13 Stories – Newnan, Ga – 16 Oct 2020 – Covid 19 Edition

We, me and Moose, arrived at 13 Stories around 8:00 on Friday night. The parking lot was busy, but not full, fooling me into thinking the haunt wasn’t busy. We bought general admission tickets to the main haunt, the Hellavator add on, and the Zombie Apocalypse laser tag feature.

Haha, the joke’s on me. The virtual queuing system means you can buy tickets anytime and get in a virtual line when you’re ready. Even then, the wait wasn’t bad. There were a couple of wandering scare actors keeping the customers on their toes. The guy on stilts was easily spotted, chasing anxious patrons around with a car horn / head light combo. A ‘slider’ was also prowling about.

Now, a word about haunted houses and Covid 19 mitigation. To me, and your mileage may vary, the key elements of a haunt are actor interaction, props, and setting. Actor interaction is strongly affected by the group you are in. My experience is that actors go for the best reactions, which usually come from the younger, clearly already nervous, patrons.

Covid mitigation turns that upside down. Actors are trying to maintain distance. Groups are not formed randomly from the assorted customers waiting in line. Your group is who you come with.

So my son and I were a group of two, an old guy and big guy, ambling through a haunted house. We occasionally caught up to the group in front of us, and the group behind us frequently caught up to us.

13 Stories had several actors stationed to prevent bunching up, holding a group with their act and blocking passage long enough to create some space. I would have loved to hear their lines and respond, but the ambient noise level in 13 stories is intense and most of the time rendered the actors essentially mute.

We encountered about 40 scares, some in fixed scenes and some roaming. The roamers were able to cut through the sets and scare the same group multiple times. Memorable actors were the pair in the ‘kitchen’ scene and the very nimble guy at the entrance to the clown house.

13 Stories uses a lot of animatronic monsters to supplement the actors, so be prepared for roaring creatures of all types to lunge out from hiding. As always, the props and settings range from mild to gross, running the gamut from graveyards to abattoirs.

Zombie Apocalypse The 2020 version of this feature has several updates. Gone are the old M4s, those solidly built replicas whose physical mass probably led to the occasional accident. I know I had a couple close calls in years past. In their place were compact, plastic, lightweight, bullpup style laser tag guns.

The other change was the course is now a loop, so while you have unlimited ammo, you now have a limited time to play as you walk through the course.

The zombies were quite lively and aggressive, and ‘died’ with energetic antics when lit up by the activation of their target necklace. They’d wait a few, then come back for more. Watch your back, they almost always attack from behind or down low to the side.

Hellavator Now I wish I had done this last year so I’d have a good comparison. This is an add on feature that I’m going to guess was meant to be a little more intense than the main haunt. During our visit, there were only 3 or 4 scare actors in the haunt rotating through the scene to scare us about 10 times. The intensity was about the same as the main haunt. Aside from the ‘elevator’ ride, the scenes and settings could have used more work.

13 Stories is a huge space with a lot of open area, and felt a little emptier this year, mostly thanks to the pandemic, I think.

We got to chat for a few minutes with the 13 Stories boss, Allyn Glover. It was nice to meet him after all these years of visiting his work. Everyone at 13 Stories was friendly and helpful, from the ticket window to the gift shop folks, and especially Crystal, the lady directing traffic on the walk up to the line.

13 Stories Haunted House – Newnan, GA – 2019

We have been to 13 Stories numerous times over the years, and I am enjoying their willingness to change things up. They have a nice, large, well built space in which to play, and on this visit, they played hard.

Me and the Moose arrived at 13 Stories, just off US-27 in Newnan, at 10:50 on Friday 11 October. We paid our $25 each for general admission tickets and went right into the front room to sign a waiver and encounter our first scare actors.

This year’s 13 Stories features the return of the Clown Haus and the behind the scenes Clown Haus. Also, this year, the whole haunt is a touch haunt, though no one tied our hands or blindfolded us as in previous incarnations which included the Sacrifice feature.

We took our time along the trail, noting some familiar sights along with the changes. The actors aggressively stayed with us, keeping up their chatter or growls, yells, and screams for a bit. There were a number of running, sliding, scares with actors skidding across the floor from behind or from a bend in the path ahead.

The best ones were those that got to stay and talk, like the butcher, the graveyard guide, and numerous clowns.

Some of the quiet ones were also fantastic. In the graveyard, a petite actor with a grisly mask linked arms with me as if we were strolling through the park. She stayed with me while the graveyard guide warned us about the terrors ahead, then walked along for a bit before slipping away to scare us again later with an upside down crab walk like something out of “The Grudge”

Then, there were the clowns.

When the website, the ticket, and all the other signs and ads say “Return of the Clown Haus” there had better be clowns. We were not disappointed.

Clowns followed us. Clowns threatened us with axes, knives, and bats, they told us jokes, they talked to us in both a conversational and an insane manner, they dropped down from above. One clown fist bumped me, which was awesome. Another said we looked bored, and we had to reassure her that we were just trying to take everything in and that they were great.

There is a lot to take in this year at 13 Stories. We enjoyed some of the subtle touches like the HR Office sign in the Clown Haus.

The actors will touch you. For us, they were not shoving or pulling, but mainly things like a hand on a shoulder, an almost conspiratorial, confiding gesture whose normality was made creepy by the context.

There are a lot of animatronics at 13 Stories this year. They were usually well placed and added a nice touch. Animatronics do not have personal boundaries though, so be prepared to get out of their way quickly.

The props ran from just gory to hideous. The 13 Stories web site does not recommend an age limit, but I would think twice before bringing an easily scared pre-teen to a haunt with such graphic props.

I lost track of counting scare actor encounters at around 60. I would guess the final tally is closer to 75, though when a pack of clowns is mobbing you for a couple minutes solid, it’s hard to describe with just a number.

We exited the haunt into a large room featuring merchandise, an oxygen bar, snacks, and at least one add on feature called the Hellevator. We passed on all the extras though, so someone else will have to tell us about them.

13 Stories is definitely worth a visit this year. We encountered a group in the parking lot who asked us how we liked it. When we told them, they seemed a little more hesitant about continuing. We assured them they’d be fine 🙂  Now I wish we had ponied up for another ticket so we could go through with them. They looked like they would be entertaining!

I do want to know if and when Sacrifice is coming back. I miss it.