CarnEvil Yard Haunt Adds On This Year

MCHENRY, IL — Matt Mabus has poured more than $15,000 into a popular local yard haunt that draws up to 500 people to it each Halloween season.

CarnEvil of Terror, located at 1701 Rogers Avenue, will open on Sept. 30.

• Patch's 2023 Guide To Chicagoland's Best Halloween Yard Haunts
  

The display is a walk-thru with a cemetery and carnival theme, and there are actors on the weekends as well as carnival games for kids to win prizes. Also on the weekends, Mabus and his wife hand out apple cider and his wife also bakes up Halloween cookies that are wrapped up in individual bags and handed out.

There's also caramel vodka on hand for an adults who'd like to spike their cider, Mabus told Patch.

This is the Mabuses second year in McHenry. CarnEvil used to be Savannah Cemetery, which was the family's yard haunt at their former home in Round Lake.

Mabus, 35, starts setting up his display on Sept. 1 and spends his evenings after work and the weekends getting things in place for a Sept. 30 opening, he said. He typically spends about $2,000 per year on materials, props and goodies and has put $15,000 to $20,000 into the display over the years.

Mabus was scared, but fascinated, by Halloween yard displays as a kid, and has always loved horror movies. His 6-year-old son also shares his love for Halloween.

"He helps set up and gives ideas and tells me what to make and buy," Mabus said.

He also loves sharing the display with all who stop out.

"The people who come out and enjoy it push me to keep going every year," he said. "I love how scared yet excited the kids in the neighborhood are to come out and take a look."

The display will be up and running from 5 to 9 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, from 5 to 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and from 5 to 9:30 p.m. on Sunday from Sept. 30 through Nov. 1.

New this year will be a tent visitors can walk through which has a "killer butcher shop theme." Children should enter at the parent's discretion, Mabus said. His 6-year-old son has walked through and it "freaks him out a little."

"I would say it's up to the parents - there's a little fake blood some gore," he said. The tent is shared with the Mabus's neighbors, who run a different yard haunt, Nightmare on Rogers.

Mabus works as a house painter at a developmental center for the state and has built portions of the Halloween display. New this year is the addition of a bridge and columns which is the entrance to the haunt, which Mabus constructed.

More information is available on the CarnEvil of Terror Cemetery Facebook page. And Patch.com has a full list of Chicagoland's best Halloween yard haunt, which have opened or will be opening soon, here.