A Haunted Soirée: A Macabre Cocktail Party

House of Spirits: A Haunted Cocktail Soirée

Hollywood Gothique Says:

With its Halloween 2019 debut, House of Spirits: A Haunted Cocktail Soirée immediately established itself as one of the best Halloween Festivities in Los Angeles – a one-of-a-kind experience that satisfies on every level. Though the name suggests a themed popup bar, House of Spirits is much more than that, incorporating elements of performance, immersive experience, interactive costume party, and even haunted house walk-through. However, in the end, House of Spirits is none of those things but rather its own unique combination.

House of Spirits retains its template from year to year (a free-roaming environment featuring cocktails, entertainment, and interaction with the ghostly inhabitants), the theme changes, providing new characters and apparitions every Halloween.

Nocturne Theatre
324 N Orange Street,
Glendale, CA 91203
Official Website
hauntedsoiree.com

2023 Update: For Halloween 2023, the event formerly known as House of Spirits: A Haunted Cocktail Soirée has rebranded itself as Haunted Soiree: A Macabre Cocktail Party, and creator Justin Meyer promises “lot of changes.” This year’s presentation (loosely based on the Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, famous hauntings, and French folktales) is titled Theatre Du Vaurien. The story involves a playwright translating an arcane text that summons tormented spirits to an abandoned theatre.

Dates: Weekends and select weekdays from October 6 to 31.

Hours: Entry times for the two-hour experience are 7pm and 9:30pm on Thursdays, Fridays & Halloween Night; 4pm, 6:45pm & 9:30pm on Saturdays; and 3:15pm, 6pm & 8:45pm on Sundays.

Tickets: Prices start at $64 for Bronze tickets (access to all attractions and shows, plus four cocktails), $69 for Silver tickets (five cocktails), and $84 for Gold tickets (expedited check in and entry to shows, adult trick or treating with imported French chocolates). Prices are higher at peak hours and on peak nights.

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House of Spirits: A Haunted Cocktail Soirée Info

House of Spirits is not exactly a haunted house, though it does resemble one. Rather, it is a free-form experience, in which guests determine what suits them. The price of admission includes drink tickets for multiple bars, offering theme libations. Visitors can linger and mingle as if at a party or engage in numerous activities: listen to musicians, watch performers, or explore the mysteries of the house’s haunted history.

House of Spirits: A Haunted Cocktail Soirée History

The House of Spirits is the creation of Meyer2Meyer Entertainment, a company formed by the people who created the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride and the Great Horror Campout. The concept was to create a Halloween event with a “sandbox” style approach, allowing visitors to pick and choose which toys they wanted to play with.

Making its debut for Halloween 2019, House of Spirits presented itself as haunted house costume party, but it was really more of an immersive variety show. At the entrance, cards were given describing the various activities, and visitors could decide where their time was best spent. The house was divided into three levels: live performances and interaction with the hosts (costumed actors playing the ghosts of former owners) on the ground floor, a spooky scavenger hunt on the upper floor, and scary walk-through activity in the basement. Six bars provided themed drinks, and there was also a sort of creepy underground lair outside, revealing a clue about the house’s haunted history.

Entrance was in timed intervals, providing just enough opportunity to visit everything, including a gruesomely funny puppet show. The only downside was that, in order to complete the scavenger hunt and walk-through scares, it was necessary to be judicious about how much time was spent lingering around the bar and interacting with the ghost-hosts. In other words, House of Spirits lived up to the old vaudeville entertainer’s motto: Always leave ’em wanting more.

House of Spirits was so successful that its run during the Halloween season was followed up with a Christmas version in November and December.