halloween horror nights

Guitar ace Slash rose to prominence with an unmistakable look as the anchor of Guns N’ Roses. A true rock ’n’ roll persona, the artist was once rarely seen without a drooping cigarette and a top hat, the latter of which could barely contain his face-engulfing curly hair.

Now, as of this week, he’s a theme park character at Universal Studios Hollywood.

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Slash, or, rather, a skeletal facsimile of him played by an actor, will be available for photo opportunities and meet and greets at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, which runs most evenings through Nov. 2. For the musician, born Saul Hudson, it’s a dream fulfilled. A lifelong devotee of theme parks and coasters, Slash has been closely aligned with Halloween Horror Nights since 2014, when he first began scoring music for its haunted houses.

And the character, he says, was partly his idea.

“I went to them and said, ‘Hey, can we have one of those stilt walkers?’” says Slash, referring to the larger-than-life lurkers who haunt guests during the festivities. “That would be really cool. So they came up with one and he looks pretty menacing.”

Slash enjoys the idea of being a towering, sometimes intimidating presence. That’s clear when he’s on stage as the attention-demanding cornerstone of numerous bands. And he likes to scare, as evidenced by his own horror-focused film production company, BerserkerGang. But get Slash one-on-one, and he really just wants to geek out on his favorite theme park rides.

Universal Studios has released a second vinyl compilation of music Slash has composed for Halloween Horror Nights over the years.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

We talked to Slash about a week before Halloween Horror Nights opened from Orlando, Fla., where he was holed up recording an album with his band the Conspirators. That work, he says, will be released in 2027 due to planned 2026 touring obligations with Guns N’ Roses. He lamented that he wouldn’t have time to visit Walt Disney World and Universal’s new Epic Universe. The latter Florida park is home to a monsters-themed land that Slash said he was eager to see.

His love of theme parks runs deep, and is, of course, nonpartisan.

“I’m a real Disney head,” he says, joking that such a declaration may not make his Universal partners happy. He says he first visited Disneyland in the early 1970s. “I really can’t put into words what makes it so magical, but there is a definite thing there that you feel when you’re actually there. I’ve loved it since I was a little kid.”

“But I love theme parks in general,” he continues. “I love roller coasters. I love that carnival energy going on. I love arcades. I love everything about that festive outdoor thing, and I’ve never grown out of it.”

Arguably, he’s grown into it.

Halloween season means it’s time for Universa’s Halloween Horror Nights, which runs through early November at the theme park.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

Slash has a deep fascination with Universal Studios, made clear by his knowledge of how the park’s backlot tram trek — officially designated as the World-Famous Studio Tour — has shifted over the years. And as a lifelong horror fan who speaks nostalgically of watching 1970s films such as “The Wicker Man,” “The Omen” and “The Exorcist” with his parents, Halloween Horror Nights is especially dear to Slash’s heart.

Slash was first drawn to the event in 2013 due to a haunted house themed around the music and images of Black Sabbath. The artist was given a tour of Horror Nights by John Murdy, who has long overseen the West Coast edition of the festivities.

“I was so blown away,” Slash says. “I was elated. I remember physically making giddy sounds. The whole thing, from the stilt walkers to the invisible bush figures who would hide in the bushes and were camouflaged, it was unbelievable. I wanted to be involved.”

Murdy was open to the idea. “The first time I walked into his personal recording studio, the first thing I noticed was a huge print of ‘Bride of Frankenstein,’ our 1935 classic, hanging on the wall. And I was like, ‘Oh, we have something in common.’”

Halloween Horror Nights is filled with haunted houses and scare actors.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

Slash would go on to write the music for six Halloween Horror Nights houses centered around Universal’s classic monster characters. This year, he’s returned to Horror Nights with a score set to a relaunch of an original, Depression-era set maze, “Scarecrow.” Musically, it’s a departure for the artist. “Scarecrow” includes a Slash-composed cover of traditional folk number “O Death.”

“We started talking ‘Scarecrow,’ and as pure coincidence, he said, ‘Oh, I just learned the banjo and the dobro,’” Murdy says. “He was learning all these traditional Appalachian instruments, and I said, ‘That’s awesome because my house is set in the Dust Bowl.’”

