Local haunted house Ashmore Estates, full of scares and nightmares, is up and running for the month of October.

Ashmore Estates was a poor farm and a mental institution located in Ashmore before being turned into a haunted house attraction by Scott Kelley, the current owner.

Kelley said this is the seventh year they have done the haunted house at Ashmore Estates.

Kelley said Ashmore Estates Asylum is the largest haunted house located in Central Illinois with about 12,000 square feet and around 40 rooms.

“We call ourselves the premiere haunted house of Central Illinois,” Kelley said.

He said there is a long history behind the building.

“A little over six years ago, everyone believed that the place was an asylum,” Kelley said. “The building has never been an asylum.”

He said the area has been a mental institution, a poor farm and a house for developmentally impaired people.

“An asylum is the kind of place that a Hannibal Lecter would be in,” Kelley said. “You wouldn’t want people in an asylum to get out, and we don’t have a place for the criminally insane here.”

Kelley said they decided to stick with the myth in their haunted house.

“We like to highlight what people are already scared of,” Kelley said.

He said he has been in the haunting industry for 41 years, just one less than the industry has been around.

The industry was started with the Knott’s Berry Farm haunted house in 1970, but has grown to include more 3,000 haunted attractions in the United States, Kelley said.

Kelley said every year around January he and his wife, Tanya Kelley, try to come up with a new conceptual idea for the design. He said his haunted house is more actor/ human intensive.

“Some haunted houses think that animatronics and animated things are scary, and I don’t believe that,” Kelley said. He said people are better for scaring people.

“You never know what someone is going to do,” Kelley said. “If a haunted house tries to use animated props, I have a real hard time getting scared by it.”

He said it is the unpredictability that makes people more scared.

“If I see (a prop), I know it is going jump out to scare me, but people, you don’t have any idea where they are,” Kelley said. “The best thing to do is not to let your victims know that you are there until you jump out at them.”

Kelly said they are often asked how long it takes to go through the house, but there is not a specific time.

“Standard answer one is ‘how fast can you run?’ or ‘you were expecting to get out?’” he said.

He added that they ask people not to touch the actors, and they will not touch visitors—also no flash photography or light sources.

“You can’t pull your cell phone out and use it as a light source,” Kelley said. “We’ll actually take it from you, and you’ll have to do something really ridiculous to get it back.”

He said one example of this is having a visitor sing “I’m a little teapot” while they video tape them and put it on their website.

He added that there is no fire sources or alcohol allowed on the premise.

Kelley said all the actors are volunteers.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $13 for children.

Ashmore Estates is open from 7 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays throughout the month of October.

The house will also be open Oct. 25 and Oct. 31 from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Kelley said he loves the haunted industry because he loves the people.

“People like to go to creepy things,” Kelley said.

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.