thirteenth Floor could probably have twice the number of zombies roaming around the prison yard as were present on Saturday night to make it an even more enjoyable experience for its guests.

Perhaps I'm spoiled from my visits to The Statesville Haunted Prison in Crest Hill on Weber Road, but if you could only go to one haunted house in the Joliet area this month, I would recommend that you visit Statesville.

After all, this is it. This is the final year of Statesville's existence.

On the other hand, I do think brighter days are ahead for the Old Joliet Haunted Prison — if they can significantly increase their number of scare actors.

Statesville, from what I remember, easily had 100 to 200 scare actors roaming Siegel's Cottonwood Farms in years past. In 2019, for example, I was constantly jumping and screaming like a frightened little baby during my visit to Statesville.

On Saturday night, I jumped with fright only two times. I know because my son was counting.

Anyhow, I hope the Old Joliet Haunted Prison can eventually reach the staffing level necessary to become a terrifying experience for you and for me. After all, that's why we like to visit haunted houses around Halloween.

I have no doubt the Joliet prison can get there. The setting for a Halloween haunted house inside an early 1900s-era limestone prison that was left abandoned in 2002 is fabulous.

Now, the place just needs more people, a lot more people, to run it.

The following opinion column is by John Ferak, Joliet Patch's editor.