Ho-ho-horror: Christmas haunted house decks the halls with guts and garland in Sullivan

Christmas is about love, joy and kindness. But this weekend in Sullivan, it will also be about scaring people out of their stockings.

Lynda Brawley, a 13-year veteran of working at haunted houses around the country, moved back to her native Missouri two years ago with her husband. They started working at the newly opened Terror on Route 66, a building that previously served as a pawn shop, truck stop and woodworking shop before turning into a haunted house in 2022.

They loved it so much, they bought it last month. And they have big plans.

“We really want to do more than just operating around Halloween. We want this to be something that helps make Sullivan a better place and gives people something to do,” Brawley said.

This weekend, that means transforming the building’s dark, twisty corridors into a Christmas-themed scare fest they call “Santa’s Slaughterhouse.”

Flickering Christmas lights, broken decorations and toys that look nothing short of demonic are just a few of the things that visitors will see as they walk through a quarter-mile of rooms, hallways and outdoor mazes.

Brian Munoz

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St. Louis Public Radio

Brian Munoz

/

St. Louis Public Radio

Here’s the fictional backstory visitors are told: Santa hired a talented toymaker for his workshop named Victor Krampus, who got interested in the dark arts and started making deranged toys. One of his creations went horribly wrong, and it started a fire.

“The fire killed all of the toymakers, and [Krampus] went out into the woods to hide and made a perverse replica of the toy shop that he was working in previously, and he turned it into Santa's Slaughterhouse,” Brawley said.

All that world building and the effort that goes into training the actors is part of the team’s commitment to the scare.

Sammy Taylor sees an obvious connection between Christmas and scary stuff. The St. Louis native plays Jingles, a blood-spattered elf who carries a giant candy cane with sharpened points on both ends.

“People ask me, ‘How do you do a Christmas character?’ And I said how I got it was being a clown — silly and cute, funny, but also dark and demented at the same time,” Taylor said.

There’s also a connection between Christmas and haunted houses, according to Brawley.

“Our team has a pretty equal love for spooky and Christmas,” she said. “I think that this is going to be a pretty good dynamic. They already have the over-the-top festiveness of them anyway for every holiday.”

Brian Munoz

/

St. Louis Public Radio

It seems Terror on Route 66 may have initially underestimated customer interest in a scary Christmas.

In early December, in an effort to use the space more in the offseason, it hosted a photos with Santa event — a normal, jolly, non-scary Santa.

“People were asking for photos with scary stuff, not just normal Santa photos,” Brawley said.

Next year, the plan is to offer photos with demonic elves and Krampus, the horned creature from Germanic traditions who travels with St. Nicholas to punish naughty children.

While there are plans for the future, the focus is on this weekend’s Yuletide fright. Taylor knows a night of scares has been a success if she wakes up sore the next morning.

“I wake up, and my legs are shaking because I was chasing people all night,” Taylor said.

She revels in how people react to the performance.

“The laughs, the screams, the look on people's faces. And also the actor's reactions too, everything from the newbies to the veterans. You build a family here,” she said.

The haunted house actors and operators talk a lot about being a family, and they believe Santa’s Slaughterhouse can be a fun family outing during the holidays.

Haunted houses are a business, but they are also a passion for some families, and that’s no different at Christmastime.

“Our daughter was born on Halloween,” Brawley said. “It’s kind of in our blood.”