Scary Travel Movies

I adore Halloween and almost everything that comes with it. Each year I try to consume as much spooky media as possible, including horror movies and scary podcasts. If you also enjoy such things, then this post is for you. I've got a long list of great horror movies that revolve around travel, which you would think would scare me off from a lot of things, but actually haven't. 

Ghost Face at Tom Devlin's Monster Museum in Boulder City, NV

I feel as if you can definitely learn a lot from these movies, even if it's just how not to get ripped off or how not to trust strangers. So, let's delve into some movies I have enjoyed and recommend for all horror lovers:

Cabin In The Woods (2012) - If I have to pick a favorite horror movie, it's a tough call to not immediately choose this one. I may have issues with Joss Whedon, but this movie is fairly perfect in my eyes, including the amazing twist you get halfway through and then an even twistier twist later on. In short, a group of college friends take their RV to one of their cousin's cabin in the woods to get away from it all. The cabin turns out to be much more than a cabin and the worst decision anyone's ever made, but there's a reason they're there and doing everything they do. It's amazing and if you haven't seen it, I urge you to rent it right now.  

Cabin Fever (2002) - A group of friends stay in a cabin in the woods. Before they've arrived, a virus has been released into the local water supply. It kills people slowly and painfully by causing them to decompose while they're still alive. After swimming in the lake, this group begins to show signs of infection. The cast is awesome and 20 years later I still have feelings about a particular scene that has stuck with me.

Psycho (1960) - While you can watch the remake, the original will always be it for me, plus it includes a lot of firsts in film that make it even more important. Marion Crane is given the day's deposit for the real estate company she works for, but instead of going to the bank, she absconds with the money in order to pay off her boyfriend's debts so they can get married. Trading in her car on the way, she finds herself pulling off into a roadside motel when the rain becomes too heavy to drive in. Cabin 1 is free...and, well, you know the rest.

House of Wax (1953 & 2005) - I'll admit, I loved both of these movies. The first is a black and white Vincent Price film that was properly scary even 70 years later. Several people have mysteriously gone missing with their lookalikes found in the newly-opened wax museum. In the 2005 remake a group of friends heading to a football game end up needing a new fan belt for their truck and go to the nearby town to await the return of the mechanic after a funeral he's attending. While waiting, they go to the town's "famous" wax museum and find more than they bargained for. This one stars Jared Padelecki (before Supernatural took off), Paris Hilton, and Elisha Cuthbert.

The Shallows (2016) - One of Blake Lively's best movies, in my opinion. After her death, she heads to a secluded beach that her mother wrote about in her journal when she was pregnant with her. She gets dropped off by a local and eventually meets two guys who are also there to surf. They leave and she decides to catch one last wave. In doing so, she is pursued by a huge shark that seems intent on eating her no matter what. The rest of the movie is her story of surviving and trying to make it back to the beach alive, with only herself to count on.

Turistas (2006) - Three American tourists go on vacation and a bus tour where the bus breaks down. The three of them connect with some others from their bus and head down the cliff to the beach where a party is taking place. Drinking is involved and drugs and, long story short, a surgeon who sells organs on the Black Market.

Hostel (2005) - Probably one of the hardest movies to watch and the one that may have deterred a lot of people from hostels, train travel, and strangers. Americans travel to Slovenia and meet some new friends who they go drinking with. When they wake up, they learn they've been sold to a torture chamber for rich people. It's terrifying and disgusting and one of the few movies I had to watch certain scenes through my fingers.

Old (2021) - I know this movie got a lot of bad reviews, but I really feel like M. Night Shyamalan has started finding his voice again. Several families go on vacation to a luxury resort and are dropped off on a private beach and told they would be picked up later. None of them have any idea where they are and they don't appear to have any cell service, so they can't call for help when things start to go wrong. Everyone begins aging rapidly and there's only one way out that isn't dying quickly of old age.

Midsommar (2019) - Our main character goes on a trip to Sweden with her boyfriend and his friends after her sister kills herself and her parents, leaving her severely traumatized and causing her boyfriend to put off breaking up with her, even though their relationship was bad before the tragedy happened. They all get caught up in "traditional" Midsommar rituals that get weirder and weirder the longer they stay. The writer/director Ari Aster, who also did Hereditary, has a lot of interesting things to say about his movie, including that he doesn't view either of his movies horror, but he's probably the only one.

