In sin city, Halloween is circled in red.
The Circus of Horrors, Hillbilly Hell and Vampire's Blood Feast are among the many haunted houses that promise to terrify Vegas visitors. There's even a haunted casino for folks who don't find the real gambling halls scary.
"The feel of fear, that's what you want to give them," says Jason Egan, the founder of Fright Dome, the largest Halloween attraction in town, at Circus Circus. "To give them that feeling, you need to make sure you've got the fog, the atmosphere, the sounds, the smells of fear."
This is Egan's sixth season of wreaking havoc on the paying public, and he promises a bevy of bone-chilling surprises from Fright Dome, which opened Oct. 3.
A sinister Santa greets visitors to one of Fright Dome's five haunted houses, the Hex-mas Nightmare.
"We kind of went with a 'Christmas gone bad' theme," Egan says of the attraction, which from the outside appears to be a cozy cottage -- "like Grandma and Grandpa's house."
In a heartbeat, the cheery greeters -- the elves -- become "hellves," and the choreographed chaos is underway. Actors and animatronics help bring Egan's scenes to life -- and in some cases, death.
The haunted-house craze in Vegas began in 1992, when Duke Mollnar opened the city's first free-standing Halloween attraction. Now his company, Freakling Bros., has three haunted houses, which are purposely devoid of bloodied zombies oozing their insides. Mollnar uses other methods to make his patrons scream.
"Throwing blood on the wall is the easy way out," he says. "There's very little gore here."
Instead, Mollnar employs dozens of actors to create what he calls "theatrical illusions" -- terrifying yet realistic scenes. A visit to his oldest attraction, the Mortuary, drives home his point as effectively as a razor-sharp scalpel.
"It's our creepiest show," he begins. "It's very realistic . . . the embalming room, the catacombs, the chapel. Everything in it is extremely morbid."
For folks who want a dose of spookiness but without the skull saws, a trip to some of Las Vegas' purportedly real haunted houses can provide plenty of ghost stories -- without causing nightmares.
"This tour has to do with real sightings, real ghosts. We don't make up any stuff," says Robert Allen, an amateur ghost hunter and founder of Haunted Vegas Tours.
