Top 10 Scariest Halloween Spots

Published October 30, 2012 by PETA Staff. Last Updated August 20, 2024.

4 min read

Like a good scare? If the same old haunted houses and rehashed slasher movies have you rolling your eyes, PETA has 10 scary spots guaranteed to make you scream like Jamie Lee Curtis. Let’s start our virtual fright fest:

1. A factory-farm barn

Anyone who has ever seen a horror flick knows that you never go into the barn. Good things do not happen there, unless you consider being mutilated a good thing. Anyway, didn’t we learn anything about eating meat from Contagion?

2. Backstage at Ringling Bros.

I’d sooner spend a year trapped in Rihanna’s warped “Disturbia” world than try to dodge the whips and chains in Ringling’s house of horrors.

3. The University of Wisconsin–Madison

The bizarre and deadly experiments on cats that are going on behind closed doors at this school are like something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. But even Mary Shelley couldn’t have dreamed up “science” this twisted.

4. A McDonald’s chicken supplier’s slaughterhouse

Is there anything creepier than a clown? How about a clown with shackles, an electrified water bath, and a knife aimed at your throat?

5. The end of a chain in a backyard

Remember the iconic opening sequence in Saw in which two men are chained up in a restroom? They didn’t last any time at all before one of them sawed off his own leg to get free. Just sayin’.

6. An Australian sheep farm

Jason Voorhees might be a knife-wielding maniac, but he’s got nothing on Australian sheep farmers. Apparently, if they call it “mulesing,” they can carve up their victims alive. (Shiver!)

7. An ice floe in Newfoundland, Canada

Even with Paramount’s money, DreamWorks’ special effects, and all the fake blood in Hollywood, Wes Craven couldn’t create a gorier scene than the Canadian seal slaughter.

8. Inside a battery cage

Do you find that the worst part of haunted houses is the beginning, when your whole group is smashed into that dark, tiny room before you start the tour? If you get claustrophobic just thinking about it, imagine if that dark, tiny room lasted for two years. It’s getting hard to breathe …

9. A cow slaughterhouse

People who have seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre probably still shudder when they think about Leatherface. But even at his chainsaw-slinging worst, the skin-wearing psycho isn’t as frightening as the slicing and dicing that goes on inside a slaughterhouse where cows are killed for their flesh and skin.

10. The mean streets of New York City

For horses made to pull carriages through New York’s noisy, congested streets, every car seems like Christine—except Stephen King‘s horror flicks only last two hours, not nine hours a day, seven days a week.

Getting chills yet?