DarkWood Manor Celebrates 25 Years of Fear
LURAY, VA — For a twenty-fifth consecutive season, citizens of Luray, Virginia were once again welcomed back into the forbidden halls of DarkWood Manor…a small, but deeply immersive haunted attraction seated on the bank of Hawksbill Creek. Twenty five years of seasonal operation is quite an achievement for an independent haunt like DarkWood. Every year, founder and creative architect Louis Brown works with his team to craft a new and immersive walkthrough experience leveraging both props, sets and costumes from previous seasons and brand new, often hand-made elements. Louis knew that he had to do something special this year to mark the occasion - and what he came up with might well have been DarkWood’s best show to date!
Now, full disclosure - as recently as a couple of years ago, we had never even heard of DarkWood Manor. Luray is a beautiful town framed by the mountains, creeks, forests and wildlife of the Shenandoah Valley and home to one of the most-visited cave systems in the country, but at the end of the day, it is a small town with a tightly-knit community. Louis’ foot traffic has long been driven by strong reviews and word of mouth, with the haunt only recently becoming more active on platforms like Instagram. But that hasn’t stopped DarkWood from seeing a tremendous return on its ongoing investment in Luray, with many nights selling out each October and local sponsors like Blue Shepherd Distillery jumping at the chance to launch a specialty cocktail in collaboration with Louis’ team. In June of 2024, we were contacted by Louis and his employee Billy Bowers and invited out to tour the property, and we were absolutely gobsmacked by what we saw and experienced there.
Above: DarkWood Manor might look small and unassuming from the outside, but the haunt offers a nearly twenty-minute walkthrough that changes drastically from year to year, rewarding both first-time and repeat visitors with a wildly immersive and terrifying experience.
DarkWood Manor is a relatively small building, which looks even smaller from its front entrance. The facade is beautifully decorated with sculptures of dragons, aliens, eldritch horrors and even a “whovian” weeping angel or two. You’ve no idea what to expect as you walk under the stone arch and enter the queue, and that’s part of what makes DarkWood Manor so much fun to visit; with the show consistently being updated, reconfigured and re-themed, even those who have been visiting for years will be starting from zero. And when your time comes and you step through the threshold of the Manor itself, you’ll be blown away by how completely such a small little haunt immerses you in the stories that it has to tell. The walkthrough experience - which is mostly indoors - can take anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five minutes to complete, depending on your pace and the crowd level on the night you choose to visit. Said experience is full of smoke and mirrors, projections, live actors, masks and makeup and hand-made “actormatronics” (large puppets manned by human operators) that are all sewn together in a seamless narrative flow.
In a celebration of their 25th anniversary, DarkWood’s 2025 show was themed to Appalachian horror stories; dark tales from Mother Grimwood’s ancient tomes, propagated and perpetuated by residents of the Shenandoah Valley and the surrounding regions. While I can’t say that we (as Baltimoreans) were intimately familiar with such monstrosities as the Dweller Neeth, the Hambooger and the Mouth Bound Man, what I can say is that the blood, sweat and tears poured into bringing all of these local legends to life was deeply evident, and that encountering each of these monstrosities in turn was bloodcurdling. The costumes, the makeup, the set design, the flickering lights and atmospheric sound loops…every detail was carefully and lovingly engineered to deliver the best and most immersive experience possible. Particularly as experience vloggers who had the honor of touring the show buildings during the daylight hours, the transformation from day to night was nothing short of unreal. And - as the Tardis outside the main entrance might subtly indicate - the haunt really is “bigger on the inside”.
Even if Mother Grimwood’s twisted tales stood alone as the only experience on property, it’d be more than worth the $20 (+tax) ticket fee. But Louis’ boundless imagination simply couldn’t be contained by one walkthrough, which is why the haunt opened a second attraction, the 3D Mind Maze, in 2017. Eight years later, the Mind Maze continues to operate as a supplemental experience that is included in that base admission cost of ~$20/person (an absolute steal, by the way), and it is one of the weirdest and wackiest walkthroughs that I think we as explorers and adventurers have ever undertaken. While there are scare actors and motion triggers inside the maze to keep the adrenaline pumping, the highlight of the attraction is the wildly overstimulating neon and the complete lack of depth perception thrust upon you by the complimentary 3D glasses. If you think walking the gangway through a vortex tunnel is difficult under normal circumstances, wait until you’re trying to do it while navigating a storm of color and light. As a rare treat for the 25th season, Louis and his team also brought back a timeless classic not seen since the pre-pandemic years….ye olde ball pit. There is truly nothing that awakens one’s inner child quite like diving headfirst into a shallow cluster of plastic balls!
Naturally, DarkWood’s midway is limited by the space that it has to work with. Parking can be difficult to find, particularly if you visit late in the season; onsite food and bathrooms are limited to a small tent and some Porta Johns, respectively. That said, the staff and the security do an amazing job keeping the communal areas clean, entertaining and organized. Aforementioned ‘small tent’ might be home to a number of different food service vendors each season, but this year’s recurrent vendors were staffers from the Care Closet, a local nonprofit. They had all kinds of goodies in crockpots and baskets and every purchase went towards providing essential items (hygiene, home care, infants and pets) for Virginia families in need. A handful of scare actors were also roaming, engaging and trolling guests as they entered and made their way through the queue. And - worth noting - you’d be missing out on some unique bits and bobs if you didn’t spend some time rooting around in the DarkWood Manor Gift Shop! We actually wound up taking home a handmade replica of Mother Grimwood’s giant storybook.
DarkWood Manor remains, year after year, one of the most imaginative, ambitious and downright unforgettable haunted attractions we’ve had the privilege of experiencing…and its 25th season only served to further cement that reputation. DarkWood thrives on passion, community and creativity, and the walkthrough experience(s) rewards both seasoned haunt fanatics and first-time visitors with something distinct, unnerving and wholly original. But of course, a picture is worth a thousand of these fancy words - and a video is presumably worth double that - so be sure to check out our full 2025 DarkWood Manor experience vlog below if you want to get a better idea of what to expect for your first visit to Luray’s premiere haunted attraction. Mother Grimwood is nothing if not patient…
DarkWood Manor (104 N Hawksbill St, Luray, VA 22835) will open next for Krampus Nights on December 5th and 6th, and the scares are expected to continue in 2026 as DarkWood opens its doors for it’s 26th season in October. Tickets are available online only and require timeslot reservation. For details and purchases, visit https://www.darkwoodmanor.net/home.html.