That Slash has been dipping into more Americana-influenced music isn’t a complete surprise. His 2024 solo effort, “Orgy of the Damned,” leans blues for instance, including a blistering, rootsy take on early Fleetwood Mac rocker “Oh Well” with country star Chris Stapleton. Selections from Slash’s Halloween Horror Nights work, minus the new “Scarecrow” music, will again be available on a limited-run vinyl sold at Universal Studios during Halloween Horror Nights.

Slash is featured this year as a “character” at Halloween Horror Nights, a skeletal, stilt-walking interpretation of the artist.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

“As soon as they gave me the concept, my brain went into that realm — I could pull out my pedal steel, and do an Americana-type approach, as opposed to the goth, kind of pseudo-metal thing I was doing for all the Universal Monsters,” Slash says.

Slash has become such a Halloween Horror Nights fixture that this year will feature a bar centered around the artist, one complete with a mini top hat as a dessert. When asked how he feels to be immortalized as a sculpted sponge cake with coconut lime mousse, he doesn’t flinch.

“I wish I could explain in words how much I love that kind of stuff,” Slash says.

He is, after all, a theme park regular, although his favorite rides are found a few miles from Universal Studios in Anaheim. “I love the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. That and Pirates of the Caribbean will always be my two favorite rides,” he says. “The attention to detail and the creative element and everything that is going on with those old Disney rides is still, to this day, second to none.”

The mark of any true theme park aficionado is an appreciation of slow-moving, old-school dark rides, attractions that are set in darkened show buildings and often filled with an assortment of vignettes. Slash singles out Universal’s “The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash” as another highlight.

“I went with my stepdaughter and we went on that ride and it’s great,” Slash says. “The ‘Pets’ one is really sweet. I’m a big animal guy. We love our cats, so that was a lot of fun.”

Crowds lined up to enter “Scarecrow,” a haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights featuing music by Slash.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

And before Slash can finish his next thought, he starts gushing about a recent trip to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where he visited Ferrari World, home to a number of celebrated roller coasters.

“I can talk about this stuff all day,” he says.

Las Vegas — I turn a bend and see a figure in a cornfield. The gray sky is foreboding, a storm clearly on the horizon. When I take a step forward, I’m hit with a gust of wind and fog. Suddenly, it’s no longer a silhouette in the haze but a scarecrow, shrouded in hay, lurching toward me.

Only I am not on a Midwestern farm, and there is no threat of severe weather. I‘m in a warehouse in Las Vegas, walking through a maze called “Scarecrow: The Reaping.” I jump back and fixate my phone’s camera on the creature, but that only encourages them to step closer. I‘m hurried out of the farmland and into a hall, where giant stalks now obscure my path.

Welcome to Universal Horror Unleashed, which aims to deliver year-round horrors and further expand theme park-like experiences beyond their hubs of Southern California and Central Florida. Horror Unleashed, opening Aug. 14, is an outgrowth of Universal’s popular fall event, Halloween Horror Nights, which has been running yearly at the company’s Los Angeles park since 2006 and even longer at its larger Florida counterpart.

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Like Halloween Horror Nights, there are maze-like haunted houses — four of them here themed to various properties such as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Exorcist.” Their more permanent status allows for a greater production factor — think disappearing walls and more elaborate show scenes — and they are surrounded by brooding bars, a pop-up rock-inspired dance show and a host of original walk-around characters. “Hey, sugar,” said a young woman as I near the warehouse’s main bar, a wraparound establishment themed to a large boiler. The actor’s face was scarred with blood, hinting at a backstory I didn’t have time — or perhaps the inclination — to explore.

Horror Unleashed is opening just on the cusp of when theme parks and immersive-focused live experiences are entering one of the busiest times of the year: Halloween. The holiday, of course, essentially starts earlier each year. This year’s Halloween Horror Nights begins Sept. 4, while Halloween season at the Disneyland Resort launches Aug. 22. Horror shows and films are now successful year-round, with the likes of “Sinners” and “The Last of Us” enrapturing audiences long before Oct. 31. Culture has now fully embraced the darker side of fairy tales.