House of 1000 Corpses (2003) - 4 friends are roadtripping across the country in order to write a book about roadside attractions. When they stop for gas they meet a clown named Captain Spaulding who owns an attraction called The Museum of Monsters and Madmen which tells the legend of Dr. Satan. In order to research this local legend, they pick up a hitchhiker who claims she lives near the tree he was hanged from and they offer to take her home so she can show it to them. Shockingly, her family is a bunch of psychopaths and things end badly for these teens. Arguably, this is Rob Zombie's best film. In my opinion it has everything, including Rainn Wilson and Chris Hardwick being idiots, Karen Black being incredibly creepy, and whole lot of killer mutants. This was followed by The Devil's Rejects and 3 From Hell, neither of which had the same campy feel that I loved.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974 & 2003) - I understand the love a lot of people have for the original, I've watched it several times and pretty much always side with Leatherface. A group of friends are traveling to visit one of their father's graves and old farmhouse. Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker who seems to have quite a lot going on and none of it good. At the old farmhouse, several of them wander off and end up at the home next door and become murder victims. I prefer the 2003 remake with Jessica Biel, who actually tries to survive. The plot is different to update with the times, but the outcome is mostly the same.

Jeepers Creepers (2001) - The original follows a pair of siblings going home from college on Spring Break. They are followed by a truck driven by a person who has seen them witness him carrying dead bodies to an old abandoned church. The rest of the movie is them trying to survive. The monster is loosely based on the Jersey Devil, even though it takes place in Florida. Barely a travel movie, Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) is also great. This movie follows a high school basketball team on the bus to an away game when a tire blows and strands them on the roadside of the same town, just 3 days after the events of the first movie. Chaos ensues and a scarecrow in a cornfield is involved. 

Us (2019) - If you haven't seen this Jordan Peele movie about a family on a vacation with some friends that they don't seem to enjoy, you might be missing out. While this has socio-political undertones, the horror aspect is amazing. The story is that every person has a double underground that is forced to live in secret and live their life like their above-ground counterpart. They have figured out how to break free and are out to seek revenge on their other selves.

The Green Inferno (2013) - This Eli Roth movie can be difficult to watch if torture porn is not your thing. A group of activists go on a trip to the Amazon when their plane goes down and they are captured by a group of cannibals. You know what happens next. It's very graphic. I would have been much more disturbed by this movie, but Roth shot on location with an actual native tribe who had never actually seen movies or TV. He explained what he wanted and showed them the most disturbing movie he had, Cannibal Holocaust, which is a movie that inspired his horror career and includes a movie within a movie called The Green Inferno. The tribe thought this movie was hilarious and, while filming, asked to be covered in more and more fake blood.

Final Destination (2000) - An oldie, but a goodie. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. A group of high schoolers are on a school trip and have just gotten on the plane when one gets a vision of the plane going down and everyone dying. A handful of them get off when he raises concerns, only to watch his vision come true as the plane has just taken off, killing everyone on board. The rest of the movie is them trying to evade Death as it comes back for them.

Brokedown Palace (1999) - While not really a horror movie, I included this because it's about a thing I always think about: getting arrested in a foreign country. While I never do anything that would probably land me in jail/prison, I think it's not that an uncommon fear. In this movie, Claire Danes and her friend go on a trip and her friend trusts a guy she just met and ends up carrying drugs for him, and they get caught and both end up in prison with a sentence of 33 years.

So, what I've learned from horror movies is to be very wary of who I trust, don't go off alone, always tell people where you'll be, don't let someone have access to your bags, don't take drinks from strangers, don't pick up hitchhikers, always have roadside assistance when going on road trips, and never split up when things are going badly.

Share with me some of your favorite horror movies. They don't have to be travel-related.  

The Paris Sewer Museum

On each trip to Paris we have done something cool and weird. On our first and last trip we visited Père Lachaise Cemetery, on our second trip we went to the Catacombs, and on this most recent trip we went to the Museum of Hunting & Nature (Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature) and the Sewer Museum (Musée des Égouts de Paris).

A museum about the sewers may not sound that awesome to anyone else, but I found it while Google Mapping a day during my planning phase. At just 9€ a person, it was very affordable and totally different from anything else we've ever done. I wanted to do a handful of non-touristy things this trip and this appeared to fit the bill.

If you passed the museum on the street (it's located in a park right on the Seine), you probably wouldn't give it a second look. There's not a ton of stuff around it, but it's situated a few steps from the Pont de l'Alma and across the street from a Metro station and a Pierre Hermé location that serves macarons and ice cream. There's a great public water fountain right out front. This was one of the only places where the employees didn't speak English, so if you have a timed ticket that doesn't work - because you're early, like we were - you will have to explain your situation to the person at the front desk.

Once inside, we were immersed in the literal sewer and its history. Paris, having the first real sewage system, has had a tour in the sewers almost since the sewer was built. People were so enthralled by this new service that they wanted to see how it worked. So many people, in fact, that they built boats for tours and charged people admission. At some point, they stopped giving tours, and then turned this portion of the sewer into a (working) museum and then allowed people back to learn history on their own, instead of through guided tours by sanitation workers. 

