The Curley’s Haunt - Delaware Haunted House Inspirations

The Curley’s Haunt is a Delaware haunted house nestled in North Wilmington Delaware that serves up plenty of scares & nightmares each Halloween season. Born out of a curiosity of the uncanny and a maddening infatuation with the macabre, The Curley’s Haunt arises out of its dormancy every year, taking on a new shape, theme, and intensity. What started as a family tradition of simple, homemade scares has spread into a full blown walkthrough experience complete with live actors, special effects, programmed lights and sounds. The Curley’s Haunt undergoes a complete overhaul each year to ensure returning guests never get the same experience twice. This aspect feeds into challenging creative limits and refining scares for the best haunted house experience.

Being a Delaware haunted house means quite a lot. Sitting in Northern Delaware, The Curley’s Haunt is surrounded by legendary attractions such as Frightland (Middletown, DE), Bates Motel (Glen Mills, PA), and Pennhurst Asylum (Spring City, PA) just to name a few (there are a ton more!). Much of our inspiration and drive comes from fond memories at these haunted houses which have deep history in fear and Type 2 fun.

Haunting becomes an all year endeavor when you decide to delve into creating a full attraction. Our process begins in January when we sit down at the drawing board and consider what we took away from the previous season. Normally, The Curley’s Haunt begins as a series of sketches and scrabbled notes that are molded and eventually transformed into hardened scenes, scares, characters, and minute details. 3-D modeling is where we layout the bones of The Curley’s Haunt, envisioning the walls and how each scene will feed into the next. This part of the process is a major catalyst when we begin the build. The build itself will start with base of pallets and plywood (for a creaky, underfoot feeling) before we install wall panels. The walls act as a canvas and backdrop that house the contents in which guests will interact. Finally, we put up the framing supports for a roof to fully enclose the structures. But these are just the bones of The Curley’s Haunt. What are bones without a beating heart? For many of us who work on the haunted house this is where the true fun begins. Part of the crew breaks out the blood, guts, and gory goodness while another part of The Curley’s Haunt family gets busy running wiring for lights, speakers, animatronics, and computer systems that allow us to expand into more elaborate, custom scares. While the sun begins to set early we tap into our ever-rotating supply of headlamps and floodlights so we can work into the night. This is crunch time where late nights of toiling are the norm. Up until the last minute we constantly tweak the haunted house and sometimes employ entirely new creations to accompany the rest of our creation. There is truly nothing like seeing the evolution from our first steps to finished product as the final pieces fall into place.

Every year this humble Delaware haunted house grows and takes on a new, foreboding aura and mystique. In 2021 you could say The Curley’s Haunt had four main scenes, 2022 was eight, 2023 had twelves areas, and 2024 ushered in 16 totally new terrifying sections. The Curley’s Haunt (and many other haunted houses alike) specialize in all things dead. But one thing we continuously try to leave behind is dead space. Scene after scene makes for an onslaught of fear and a blur of terror for our more frightful victims.

As always, we are unbelievably excited to share what is in store for the 2025 Curley’s Haunt experience. We extend our sincere thanks to those who have braved the haunted house every year. We look to continue being a force in the Delaware haunted house community.

The Curley’s Haunt was not only established to manufacture nightmares, however. Our Delaware haunted house aims to be a force for good as well. Each year, proceeds are donated to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. BCRF is one of the highest rated foundations when donating money for research. 91% of all donations are going toward actual research. In the past three years over $10,000 have been given through your participation in The Curley’s Haunt. As always, we wish to continue this part of our tradition each and every season.