“World’s Largest Haunted House” has stayed in the family since the ’80s

By Calvin Nuttall

Gilroy’s “World’s Largest Haunted House” is open for willing victims to experience horror and delight now through Nov. 3.

Located at the Garlic City Casino and Restaurant on San Ysidro, the indoor attraction features twisting, maze-like hallways stocked with nightmarish scenes and haunted by a team of volunteer actors prepared to bring your worst fears to life.

Operated by Gilroy couple Oscar Garcia and Alicia Juarez, the accursed attraction carries on a family tradition of scaring that stretches back to the early 80s, when Garcia was a kid helping out in his uncles’ haunted house, then located at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose.

“I grew a love for it,” Garcia said. “I think I was in sixth or seventh grade. It was back in  the early ’80s, and it was run by my uncles. There were a bunch of us, all of the family members would go over there and help out and work and play characters. I was one of the gremlins when I was a kid.”

When Garcia’s great uncle passed away and the haunted house tradition began to die, he took it upon himself to raise it from the dead. In 2006, he found an opportunity to re-open the haunted house in a new location, this time at the old Walmart in Gilroy.

“It was a bit overwhelming,” he admitted. “The place was 170,000 square feet. It was just a lot of work to put that whole thing together. But between family and friends and everything else, we were able to open up the first year.”

Since Garcia reestablished the haunt, it has changed locations a number of times, at one point returning to the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds where it had been when he was a kid.

“It was like old times,” he said. “We were there for several years, and then there was new management. It just didn’t work out, logistically and financially, at the fairgrounds. So then, we didn’t do it for a while, a couple of years.”

Last year, Garcia joined forces with his wife, Alicia Juarez, to bring the haunt back once more, this time in its current location at the Garlic City Casino. A self-described “big chicken,” Juarez said operating a haunted house is the last thing she would have expected she would be doing in her very limited free time, but she has unexpectedly fallen in love with it.

“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” she said. “I wasn’t hesitant going into this, because whatever I do, I do 100 percent, but I had no experience. I’m really proud of what we’ve created. For us, to put on that good show, it is so much work, it is so much passion, it is dedication. We work long hours. I am still a chicken at heart, but I love to be able to scare people.”

The couple keeps to an old-fashioned tradition of terror, eschewing automated features like puppets and animatronics in favor of live actors in costume. These actors are volunteers, including members of Garcia and Juarez’s family, and other like-minded members of the community with a passion for Halloween.

“There is nothing like walking through a place knowing you have actual people in there, not a dummy that pops out, or an animatronic, or whatever it is,” Garcia said. “We’re about keeping something traditional. These walls, this space, and the way we put it together is the same as what we did in the ’80s.”

The attraction drew large crowds last weekend, including visitor Destiny Olsen, an avid horror fan who was impressed with the size and depth of the haunt.

“I love horror, so it takes a lot to scare me,” said visitor Destiny Olsen. “I thought it was pretty cool. Sometimes haunted houses can be really short, this one was pretty long. It’s a lot more fun because you can explore a little bit. It was nice to be able to go from area to area.”

The haunted house will remain open until Nov. 3, at which point they will shut down for a few weeks while they change over to a Christmas attraction, reopening on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

“Last year, we decided to do something a little bit different,” Garcia said. “We tore everything out for the haunt, and switched everything to Christmas lights. I believe we had something close to 200,000 lights that we put up last year. We’re not done with the Halloween thing yet, but we’re already looking at how we’re going to do the Christmas display again.”

Calvin Nuttall is a Morgan Hill-based freelance reporter.