2025’s Best Haunted House in Illinois Is Seriously Frightening

It will be Halloween season in Illinois before you know it, and soon haunted houses all over the state will be opening for your haunting pleasure, but which one should we visit first?

Halloween Season in Illinois

I love the Halloween season for one big reason (besides candy): dressing up!

To me, the best Halloween costumes aren't the elaborate ones you can buy from a store, they are the creative ones that people create themselves OR the simple, punny ones that make everyone laugh like this:

I'm assuming you've figured out by now that I am a cute costume, lots of pumpkins and candy kind of Halloween person, but I understand many others are the scary, all black, blood, and gore kinds of Halloween people. This one is for them.

Best Haunted Houses in Illinois

If there is one Halloween tradition I miss each year, it is typically visiting a haunted house. I'm a huge wimp when it comes to jump scares, and my kids are too, so we've never taken them to a true haunted house before. When we decide to do so, we should probably take them to one of the best haunted houses Illinois has to offer, right?

Every year The Scare Factor releases a list of the best haunted houses in each state, and Illinois' 2025 Best Haunted Houses list contained many of the usual suspects like:

• Twisted Crypt in Rockford
• The Old Joilet Haunted Prison in Joliet
• Disturbia Haunted House in Downers Grove
• Basement of the Dead in Aurora

All of the 13 Illinois haunted houses that made The Scare Factor's list are well known for over-the-top effects, costumes, and acting, but the haunted attraction that came in at number one takes terrifying to a whole new level.

HellsGate Haunted House in Lockport, Illinois

HellsGate Haunted House isn’t your typical “park in a lot and walk in” haunt.

To get to the house you must "travel through the zombie-infested woods and across the Lost Souls Cemetery" to find a "multi-level mansion filled with secret passages, giant slides, ghastly secrets, undead abominations, really nervous groundskeepers and a darkness that the gate can no longer contain!"

Umm...yikes!

HellsGate Haunted House opens for the 2025 season on September 26, but tickets are on sale now here.