Business View Magazine | October 2019

9 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2019 OPENING L INES C hoosing the best haunted houses in the nation is a labor of love for the Queen of Haunts, also known as Amber Arnett- Bequeaith. She has spent a lifetime in the haunt industry – celebrating forty-five seasons. Some of her early memories as a five-year-old was sleeping in a coffin and rising up from it to toss petals on passersby in her family-owned haunt in Kansas City. The family still owns the haunt it created in 1975, the Edge of Hell, marking it as the nation’s oldest-operated, commercial, haunted house. The years following, they expanded to a whole bevy of scare-based attractions including haunts Beast and Macabre Cinema, a ghost and gangsters tour, hayrides, and the Festival of the Full Moon where the Queen of Haunts reigns over scary fun and laughter. “The most common question I get is what is the best haunted attraction to visit,” said the Queen of Haunts. This fright-for-fun expert is quizzed by all types of people – from scare enthusiasts with either a penchant for travel, or a bucket-list of thrill goals, or others simply wanting to hear how their local haunt stacks up. While she admits she is hard to scare and knows the inside “tricks of the trade,” she favors the haunts where the scares are invented but the fun is for real – best described as “TERROR-ific”. The United States is a behemoth in the haunt industry, with approximately 1,200 haunts focused on fear-based entertainment – without counting the charity-run, smaller-scale haunts. In the sea of choices, the Queen’s picks are sure to cast scares to make fun memories for a lifetime. Here are the top 13 TERRORific haunted attractions for heart-pounding, hair-raising fun: 1. Edge of Hell, Kansas City – perhaps close to her beating heart, but this granddaddy of haunts creates a mind-blowing scary experience from THIRTEEN TOP PICKS FOR THE MOST “TERRORIFIC” HAUNTED ATTRACTIONS IN THE U.S.