"It's a dead man's party.
Who could ask for more.
Everybody's comin'
Leave you body at the door."
-Oingo Boingo
As Pontiac's Erebus Haunted House grows, so too does the downtown's infatuation with it. The Guinness Book of World Records holder for largest walk-through spook house has expanded even more for this Halloween season and that has inspired downtown Pontiac to become a Halloweentown of sorts.
The attraction now occupies almost half of the 100,000 square feet of its multi-use building on Terry and Water streets. Brothers Ed and Jim Terebus opened the haunted house in 2000 in a long-abandoned building that once housed everything from office space to a bowling alley. Since then they have enjoyed lots of success, with people often lining up around the block to go through it.
Erebus --named after the mythical Greek darkness the dead had to pass through immediately after dying before they reached Hades-- sports a new dungeon section in the front and a "nuclear Jurassic Park" section in the bowels of the building. Each year, the Terebus brothers try to expand a little bit more into the structure. This year the haunted house occupies 40,000 square feet of the building and can take up to 45 minutes for people to make their way through each terrifying room.
"It depends on how fast you're running," says Ed Terebus.
The haunted house attracts thousands of people to downtown each year. To help capitalize on all of the extra foot traffic many of the downtown's businesses are operating with a Halloween theme, such as serving pumpkin beer.
Erebus is open from 7 to 11 p.m. on Sundays through Thursdays, 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Fridays and 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. Saturdays. Admission is $20 per person. For information, call (248) 332-7884.
Source: Ed & Jim Terebus, founders of Erebus
Writer: Jon Zemke
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