Arizona community comes together to repair haunted house maze

By Elliot Polakoff

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    CHANDLER, Arizona (KTVK, KPHO) — Halloween is this Sunday. And that means trick or treating, candy, and if you’re adventurous, haunted houses.

For the last 12 years, at along South Forest Drive in Chandler, Allen Moskop has turned an ordinary house into a spooktacular setup.

Originally, the setup was a little smaller; instead of a haunted house, it was more like a haunted garage. “Just a couple of rooms,” next-door neighbor Megan Hamrick said. “And then through there, it grew and grew to be a maze.”

A maze that drew not hundreds, but thousands of people. “People come in carloads and busloads of people,” Moskop said. “And like I said, the street just gets completely packed full.”

After COVID-19 wiped out last year’s plans, the recently retired Moskop planned on going big one last time while Halloween took place on a weekend. He starts preparing the house in September. But a couple of weeks ago, some heavy wind literally put a dent in his plans.

“My wife and I went to bed at 11 o’clock,” Moskop said. “And then 10 minutes after we got in bed, we heard this tremendous crash, came outside. And then everything was just destroyed and devastated.”

Moskop originally thought that was it, his haunted house days were over. His neighbors, though, had other ideas.

“I wasn’t going to let that happen,” Hamrick said. “I couldn’t. I came out the next morning, and took the whole thing down, and took the whole thing back up within the last week.”

“Everybody kind of reached out, and said if you need any help let us know,” Moskop added. “And so I found that very, very helpful.”

Now, just a few days before Halloween, it’s nearly ready to go, and Allen can start preparing for his yearly tradition. “You’ll get someone that just scares real easily,” Moskop said. “And honestly, I just keep picking on that person over and over again. And it drives them crazy, but not too crazy, because they seem to go through it again.”

The event is free, and there’s a practice run the day before Halloween to test out all the elements. And while this year was supposed to be the last one, neighbors aren’t so sure.

“No,” Hamrick said. “I see the joy that it brings to Al’s face that it brings on Halloween night. So it would be sad for him to not participate in that whole-heartedly.”

The haunted house maze is open to anyone interested, and gets started on both Saturday the 30th and Sunday the 31st at around 6 pm. It’ll stay open until around 10 pm.

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