Saskatoon haunted house opens for spook-tacular Halloween season

The Berry Barn’s annual haunted house has returned just in time for the spooky season in Saskatoon.

“We’ve been doing it 10 or 11 years. This year we mixed it up quite a bit. We made it tighter, corners are tighter, it’s narrower, filled with a lot more scares than before,” Jason Horbay, a manager at the Berry Barn, said.

The haunted house is actually a greenhouse that staff convert into a haunted attraction for guests to walk through. Horbay says every square inch of the greenhouse is covered, so he encourages guests to keep an eye out for the details.

“It takes a good three weeks to a month to put it together. We start right after or just before September long weekend. We use a lot of what we have around us, so a lot of bushes, a lot of plants, a lot of dead, smelly things. It all goes into what makes ours unique,” Horbay said.

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While the Halloween staple has been a tradition at the Berry Barn for more than a decade, it is different every year. Horbay says many of the decorations are repurposed to make sure those who visit every year always see something new.

“You have to change it up. You gotta keep the public coming back. If you do the same thing every year, it gets stale. So we mix it up, every year we change it up,” Horbay said.

Horbay says while it can be difficult to precisely measure the success of the haunted house each year, he has come up with a system of sorts.

“Anytime someone screams, cries, yells, refuses to go through — in my eyes, that’s a win. Ultimately, we just do it for the entertainment,” Horbay said.