Blind Scream transforms Rohnert Park campus into a haunted attraction

Blood-curdling screams, bodies stuffed into a meat grinder, maniacs with chainsaws.

It’s that time of year for haunted houses, with actors in ghoulish garb and bloody makeup jumping out at visitors in dimly lit mazes and rooms straight out of a horror movie.

For the fourth year in a row, a portion of Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park has been transformed into a Halloween attraction called Blind Scream.

This year there are three haunted houses to choose from: Slaughter Shack, where a demented butcher runs amok; Uncle Chuckle’s 3-D Mad House, where the inmates run the asylum; and Blackout, a “heart-thumping, blood-pumping walk through your darkest nightmares.”

“We don’t claim to be the scariest haunted house in town. We’re the Halloweeniest,” said Drew Dominguez, the builder and designer, who explained each attraction is theatrically driven with a story line.

Take little Horrus, the butcher whose father was a surgeon. Now the son makes human sausage in a shop surrounded by decapitated (rubber) heads with empty eye sockets, complete with recorded sounds of buzzing flies and scent of burning flesh for added believability.

Some of the actors - perhaps the most eerie - are as young as 9.

Dominguez two months ago began transforming the 25,000-square-foot space into a chamber of horrors that runs through Halloween.

A former prop man at Knotts Berry Farm and movie studios, he said “there is something primal in our soul” that is attracted to the haunted house experience. It involves overcoming and conquering our fears.

Judy Groverman Walker, co-owner of Blind Scream, said there is an adrenaline rush. “After they’re done getting scared, they laugh,” she said of her customers, adding that it’s the time of year when adults can open up to being a child.

“People are trapped inside themselves. This triggers something,” she said.

For those who want to go a little further exploring their phobias, there is a real coffin to lay down in while the lid is closed, complete with smells and sounds of the hearse going to the cemetery - like being buried alive.

Blind Scream is highly regulated by the fire department to ensure it is safe and accessible for people in wheelchairs, Dominguez said.

“It was fun. I’m super into Halloween,” said Jolee Fernandez of Rohnert Park, as she and her husband, Asha, emerged from Slaughter Shack. “We love horror. It’s the thing we have in common.”

Blind Scream runs Wednesday through Sunday from 7 to 10 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from 7 to 11 p.m. Hours are from 7 to 11 p.m. on Halloween.

It is not recommended for children under 7.

General admission is $10 for one haunted house and $20 for all three.

Customers can come in costume, but are not allowed to wear masks.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 707-521-5214