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Christmas Haunted House Features A Scary Chainsaw-Wielding Santa

This Santa Wants To Give You Christmas Nightmares
Ed Mazza
By 

Overnight Editor, HuffPost

You'd better watch out -- Santa Claus is coming, and he's got a chainsaw.

A Christmas-themed haunted house called "A Very Scary Christmas" is opening this weekend in Hauppauge, NY., complete with "killer snowmen, evil elves, man-eating reindeer and murderous Christmas trees."

Of course there's a Santa as well, but he's not the right jolly old elf most people picture.

"I want people to be terrified. I want people to soil themselves," Frank Ingargiola, who portrays Santa, said in a video on the Newsday website. "Naughty. Nice. It don't matter to me anymore. I'm coming. And you ain't gonna stop me."

A few chills on Christmas aren't completely outside of the spirit of the holiday. "A Christmas Carol," is, after all, a ghost story complete with rattling chains and a graveyard. And in recent years, operators of Halloween haunted houses have been adding Christmas shows to earn some extra money.

Call it "Halloween Creep."

"Once Halloween stops, the haunted house season is dead. People have to wait a year to go to the next one," Marty Arominski, owner of Chamber of Horrors NY, which operates the Christmas-themed haunted house, told Newsday. "This is something different to do during the holidays."

Live outside of New York? Well, there's also the Frightmare Before Christmas near Chicago, Nightscare Before Christmas and Wreck the Halls in Dallas, Santa's Slay in New Jersey and Creepo's Christmas in Pittsburgh.

Even Disney gets in on the act, giving the famous Haunted Mansion attraction in Disneyland an annual holiday overlay based on "A Nightmare Before Christmas."

Some attractions, like Disney's, are for all ages. Others are decidedly not. The one in New York is on the more extreme end, promising thrills, chills and gore.

“This is not a holiday show for the faint-hearted, but rather an interactive theatrical experience," Arominski said in a news release. "As participants go from room to room, the settings and characters get progressively more frightening."

A Very Scary Christmas does have one thing in common with more child-friendly Christmas events: Everyone gets a photo with Santa, and this one will probably make for a very memorable Christmas card.

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Weird NewsChristmasVideoHaunted Houses

Before You Go

Fright Dome (Las Vegas)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
Located at Circus Circus's Adventuredome theme park, the Fright Dome is a pitch-black, lights-out, haunted spectacle that culminates with something called the Clown Overload Zone, where hordes of creepy clowns with glowing eyes surround visitors. "Ghost Adventures" star Zak Bagans recommends the Fright Dome by saying it gave him the "worst panic attack."
Netherworld (Atlanta, Ga.)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
Netherworld in Atlanta has more than 200 animated monsters and 100 live actors, and has been featured in movies like "Zombieland." The creeps begin in the parking lot where costumed characters try to scare away patrons from even buying tickets.
ScareHouse (Pittsburgh)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
The ScareHouse in Pittsburgh rates high with famed director Guillermo del Toro, who said, “With the sound design and the atmospherics, it is beautiful. I could live here!”
13th Floor Haunted House (Denver)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
The 13th Floor Haunted House in Denver may be the most technologically advanced haunted attraction thanks to state-of-the-art technology such as Microsoft Kinect to make sure the robotic monsters frighten anyone who dares to visit.
13th Gate (Baton Rouge, La.)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
Considered to be one of America's most elaborately detailed haunted houses, the 13th Gate not only has more than 100 professional actors, but also live animals, like snakes and alligators.
Bennett’s Curse (Jessup, Md.)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
Bennett's Curse in Jessup, Maryland, is usually an automatic selection on haunted house lists, thanks to three terrifying haunted houses: Medieval Underworld, Inferno 3D and Sanctuary of Insanity. New monsters and effects are added often to keep repeat visitors on their toes -- or on their knees begging for mercy.
Festival of the Dead (Salem, Mass.)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
Salem is a popular spook destination thanks to its famous witch trials. The Festival of the Dead capitalizes on this by including two weeks of events and parties designed to bring out your inner-witch, including seances, ghost hunting seminars and lectures of weird death rituals.
Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights (Orlando, Fla.)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando is the place for big budget scares thanks to movie industry experts who craft haunted houses so loaded with detail that visitors walk through and feel like they’ve been dropped into an episode of “The Walking Dead” or the movie “From Dusk Till Dawn.”
Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor (Long Beach, Calif.)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
In the 1930s, the Queen Mary was a luxury trans-Atlantic ocean liner. It was pressed into military service to carry troops during World War II where hundreds died in and around the ship. These days, it's turned into a haunted house that has the unique distinction of having real spooks intermingling with the pretend ones.
Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum Haunted House (Weston, W.V.)
Courtesy of Travel Channel
This former mental institution has been turned into a haunted attraction. Zak Bagans, who completed a live, seven-hour investigation with the "Ghost Adventures" crew, said the spirits that roam the asylum’s halls are still extremely active. “It is undeniably the scariest overall haunted attraction that I’ve been to in the U.S.,” he said.
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