Haunted House Scare-Permit Office Denies 22 Applications for ‘Insufficiently Spooky’ Insurance Riders

GRIMSBY — The county’s Haunted House Scare-Permit Office has denied 22 of 31 permit applications this season, citing what director Frank Delacroix called “a crisis of insufficient spookiness in our insurance documentation.”

Under county code, all commercial haunted attractions must carry a Scare Liability Rider — supplemental insurance covering injuries caused by fright, including but not limited to “startle-induced falls, scream-related throat strain, and at least one (1) documented case of a grown man weeping in the clown room.” The office reviews each rider for what Delacroix termed “adequate dread.”

“People think any haunted house can just open,” Delacroix said, flipping through a denied application from a would-be attraction called ‘Mildly Eerie Barn.’ “This application describes its scariest room as ‘a hallway with a curtain.’ A curtain, Brenda. My office has scarier hallways.”

The denials have sparked outrage among aspiring haunt operators. Marcy Lindqvist, whose ‘Basement of Whispers’ was rejected for the third consecutive year, called the process “arbitrary and cruel.”

“They told me my fog machine was ‘atmospherically adequate’ but my jump scares lacked ‘narrative commitment,'” Lindqvist said. “What does that even mean? The man in the rubber mask jumps out. That’s the whole business model. What narrative does he need?”

Delacroix defended the standards, noting that the county’s last haunted-house incident — a 2019 case in which a teenager sued after being frightened by what turned out to be “just a very realistic mannequin” — cost the county’s insurance pool $40,000 and “one (1) shattered illusion.”

To assist applicants, the office has published a 38-page Spookiness Benchmark Guide, including the minimum required decibel level for screams (110 dB), the acceptable cobweb density per square foot (described only as “a lot”), and a list of 14 banned “lazy scares,” among them: a guy with a chainsaw but no chain, a bowl of peeled grapes labeled “eyeballs,” and “any clown who is clearly just tired.”

“We want people to be scared,” Delacroix said. “Genuinely, professionally scared. That’s the job. If your haunted house is just a barn with a curtain, that’s not a haunted house. That’s a barn. And barns have their own permit.”

The office confirmed it has approved nine attractions this season, including the returning champion ‘Dread Manor,’ whose application included a 12-page fright-impact study and what Delacroix called “the single most committed rubber-mask man in the county.”