Bonnie Springs has no shortage of entertaining ways to while away the daylight hours throughout the entire year, but come sun down in October things shift gears quite a bit. After their normal operating schedule, the springs close down to the public for a couple hours as the ghouls start to crawl from their crypts and the venue itself changes it's name from the unassuming "Bonnie Springs" to "Bonnie Screams"! It's a fitting change in moniker as the shadows spread and spookiness prevails you might find yourself hard-pressed to silence a scream. Not only is the location famously haunted (as explored in an episode of Ghost Adventures) year round, anyway, but when the barrier between this world and the next one over thins during Halloween it's bound to get a bit spectral. Even during the supposedly safe daylight hours I found myself screeching in shock and horror in the wax museum when one of the wax "figures" sprung to life and damn near scared the shit out of me, literally... Luckily for us, it was just one of the gunmen from the afternoon shoot-out messing with us, but with the thick and ominous atmosphere of the wax museum I really wouldn't have been surprised if that had not been the case. There's a lot of history at Bonnie Springs as it was an important stop in the Spanish trail for some time and helped in the exploration ever Westward that led European settlers to build up the Americas as we know them today... but prior to that Paiute tribes and indigenous people called this place their home for much, much longer. If all the tales of misfortune attributed towards building upon ancient Indian burial grounds holds any water, the entirety of Las Vegas and especially Bonnie Springs would be rife with curses and foreboding.
With multiple haunted houses to explore, the cost of the tickets themselves is quickly absolved. We had a lot of fun and thoroughly enjoyed our exploration of the grounds. One especially fun thing about your tickets is that you can do the haunts as many times as time permits in the evening, there's no limit- so if you need several rounds through to get your satisfaction you absolutely can! On top of the haunted houses there were live performances from fire dancers and magicians, tapping into the otherworldly powers provided by the Hallowed eve. Between our explorations of the petting zoo and daytime grounds, we did have an hour or two to pass before they reopened to the public...we opted to hang out in our van after moving to the Screams specified parking. We watched the sun go down and took a few more photos of the van, and ourselves, before we were able to strike out for the spooky fun. You have a couple of options from there- we opted out of the zombie paintball this year as it wasn't in our budget and instead took the creepy walking trail up to the haunt. Though the darkness made it difficult to snap much, I'm not terribly bothered by this as I wouldn't want to ruin the fun for anyone else! Suffice to say, winding our solitary way along a desert path in the dark with creepy sounds echoing among the terrain and the occasional hung man, clown or other otherworldy spook greeting us around various turns had our hackles well and raised before we even entered the grounds proper...
More photos after the cut...
Until next time!
XOXO,
NAU
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