Local haunted house owner are looking to scare Windsorites

by Liam Higgins

Windsorites wanting a good scare will be able to get their fix for again this at the Scarehouse.

The Scarehouse at the corner of Tuscarora Road and Ouellette Avenue is in its seventh year of operation. The Scarehouse has been in multiple locations, and first began at a bar in downtown Windsor called Bentley’s Roadhouse. Since then, it has been located in the basement of the Holiday Inn hotel on Huron Church Road, and more recently has been at its current location for the past two years. The Scarehouse encompasses about 30,000 sq. feet of haunted house.

The Scarehouse first began in 2006 when one of the owners and organizers of Scarehouse, Shawn Lippert, owned Bentley’s. When business became slow after passports became mandatory to cross the U.S. border, the bar went empty during the Halloween season. Lippert and other owners created the Scarehouse to bring in more customers before shutting the bar down.

Lippert said since they’ve begun, business for the haunted house has only gotten better.

“If we stick around long enough, we start to develop habits,” said Lippert. “The people that come here come back year after year.”

The Scarehouse brings in anywhere from 50-100 people a night on weekdays, and 500-800 people a night on weekends with a ticket price of $10. The Scarehouse can bring in $5,000-8,000 each day on the weekend, and $500-1000 each day during the week. Lippert said the price of tickets has increased to $12 on the weekends starting the weekend before Halloween.

Jason Warwick, 15, came to the Scarehouse for the first time this year and said he was a bit nervous. Warwick said he expected a lot of things to be jumping out at him throughout the course of the Scarehouse.

“I expect to see a lot of jumpers,” said Warwick. “Things that I can’t see that are just going to pop out at me.”

Windsorites looking to be scared at the Scarehouse are able to visit until Halloween night, when Lippert and the rest of the Scarehouse crew will perform one last scare for the season. For more information on the Scarehouse, call Shawn Lippert at 519-791-1492.