Arx Mortis is a perennial favorite in north Alabama. Located at 4051 US72 in the appropriately named Killen, Alabama, it has been running since 2007, and advertises heavily, and creepily, on radio and social media, boasting of 50,000 square feet of haunt.

Tickets available on line include General Admission for $34.00 plus a $3.99 fee, and Fast Pass for $59.99 plus a $3.99 fee. I attended on a Thursday night and bought a Fast Pass at the ticket window for $48.25. A zombie shooting game can be added to your experience for $10, but only on Friday and Saturday nights.

Despite ads promising that Thursdays would be as well staffed as the usual October weekend, I didn’t expect the evening to be heavily attended, but I was wrong. The warm, dry weather brought out the haunt goers. Arx Mortis is part of a sprawling seasonal entertainment complex that includes mini-golf, laser tag, an arcade, and other attractions depending on the day and time.

Tonight it was just the haunt, but there’s plenty to do at Arx Mortis. The haunt uses a color coded group system for entry, so there’s no waiting in line until your group is called. This encourages guests to visit the large concession stand, extensive gift shop, see live music on certain nights, and look over other vendors scattered throughout the Fright Town Entertainment Zone. The zone was crowded, but not too crowded, with young folks and families. Staff  members roved the area, highly visible throughout Fright Town and helping promote a welcoming, family-friendly atmosphere.

The haunt is a long winding trail through buildings, under covered paths, and along open air walkways through five attractions: Sir Cecil’s World Famous Bigtop, Covington Clinic, Cell Block 9, Deadwater Bayou, and The Underground. Each theme was populated with actors, props, and well developed sets.

The walk up to the Bigtop meandered along a wooded path that included a short, pitch black little maze and several actors lurking, also clownlike, in the woods. The Bigtop, in a nicely built tent setting, featured an assortment of clowns aggressively jump scaring their victims. They also liked to follow the more reactive visitors, showing off makeup, costumes, and masks that tended toward the dark and horrific rather than the comical.

Covington Clinic is the oldest attraction at Arx Mortis. If I remember correctly, it was the original name of the haunt. The sets are lavish, decorated with a staggering amount of hospital and lab equipment straight out of the 1940s or 1950s. Along with the equipment is the largest array of mangled dummies and bloodied corpses I’ve ever seen in a haunt, and a number of animatronic features. All of this makes a perfect backdrop for the actors: demented doctors, anguished patients, the tortured, and the insane. The cast in Covington Clinic is over the top with their threats and pleas, and their jump scares come from a variety of directions, concealed by the ample props. Costumes vary from the formless filthy attire of patients run amok to horrific doctors, whose mutated and disfigured faces bear witness to their own twisted experiments. One very dedicated actor even wore a metal contraption, a Whitehead Mouth Immobilizer, that held her jaws open for the maniacal dentist who hovered over her, ignoring her screams and pleas, and alternating threats to the patient and the patrons.

Cell Block 9, which I think is a recent addition, was less dense in its setting, but that didn’t stop the actors from putting on a show. A guest decided, for some unknown reason, to whip out her phone before entering this section. A lunatic janitor cornered her, asking why in the world anyone would be on the phone right before the scariest part of the haunt. That set the tone for the rest of the feature. Animatronic executions and scenes of incarcerated torment combined with yet more aggressive actors to hurry us along. There were also scenes suggesting that Covington Clinic wasn’t the only area experimenting on its inhabitants.

Deadwater Bayou combined several elements in its setting. Aboveground mausoleums lent a New Orleans flair that quickly yielded to dark alley environments and then to outdoor paths near water. Actors would pop out of the darkness, then disappear into the shadows only to reappear and scare again thanks to clever shortcuts behind the settings. In Deadwater Bayou guests encountered voodoo zombies, incarnations of death, practitioners of dark magic and their servants. The actors here leaned heavily to costumes, masked, and handheld props to define their characters.

The final leg of the journey ran through the Underground, which simulated a cave and mine system. The trail ran through simulated caves with well constructed cave textured ceilings, including stalactites. I think the Underground included the single chainsaw scare of the evening, the obligatory cannibals, and a little dark mini-maze that we were guided around by the cast.

Unfortunately, and despite the staggered starts used for group entry, by this point in the tour, four groups had converged and combined.

We exited into the large gift shop. Our walk had taken just under thirty minutes and we encountered fifty actors along the way. I stopped to talk to a young couple from our group. They enjoyed the haunt, their comments coming with big smiles, but they also noticed the collision of tour groups and regretted not getting every jump scare fresh and without warning.

For my own part, I missed a feature from previous years. There was a bridge that ran alongside and over a creek or pond. Actors would hide in the water to scare, sliders used the bridges to show off their tricks, and water constantly trickled from the ceiling, adding a little tactile sensation to the haunt.

Arx Mortis is a dark haunt, illuminated by small lights, lights over or in fog, flashing light, and outdoor lighting placed well above the trail. In some places we felt our way along the wall and shuffled our feet along a few uneven places in the trail. Also, it’s a no touch haunt. Actors will not grab guests, but many passages are narrow and an actor might brush by or even touch a shoulder to pass.

There have been a number of off season scare events at Arx Mortis, and I hope to visit again before next Halloween. Don’t miss the chance to visit the ever changing Arx Mortis and discover your favorite scene.

For more information about Ark Mortis, check out their Facebook, Instagram, and webpage. For information about similar events, check out our Event Calendar.

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