Now, I'll tell you that I read the reviews of the museum before I purchased tickets and the most memorable, which actually pushed me to buy the tickets, was one that said "I only saw one sewer rat on my tour. I thought I'd see more, so this was disappointing." Now, I'm aware this was a working sewer and might contain rats and other unsavory things, but it's also a museum and amazingly clean. We actually did see a rat also, but it was far away and never came any closer to us down the tunnel. 

If you are afraid of rats, mice, bugs, are claustrophobic, or have a very sensitive nose, this is not a tour for you. We wore masks the entire time, but I did briefly take mine down to smell the air when I heard two people retching further down a tunnel section, but it honestly didn't smell worse down there either. Yes, it's a working sewer and yes it smells weird, but I didn't find it overpowering and off-putting. Some sections are worse than others, but still not enough to deter me from finishing the tour.

You follow a guide of numbered plaques that tell you about each section you're in. If you only speak/read English, there is a take-along guide for you to follow along. We took turns being a tour guide for each other and telling each other about the different pipes and waterways and cool dredger boats and sewer balls (giant rubber, wooden, or iron spheres that help clean the waterways - seen below). 

You'll also see old wooden dredgers and manholes (what you'd see under a manhole cover) and all the different pipes and digital equipment used now to monitor water levels. 

Some sections are very large and some are barely tall enough for a man to stand up in. You are not permitted to go through some tunnels, which would lead you into the labyrinthine pipe system where only trained sanitation workers dare to go.

Each section is a mirror of a street or walkway above ground and each street has a street sign in the sewer tunnels, which is kind of amazing and shockingly organized for what I expected. 

At the end of your tour, you can sit and watch a video about the inner workings of the French sewer system and see how it works through illustrations and illustrated maps. It's all in French, but if you paid attention to the tour guide or speak even a little French you can get the gist of it

After you've watched the video, or skipped it, there are small models, interactive videos, and old sanitation worker equipment and protective gear. There's also a small gift shop with some cool things in it. We purchased some postcards and t-shirts (only 8 euros!) and some other little things, but they have mugs, glasses, books, and more. We highly recommend this weird and informative activity. It only takes about an hour to walk through, but it's definitely worth it, and it's easy to get to.

Have you loved a "hidden gem" attraction on your travels that you wish more people knew about?

Travel Tips for Great Fall Trips

Fall is here! Now's the best time to travel to a lot of places, because airfare and hotel deals are less expensive than other times of the year. We tend to do a lot of things in the fall, including going on our big yearly vacation. It saves us money this way and the kids are all in school, so there are smaller crowds and fewer lines everywhere we go. 

Want to make the most out of your fall? Then here are some fun ways to celebrate the season and Halloween. We did some of these things on our recent trip to France.

Head to New England

There are few places where you can go that are truly scary, but the New England area has a ton of history that includes witches, horror writers, massacres and more. This post gives you all the awesome things to do there. Rent a car, stay for a few weeks and drive to all kinds of awesome stuff.

Hit up New Orleans

New Orleans is quite exciting and not just during Mardi Gras. There are plenty of things to do in the fall, especially considering the spooky vibe of the city including the history of voodoo and vampire legends. here are some fun things to check out. For haunted experiences, you may want to visit these 5 places:

• The Omni Royal Hotel - Once the building for the city’s slave market and the site of great brutality, the hotel is now a grand place to stay and home to many spirits. 
• The Bourbon Orleans - This former orphanage run by nuns still has kids running along its corridors. Guests have reported hearing children’s voices, seeing nuns in the hallways and feeling electrical charges near the stairwells.
• Brennan’s New Orleans - A staple of the city since 1946, Brennan’s is not only a highly rated fine dining establishment, but it also has its own ghosts. In the Red Room, a man living in the building hanged himself after murdering his family. 
• The Pharmacy Museum - Set on the site of the very first apothecary shop, the Pharmacy Museum holds a wide variety of cures and artifacts from old medical practices and voodoo rituals, including ghastly instruments used in the past for dentistry, many by the former owner, a dentist known to conduct grisly experiments on patients.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 - Nearly everyone has heard of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau and you can visit her tomb in New Orleans’ most haunted cemetery. Hundreds of thousands are buried in this one square block, with the tombs being reused over and over. 

Pumpkin harvest

I don't really get excited by pumpkin carving. That might be a little weird for someone who loves Halloween as much as I do. I just don't find it fun and I don't make pies, but often the harvest festivals are full of pumpkin-picking and other activities like hayrides, squash-tossing, farm animals and more. 

If you find a corn maze, it's not unusual for there to be pumpkin harvest festivities going on nearby. Kids love to run and pick out the pumpkin they will use for their jack-o-lantern at home and also enjoy running and around and climbing on things. We have farms that feature hay bale pyramids and tours on a farm train. Usually these days out are fairly affordable and you can even sign up to receive coupons when the celebration starts.