A scene from the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” maze at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the Universal Horror Unleashed.

A gruesome moment during the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” maze at Universal Horror Unleashed.

“You can make every month horrific,” says Nate Stevenson, Horror Unleashed’s show director.

That’s been a goal of David Markland, co-founder of Long Beach’s Halloween-focused convention Midsummer Scream, which this year is set for the weekend of Aug. 15. When Midsummer Scream began in 2016, it attracted about 8,000 people, says Markland, but today commands audiences of around 50,000. “Rapidly, over the past 10 or 15 years, Halloween has become a year-round fascination for people,” Markland says. “Halloween is a culture now. Halloween is a lifestyle. It’s a part of people’s lives that they celebrate year-round.”

There will be challenges, a difficult tourism market among them, as visits to Las Vegas were down 11.3% in June 2025 versus a year earlier, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. And then there’s the question of whether audiences are ready for year-round haunts that extend beyond the fall Halloween season to winter, spring and summer. I entered Horror Unleashed for a media preview on an early August night when it was 105 degrees in the Las Vegas heat. It’s also been tried before, albeit on a smaller scale. Las Vegas was once home to Eli Roth’s Goretorium, a year-round haunted house that leaned on torture-horror and shuttered after about a year in 2013.

But Universal creatives are undaunted.

Frankenstein’s monster comes alive during a Universal monsters maze at Universal Horror Unleashed.

More than a decade, of course, has passed, and Horror Unleashed is more diverse in its horror offerings. A maze themed to Universal’s classic creatures winds through a castle and catacombs with vintage-style horrors and a mid-show scene in which Frankenstein’s monster comes alive. Original tale “Scarecrow: The Reaping,” which began at Universal Studios Florida, mixes in jump scares with more natural-seeming frights, such as the aforementioned simulated dust bowl.

TJ Mannarino, vice president of entertainment, art and design at Universal Orlando, points to cultural happenings outside of the theme parks in broadening the terror scene — the success of shows such as “The Walking Dead” and “American Horror Story,” which found audiences outside of the Halloween season, as well as “Stranger Things,” which he says opened up horror to a younger crowd. Theme parks are simply reflecting our modern culture, which is craving darker fantasies. Universal, for instance, recently opened an entire theme park land focused on its classic monsters at its new Epic Universe in Florida, and even Disney is getting in on the action, as a villains-focused land is in the works for Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.

An anxiety-ridden actor in “The Exorcist: Believer” maze at Universal Horror Unleashed.

“We think our audience really wants this,” says Mannarino, noting theme park attendance surveys were prodding the company to give horror a permanent home. And at Universal’s Orlando park, Halloween Horror Nights starts earlier, beginning in late August.

“Just a couple years ago, we started in August, and we were selling out August dates,” Stevenson says. “On a micro level, we’re seeing that, boy, it doesn’t matter if you extend past the season or extend out before the season — people are coming. People want it.”

The central bar, themed to a boiler room, at Universal Horror Unleashed.

Universal is betting on it, as the company has already announced that a second Horror Unleashed venue will be heading to Chicago in 2027. Smaller, more regional theme park-like experiences are once again something of a trend, as Netflix has immersive venues planned for the Dallas and Philadelphia regions, and Universal is also bringing a kid-focused park to Frisco, Texas.

There are antecedents for what Universal is attempting. Disney, for instance, tried an indoor interactive theme park with DisneyQuest, for which a Chicago location was short-lived and a Florida outpost closed in 2017. Star Trek: The Experience, a mix of theme park-like simulations and interactive theater, operated for about a decade in Las Vegas before it shuttered in 2008.

“I know there’s horror fans and Halloween fans who are always looking for something to do,” Markland says. “What [Universal is] doing is very ambitious and big, and so I’m nervous along with them. We’ll see how it goes. I’m sure people will go as soon as it opens and through the Halloween season, but after that, I don’t know. … They’ve definitely invested in Halloween and horror fans. They’re all-in.”

Horror, says author Lisa Morton — who has written multiple books on the Oct. 31 holiday, including “Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween” — is thriving in part because today it is taken more seriously by cultural critics. The genre also has metaphorical qualities — the struggle, for instance, that is life, art and creativity in “Sinners” or the underlying themes of PTSD that permeated the latest season of “The Last of Us.” That makes it especially appealing, she says, for today’s stressful times.

