PHOTO COURTESY SCAREHOUSE

ScareHouse, the nationally renowned Halloween attraction that has drawn celebrity raves and loyal fans throughout more than 20 years of operation, will not operate in 2024. The attraction, which for most of its lifespan was housed in an historical building in Etna, quietly moved out of its latest home at the Pittsburgh Mills mall in late 2023.

ScareHouse co-owner Scott Simmons broke the news to cast and crew members in a private Facebook group last week, then confirmed the update to Pittsburgh Magazine Thursday.

While there are tentative plans in place for smaller-scale experiences this year and ideas for a future revival, Simmons says that such plans will require a reimagining of the popular attraction — and, in all likelihood, outside investment.

Related: Here’s What It’s Like to Work as a ScareHouse Haunt Actor

After a previous hiatus in 2019, ScareHouse had major plans for reopening at Pittsburgh Mills in 2020. When the pandemic hit, however, those plans were scaled back; while the haunted attraction did operate that year, it was at significantly reduced capacity. The combination of a year without revenue followed by a costly move and a season with very limited attendance presented ongoing financial challenges.

“We’ve been basically spending our own money to keep this thing going,” Simmons says, “because ScareHouse means a lot to a lot of people.”

The location, which was housed in a former H&M store at Pittsburgh Mills in Frazer, operated normally from 2021-23. As fewer and fewer other tenants remained at that mall, however, traffic waned.

“Crunching the numbers and looking at what we were doing … It was just going to get really, really bad,” Simmons says. “We didn’t see the situation improving at Pittsburgh Mills. We didn’t see any chance of somebody coming in and putting more money and putting more attention” into the mall, which narrowly avoided a sheriff’s sale last year when its ownership group, Namdar Realty Group, paid more than $11.5 million in taxes with days to spare.

Calls and emails to Namdar’s offices were not returned as of Monday.

Moving to Pittsburgh Mills, Simmons says, carried a number of benefits — chief among them, the presence of ample parking, which was never present in the Etna location. At the time ScareHouse moved, however, a number of busy neighbors were present in the mall, including a Cinemark movie theater, a Starbucks and a Hot Topic location. All have since moved out, as have all tenants of the mall’s former food court. (A different theater chain, GQT Pittsburgh Mills Cinemas, later took over much of the former Cinemark space.)

“The mall was never known for being heavily occupied, but post-pandemic, for a variety of reasons, the vacancies grew significantly. There were a lot of ongoing issues at that mall that were sort of unanticipated,” Simmons says.

Namdar late last year offered ScareHouse the opportunity to leave the mall before their lease expired with penalty; it seemed to Simmons and his father and co-owner, Wayne Simmons, to be the only reasonable option. The majority of the attraction’s props, costumes and sets were packed up and put in storage; cast and crew members took other pieces home.

Simmons does hope to revive ScareHouse’s “extreme” attraction, the immersive-theater creation “The Basement,” at a new location this year. The team also still operates Bold Escape Rooms, an escape room and event space in the Strip District. (The escape rooms are currently closed to the public for the summer months, in what Simmons categorizes as a fairly routine practice; escape-room business dips in warm weather.)

“I’m choosing to look at this as an opportunity to pivot and rebrand and figure out, ‘What does the next generation of ScareHouse look like?’,” he says. While talks are ongoing with a variety of parties, “it’s going to take some investment and reimagining” to revive the attraction.

“Just like any good horror movie, we’re not dead yet — but we’re not in a good spot.”

Note: Sean Collier worked as a performer at ScareHouse from 2021-22.