Corn maze

I look forward to the corn mazes all year long. It's so fun to go out and spend an afternoon on local farms and get lost in a maze of maize! We pack up the car with a change of clothes and the dog and hope there's no mud where we will have to use those extra clothes and shoes and towels, but if we do, we're prepared. The mazes test our ability to read a map or our trivia knowledge. While other families split up and race each other through the maze, we view it as a fun family outing and the three of us go together. Sometimes we just let the dog go and pick our course and sometimes we use whatever clues they give us at the beginning. After we emerge from the corn, we make a trip to the gift shop, grab something warm to eat and drink and then head home. There are always great photo ops.

Farmers' market

This is similar to you-pick farms, except you can just go with your list and have fun finding them at the different stalls. Another plus to the markets is that you are getting affordable local foods and you can usually pick up lunch from any number of food merchants there, too. Our market up the street is a great place to get everything from crepes to tamales. When you're traveling, it's a perfect way to stock your fridge with healthy options for snacks and side dishes.

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Fruit picking

I love fresh fruits and vegetables. I also love to visit local farms. I'm always amazed by what people can grow. I have my own garden, but it's not big and awesome, so I like to get ideas on how to make it better. Many of these farms let you go pick your own fresh produce. You pay by the pound and often they have a store where they sell jams, sauces, and other things they make on-site. These make great gifts and souvenirs as well.

Wine and beer festivals

Right after the grape and wheat harvests come the festivals! Food, wine, beer, you name it. Fall has tons of wine and beer celebrations everywhere they serve such things. Find new favorites when you can sample all the local (and some not-so-local) varietals and brews. Most of these fests require you to buy a glass for your samples, so you already have a built-in souvenir, too!

Head Underground

Lots of weird stuff happens underground. Here are three I greatly enjoy:

• The Shanghai Tunnels under Portland. They were featured on Travel Channel’s 10 Most Haunted. Though it came in at number 10, it was the only Portland site to make the list, so by simple reasoning, it must make it Portland’s most haunted site. I was disappointed that I didn’t experience so much as a cold breeze, nor did I catch anything on my camera, unless you count dust particles catching the light of my flash and presenting themselves as “glowing orbs”, but maybe you'll be luckier (if you think it's lucky to see/feel a ghost) than I. 
• The Dungeons are on my list of kitchy and kinda scary (if you're afraid of the dark and mirror mazes where you might be followed) and must-do attractions. The site offers best price guarantee and you can get discounted deals if you purchase a combination ticket with Madame Tussaud's and/or the London Eye. If you plan to visit off-peak hours, you can save up to 50%! You must purchase your tickets online though. Each dungeon (located in London, Edinburgh, Blackpool, York, Alton Towers, Warwick Castle, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, and Shanghai) walks you through the "streets" of history and winds you through creepy stories and rides that take you from one area of the dungeon to another.
• Paris Catacombs. There are miles of underground tunnels underneath Paris full of human bones that were put there when the cemeteries became overcrowded. Even now they are still crowded, but with tourists. Get there right at opening and beat the crowds. Lines can stretch up to 2 hours long and with prices at only 13-15 euros per person, it's one of the cheaper things you can do in France. And if you're looking for something interesting, but not scary (unless possibly seeing a rat or a bug scares you), the Paris Sewer Museum is a cool underground self-guided tour that's only 9 euros, and I promise there are no skeletons.

Go to a theme park

Most theme parks have a Halloween celebration of some sort. Here are the top ones, including how to save on admission if there's a way to:

• Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. Many park days at the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland in Sept-Nov are cut short for this party that requires a special ticket to get in. From 7pm to midnight, many of the park guests come dressed in costume to enjoy 5 hours of trick-or-treating, dancing, nighttime thrill rides (only specific rides will be open during that time, not the whole park), Hall-o-wishes fireworks display, an all-villain musical show in front of the castle, villain meet and greets, amazing park decorations and, best of all, a special parade opened with the Headless Horseman on horseback. It’s all totally Disney and so out of their normal festivities that it’s worth putting off your vacation until that time of year.
• Knott's presents Knott's Scary Farm. Save significantly on your tickets by buying them online instead of at the gate.
• Universal puts on Halloween Horror Nights. While ticket prices don't waver, you're sure to get your money's worth while riding select rides and being scared out of your wits with roaming creeps, themed haunted houses and scare zones. It's like being in your very own horror movie. 
• Busch Gardens in Tampa offers up Howl-o-Scream. Much like Universal, they have scare zones, haunted houses and themed entertainment. You can't get cheaper tickets for this event either, but it'll scare your pants off, which you maybe can't put a price on.
• Legoland has spooky fun for the little ones with Brick-or-Treat. It includes trick or treating and the opportunity to dress-up and enjoy the park after it closes for the regular day. Tickets are separate from the main park admission, but totally fun!

What are some of your favorite ways to celebrate fall? If you missed my trip to Halloweentown, go check that out now.