Nightfall Haunted Territory

Cover of night

NIGHTFALL HAUNTED TERRITORY HAS FOUND ITS HOME AT LOST LAKES ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX AFTER BOUNCING AROUND THE METRO FOR SEVERAL YEARS.

By Matt Dinger

It was a dark and stormy night. Kinda.

The rains had slacked off but the cooler temperatures hung around at Lost Lakes, 3501 NE 10th St., by the time the actors arrived to start suiting up.

“Suiting up,” of course, meant putting on a myriad of costumes and being caked with makeup for the third night of the season which lay ahead for Nightfall Haunted Territory.

The woods are a flurry of activity, with golf carts whizzing around in the near-pitch darkness, a scratchy squawk of walkie-talkie chatter emanating from them. Co-founder Rad Janloo helms one.

“This will all make sense when you walk through it,” he said as he bounces along a beaten dirt path through a sea of wrecked vehicles towards a shipping container. In and out of it like a trail of ants come and go staples from modern horror franchises. The blades of Freddy Krueger’s glint in the moonlight as he walks down the hill. He passes Jason Voorhees who is headed up to his place in the haunt.

“This started as a Halloween party in a backyard with my partner Andrew West,” Janloo said.

“There was a lot of planning. We actually started saving up shit for years. We were buying stuff, finding stuff. We had a bunch of materials ready to go before we actually started because we always talked about having a haunt. We didn’t know if it was actually going to come through.”

The pair continued to amass horror paraphernalia over the years, eventually starting Nightfall in its first iteration behind a Halloween store near Interstate 35 and NE 50th St. with about $75,000 worth of materials.

“We had all that money invested in it. In the first year, we did $12,000 in revenue. Oh, we got our asses kicked,” Janloo said.

The haunt moved twice again, expanding each year and slowly gaining steam until they were approached by Lost Lakes in 2020. The first year there, Nightfall saw about 11,000 people. Last year, it had more than 22,000 visitors, he said. There are no lines, so once tickets are purchased, people are encouraged to grab food or drinks from the on-site bar and restaurant. Your party will receive a text when it’s time.

With the popularity comes expansion. What originally took about 20 minutes to walk through now involves 35 scenes over the course of more than a mile of path. The terrain isn’t the most gentle. In order to enter the attraction, you have to walk across a narrow but long buoyant bridge over the eponymous body of water. Expect to go up hills, down a slide and through a rather noisy trailer over the approximate hour’s worth of scares.

“Our first weekend [this year], we had 114 actors. We’re completely full of actors. There’s no empty spots. It’s constantly a scare after scare after scare after scare. It’s not like you walk 45 seconds and there’s nothing there,” Janloo said.

As we make our way through as one of the first groups of the evening, Janloo is handing out praise and criticism in equal measure, both towards himself and the actors. He’s proud of what he’s done but every misplaced light or missed cue, he treats like a personal failure and apologizes profusely.

“Oh, this next guy is great. He’s so fucking creepy,” he said as the Bates Motel sign comes into line of sight as we trudge up a hill.

The priest and possessed girl we just saw, well, they’re father and daughter. Oh, and he’s really a pastor, Janloo tells us.

“Wow. You really nailed it,” Janloo tells one actor after exiting the scene. Another, he doubles back on. “You didn’t even scare a 6-yearold,” he said, referring to his daughter who insisted upon making the trek with her dad and brother along with Oklahoma Gazette.

“It takes you through every single horror movie you could think of. That’s just what we love and we wanted to bring that to life, but also every other haunted house in the

A scene from the Haunted Forest. | Photo by Berlin Green state in the region we’ve ever been to, they do original shit … You could tell from every scene what movie you’re in, per se, for the most part. The Michael Myers scene, the Texas Chainsaw scene, the Krampus scene,” Janloo said. Nightfall doesn’t go heavy on the fog and smoke machines along the trail, utilizing them only in a couple of the scenes where they’re relevant, but music from the films are also pumped in through speakers hidden in the wilderness. “In a haunted house, there’s different ways to scare but also having that audio in your ear is another way of putting that memory back into it. ‘Oh, shit, this is A Nightmare on Elm Street.’ And I think it intensifies the scare,” he said. All told, Nightfall now has more than a half-million dollars invested in the production. What originally began as an extension of a Halloween party has now become part of a lifestyle centered around horror movies. Originally in oil and gas, Janloo also started putting on conventions. Through founding and running OKC’s Pop Con held in June and OKC’s Horror Con which followed on its heels in August, Janloo started booking actors to appear for autographs and photos at his cons. He was approached by several of the actors afterward who asked him to become their booking agent. Now he represents more than 30 personalities in the business, Janloo said.

Additionally, his twin brother Reza Janloo, operates Elm Street Dispensary, formerly the Elm Street Smoke Shop, in Midwest City. They maintain a presence selling pipes, trays, papers and the like at the entrance.

What began as a childhood obsession for the brothers has no become their way of life.

“The fascination of dressing up and being somebody else for the day is really what got me into Halloween and that’s the earliest memory, really, is just dressing up and trick or treating,” Rad Janloo said.

Nightfall Haunted Territory will be open starting at 8 p.m. on Oct. 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, and 31. General admission tickets are $35 with fast pass and VIP options available.