Northern Marylanders Can Experience Two Haunted Houses with One Ticket
NORTHERN MARYLAND — Feeling displaced as a Halloween enthusiast? Tired of the merry, missing the scary? Looking for an atypical way to celebrate the holiday season? If your answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, then you’re likely to be the target audience of the holiday haunt - a seasonal overlay of a haunted house which twists the usual winter holidays into something a bit darker. These limited, ‘off-season’ haunt events are becoming more and more popular each year, and the holiday haunt might just be the most popular of them all. This year, Northern Marylanders can experience not one but two holiday haunts with a single ticket purchase - and with less than fifteen minutes’ commute between them.
The Final Bell Haunted Schoolhouse (Hampstead, MD) opened its doors for the first time in October 2025, it was already impressive. The incredibly immersive haunt experience was built in less than seven weeks, filling the shell of a former high school and propagating it with actors to play students, teachers and custodians who had become trapped in time and dehumanized by their endless march through infinite days. “The little haunt that could”, as showrunner Matt Tillett calls it, is still finding its footing with the local community and building brand awareness regionally - but after a single season, the attraction had already built up enough momentum to justify its first off-season event. Meanwhile, only a few miles away in Westminster (MD), Hera’s Nightmare was throwing the doors open for its second consecutive holiday haunt weekend.
Above: Scary meets merry at the Final Bell Haunted Schoolhouse, one of two exceptionally terrifying holiday haunts that can be accessed using the coveted ‘combo pass’. Itzhallow_ (left) and Saphire Amber (right) strike a “heartfelt” pose.
‘Shoot for the stars, and land on the moon’ as the saying goes. But owner and showrunner Carlos Rivas is never content to settle for the moon. Hera’s Nightmare - in many ways a spiritual successor to the now-defunct Hackney Haunts - recently won the 2025 OSCARES Award for Best First-Year Haunt, an achievement that brought national recognition to the attraction and validated Carlos’ passion for the experience he had built. Six months later, Carlos was purchasing additional space at the TownMall of Westminster in order to expand the haunt to 27,000 square feet. Like the Final Bell Haunted Schoolhouse, the 2025 Halloween show at Hera’s Nightmare was a thing to behold; but there would be no rest for the wicked, because Carlos had a mind to keep operating through the winter.
2025 marks the second holiday haunt event for Hera’s Nightmare, and a rising tide lifts all ships - so Matt and Carlos chose to ride that tide together. This year, for the very first time ever, the two haunted attractions jointly offered a new ticket type called the ‘Combo Pass’. Guests with this coveted ticket could access not only the three haunted attractions at Hera’s Nightmare, but the extended linear attraction at the Final Bell Haunted Schoolhouse, as well. The combo pass - which will reportedly remain available for future events and experiences across both haunts in the year to come - allows guests to bypass the standard queues by zipping through the V.I.P. queues at every attraction, and in some cases even includes added bonuses like admission to the Horror Vault walkthrough at Hera’s Nightmare. For just over $60, this is an absolute steal and allowed us to face off with festive folklore from across the jingleverse.
As far as theming, neither haunt was pulling any punches. Hera’s Nightmare affixed the subtitle of “Christmas Nightmare” to its limited event, and each of its three attractions offered a unique nightmare of its own. “Humbug Hollow: Marley’s Revenge” presented a dark and sinister take on Charles’ Dickens’ classic Christmas tale, “Santa’s Twisted Toy Factory” remade the North Pole into a demented industrial fever dream and “Christmas Carnage: Krampus Returns” welcomed the anti-Claus himself, heralded by the corrupted cast of the Nutcracker ballet. Meanwhile, over at the Final Bell Haunted Schoolhouse, “Christmas Slaycation” unleashed a creepy Christmas party on the timeless school building, with saints and sinners aplenty throughout its hallowed halls. Costumes and makeup were definitive strengths of both haunts, and the actors did an incredible job giving us something seasonal to scream about.
There are some caveats to the bargain that the combo pass offers. Firstly, V.I.P. access is not the same as ‘instant’ access - your wait will be noticeably shorter, but you may still encounter a brief wait as the V.I.P. lines will sometimes clog during busier times of the night on any given event date. Secondly, as of December 2025, the combo passes must be purchased onsite - online purchases are not currently possible due to capacity limitations from the haunts’ ticket processor. Thirdly, as both of these holiday haunts were two-night-only, extremely limited events, you’ll need to wait until 2026 to see these two powerful forces combine once more. These caveats stated plainly, we’d still recommend the combo pass to anyone who wishes to experience Hera’s Nightmare or the Final Bell Haunted Schoolhouse, as these magical admission passes make it affordable, accessible and expedient to get through all four attraction walkthroughs. Best of all, you don’t have to take our word for it - our experience vlog below shows just how easy it is to get from one haunt to the other (going in either direction) in the same night. For tickets and future event details, be sure to visit https://www.herasnightmare.com/index.html and https://finalbellhaunt.com/, respectively.