“I suspect that’s part of the reason horror is booming right now,” Morton says. “Everything from climate change, that we seem to have no voice in, and our politics, that don’t seem to represent us. Many of us are filled with anxiety about the future. I think horror is the perfect genre to talk about that. When you add a layer of a metaphor to it, it becomes much easier to digest.”

To step into Horror Unleashed is to walk into a demented wonderland, a place that turns standard theme park warmth and joy upside down. Don’t expect fairy tale-like happy endings. The space’s centerpiece performance is twisted, a story centering on Jack the Clown and his female sidekick Chance, who have kidnapped two poor Las Vegas street performers and are forcing them to execute their acts to perfection to avoid murder. The deeper one analyzes it, the more sinister its class dynamics feel, even if it’s an excuse to showcase, say, street dancing and hula hoop acrobatics.

A circus show at Universal Horror Unleashed features various Las Vegas performers.

The space has an underlying narrative. Broadly speaking, the warehouse is said to have been a storage place for Universal Studios’ early monster-focused horror films. That allows it to be littered with props, such as the throne-like chair near its entrance, and for nooks and crannies such as a “film vault” to be renamed a “kill vault.” Somehow — horror loves a good mystery — the space has come alive, and don’t be surprised to be greeted by a vampire or a costumed swampland figure that may or may not be related to the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The goal, says Universal creatives, is to give Horror Unleashed a bit of an immersive theater feel, something that can’t really be done among the chaotic scare zones and fast-moving mazes of a Halloween Horror Nights event. But here, guests can linger with the actors and probe them to try to uncover the storyline that imbues the venue. One-to-one actor interaction has long been a goal of those in the theme park space but often a tough formula to crack, in part because cast members are costly and in part because of the difficulty to scale such experiences for thousands.

“As we’ve evolved this style of experience, we have given more and more control of the show to the actors,” says Mannarino on what separates Horror Unleashed from Halloween Horror Nights. “It’s less programmed. It’s less technology. I’ve had conversations with tech magazines, and they’ll ask me what is the most critical piece, and I’ll say it’s the actors. … The lifeblood of our all stories — we can build all of this, but it doesn’t go without the actors.

“It’s what really drives this whole animal,” he adds.

A dark moment in “The Exorcist: Believer” maze at Universal Horror Unleashed.

It extends a bit to the mazes as well. Audiences should expect to spend about five to seven minutes in each of the four walk-through attractions, but unlike a Halloween Horror Nights event, where guests are rushed from room to room without stopping, in Las Vegas there will be one dedicated show scene per maze. Here, groups will be held to watch a mini-performance. In the “Exorcist” maze, for instance, that means witnessing a full exorcism, complete with special effects that will have walls give way to demonic specters. In the ‘70s-themed “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” haunt, look out for a bloody scene designed to drench guests.

The mazes are intended to be semi-permanent. Stevenson says there’s no immediate plans to swap them out in the near future but hints that Horror Unleashed will be an evolving venue and, if all goes according to plan, will look a bit different in a few years. Thus, he says the key differentiator between Horror Unleashed and Halloween Horror Nights is not necessarily the tech used in the mazes, but the extended time they can devote to unwrapping a story.

“When Universal builds a haunted house, the level of story that starts that out is enormous,” Stevenson says. “There’s so much story. All of our partners need that because they base every little nuanced thing off of that story. Unfortunately, we don’t always have the chance to tell that story, and all our fans tell us they want to know more story.”

A sampling of food and drinks at Universal Horror Unleashed, including a bread dish with bourbon-laced cheese.

Tacos and a chainsaw-themed flatbread at Universal Horror Unleashed.

Story percolates throughout the venue. Flatbreads, for instance, are shaped like chainsaw blades. Desserts come on plates that are mini-shovels. Salad dressing is delivered in syringes. In the past, says Mannarino, no one wanted their food to be played with. ‘“Don’t do horrible things to my food!’” he says in mock exaggeration. “But now, people really love that.”

Little, it seems, is obscene, when every day can be Halloween.