Wow, wow, wow!!! If you have never been to The Muskogee Castle in Muskogee Oklahoma, you are missing out! The Halloween Festival is a MUST SEE!! The Castle is well known in Oklahoma, and for good reason. They operate several months out of the year and have some very special seasonal events starting with the Renaissance Festival in May and ending with Christmas at the Castle. Since Oklahoma is known for hot and humid summers, The Castle takes the summer months off to beat the heat and returns in the Fall with the Halloween Festival. It’s no wonder we chose this iconic location for our first out of state haunt trip in 3 years! And it was well worth the 13-hour drive from Denver, CO. With 9 different attractions including a haunted hayride, 2 indoor classic haunts, an enchanted train ride, a haunted walk through the woods, a zombie hunt and even a torture device museum, you will have plenty to entertain you at The Castle. In fact, we highly recommend spending 2 nights exploring the realm if you have the time.
Once you enter The Castle walls, you come upon the village, this area is always free for patrons to explore; there are story tellers, food vendors, and merchants with wares for sale. The rest of the castle grounds contain the paid attractions. If you begin your Castle adventure at the time the gates open, you will be dazzled with a spectacular dance performance by all the monsters! An ingenious entertainment feature we have never encountered in all our days of haunting. A dream scenario for us! We’ve always wanted some sort of Halloween monster red carpet and this dance party is the best thing we’ve seen! And just when we thought it couldn’t get any better a truck full of Zombies comes rolling through! The Zombies look excited by the feast laid before them but, no these zombies were tricked! The truck unloads the Zombies into the captivity area for The Castle’s Zombie Hunt experience! What an incredible show to begin our adventure!
After the monster dance party it’s time to explore! We begin with the two indoor haunted attractions Casa Muerte or Murder House as it’s known, and Domicus Horrificus. Both very classic style haunted houses. Casa Muerte was the perfect place to start, it got our blood pumping with some good jump scares! This haunt had a good mix of live actors and animatronics. Although, the actors were not quite as trained as the ones who roam the castle grounds as we seemed to have caught some of them off guard as we walked through. But we did attend on opening night and I imagine first night jitters may have been present. Next was Domicus Horrificus, another classic haunt featuring an incredible Nun scene! Perfect number of actors in that scene, they surround you and provide scares from all angles, exactly what we look for in a good haunt! Then it was on to the Torture Chamber and Royal Catacombs. The Catacombs was probably our least favorite attraction overall. Not much in there except for props. We felt this attraction could have used some good animatronics and definitely some live actors. It had more of a haunt museum feel which, if it were accompanied by a spooky story telling of the history of the catacombs, it would have made a huge difference in our enjoyment of this attraction. The Torture Chamber on the other hand was fascinating, no animatronics or actors in here either but, learning the history of the different torture devices used in the middle ages and even today was enlightening. By the time we exited the Torture Chamber it was nice and dark so we ventured out into the woods for the outdoor attractions.
Our absolute favorite attraction overall was the haunted hayride!! DO NOT MISS THIS! If the only thing you have the time and money for is one attraction, we highly recommend the Haunted Hayride. We don’t have anything like it in Colorado and for us it was the star of the show!! We were blown away by how vast and dense the forest behind the castle was as we were sitting on a haybale riding on a tractor through the dark and spooky woods watching all the giant animatronics come to life among the trees! This attraction was a genius combination of haunt tricks. The huge animatronics are terrifying when they roar to life! Some of them are timed just perfectly to catch you by surprise. And the disembodied voice that recites the haunting and tragic past of the castle is a perfect accompaniment to this attraction. The whole experience was hauntingly magical, and we enjoyed every moment of it! We could have gone on that hayride over and over again it was so much fun. Definitely hard to top which is likely why our experience at the Trail of Blood was a bit of a letdown. The concept behind this final outdoor haunted attraction is quite good but, we would recommend some extra live actors to really give this spooky walk through the woods the bone chilling scares it deserves.
Exploring the vast forest behind the castle worked up a pretty healthy appetite so we headed back to the village for sustenance. Good eats at fair value is all we could have asked for! Jolly merchants line the village streets with fried goodies both sweet and savory. There are even some international cuisine options (a.k.a tacos 😉) No pricier than a meal at your typical corporate sit-down restaurant we enjoyed our grub and ventured onward to check out the Zombie Hunt. This attraction is not included in any of the combo ticket packages so if you want to give it a go make sure you purchase the correct tickets. We have experienced a lot of zombie paintball attractions in our day and assumed this Zombie Hunt would be similar. So, when we were handed our zombie killing weapons with no safety gear we were quite stunned! But, once we began shooting, we realized we had laser guns, not paintball guns. Whew!! The Zombie Hunt was very enjoyable but, the ammunition is limited. There isn’t a way to tell how many shots you have remaining with the laser guns. Also, there are live zombies and animatronic ones. Hot Tip: Don’t waste ammo on the animatronic ones. Only shooting the live ones counts!
And finally, for the younger ghouls and goblins we have the Enchanted Train! What a perfect after dark experience for the whole family. We truly enjoyed getting to ride around the castle looking at the massive collection of spooky décor and inflatables dotted all around. Definitely worth your time if you’ve got folks in your group that are not as enthusiastic about the spookier stuff in the park. Beware though, it’s a pretty bumpy ride.
No matter where you call home, a trip the Muskogee Castle is worth it!! Thank you to the owners and managers of the castle for an incredible experience the Hauntaholics will never forget!
The Castle of Muskogee
3400 W Fern Mountain Rd, Muskogee, OK 74401
Open Fridays and Saturdays
5:30pm – 10:00pm CST
Hauntaholics 