The Halloween Festival at the Castle of Muskogee offers scares to those of all ages

MUSKOGEE, Okla. — Starting on the last weekend of September, the Castle of Muskogee has already hosted two weekends of scary entertainment for those of all ages.

"It's our best year yet," said Vice President of the Castle of Muskogee and Director of Operations Matt Hiller. "The response so far has been great—great turn out."

This year, the Halloween Festival offers 9 unique haunts as well as free access to the Halloween Village.

While the haunted houses are what draw many guests to the Halloween Festival, Hiller emphasized the Castle has more activities available than just haunted houses.

The festival also offers games, a climbing wall, bounce houses, ax throwing, fortune tellers, zombie paintball and free ghost stories.

Hiller explained an addition that has returned to the Castle this year revolving around the characters guests can interact with in the Halloween Village.

"You have characters throughout the Village...and those characters also take turns taking a ride as Ghost Hosts on the hay ride. So, we have a hay ride that goes all the way around the outskirts of the property and each hay ride is different because the Ghosts Hosts have their own story to tell about how they ended up here at the Castle and the tales around the castle grounds. That's a real step up this year that we've added back since Covid and the Ghost Hosts really make it for an exciting ride as well as a good interaction throughout the Village."

The Castle has been preparing for the Halloween Festival for months, rebuilding the various haunted houses and attractions.

"From the moment our Fireworks Season ends, we start preparing for Halloween...One thing about our Halloween Festival and our haunted houses is that we rebuild them every year, so they're never the same...We rebuild all those haunted houses inside and a lot of the outside haunted houses or haunted attractions get rebuilt with different scenes and we mix it up and it's always different. It's great to see people coming back year after year and being more excited to see characters that they've met in The Village or just to see how its changed over the years."

Hiller also shared some things that are new at the Halloween Festival this year.

"We've switched over one of the haunted houses to make it more of a kid friendly, fun haunted house. It's called Monster Blaster. You go through with Orbeez gun and you're shooting stuffed animals and things like that. [There's] a lot of added kid stuff, more kid stuff this year...The Ultimate Maze is kind of an Alice in Wonderland theme and just a lot of stuff going for kids this year."

Hiller said the Festival starts out as a young, family evening before turning into an adult or teenage evening by the end of the night. While many of the new additions have been for kids, he said some of the haunts can get pretty intense.

While the Halloween Festival is supposed to deliver on fear, Hiller shared that the Festival has employed security to keep everyone safe.

"We do have security. Everybody that comes in has to be accompanied by a parent or guardian, someone of age with an ID, and we have lots of security scattered around, so it's not just a place to come and drop off your kids. You have to be accompanied by a parent or a guardian."

The gates at the Halloween Festival at the Castle of Muskogee open at 5:30pm and the ticket booth closes at 10:00pm, but the haunted houses and other attractions remain open after the booth closes.

To learn more information about the Halloween Festival at the Castle of Muskogee, you can visit their website at okcastle.com .