2020 Oaks Park Haunted Drive-Thru

Local fear and fright attractions are coming together to give guests the terrifying thrills of a walk through haunted house from the safety of their cars.

Oaks Park has joined the ranks by teaming up with the minds behind the Clark County ScareGrounds to create a unique, contactless haunted experience called Oaks Park Haunted Drive-Thru. The new event will take you right into the heart of the haunt. Inside your vehicle, you’ll be front-and-center in the action as live actors lead you through a unique storytelling experience.

Here are all the details about this year’s event.

2020 Oaks Park Haunted Drive-Thru

How it works

The entire Oaks Park Haunted Drive-Thru event is experienced from inside your vehicle. You choose from five different haunted attractions, each with a unique theme and story that will play out over the course of multiple scenes. 

You may make reservations for multiple attractions in a single night, or spread them out throughout the month. However, you must leave at least an hour between reservations. Back-to-back reservations are not allowed.

Prior to entering an attraction, you will be instructed to roll down your window and take a sanitized portable bluetooth speaker for your vehicle that will provide the audio for your entire experience. The unit will come already set up. You’ll simply place it on your dash. 

Once your adventure begins, your vehicle (and only yours) will be guided into a scene where you will park in a designated spot and turn off your car. 

Each scene is a scripted theatrical performance with live actors, sound, thematic lighting, special effects and animations. 

When the scene ends, you will be instructed to restart your vehicle and guided to the next scene. Vehicle paths are always straight; no turns. Actual travel distance inside the attractions is minimal.

All of the attractions include the use of fog, animated props/creatures, and strobe lighting. Here are the descriptions for each of the five attractions:

The Condemned

Before the founding of Portland, the area was occupied by scattered pockets of frontiersmen, fur trappers, traders, and other sordid sorts. Criminals, murders and thieves fleeing justice back east would shroud themselves in the anonymity of the wild and untamed frontier. Over generations one such family has remained isolated and carries on the terrible traditions of their forefathers, stalking the woods and marshes of Oaks Bottom, seeking the easy prey of modern men.

Scare rating: 4/5 for moments of horror violence and terror, cannibalism, crude humor, blood/gore and language.

Night Terrors

An old abandoned circus that once occupied the grounds where Oaks Park stands today has recently resurfaced with evidence of a dark and sinister past. This traveling circus was home to a murderous troop of degenerates who used the bright and cheery atmosphere to lure in unsuspecting victims for the purpose of selling them to passing ships as crew. The practice is known as Shanghaiing. The motley clad crew of vagrants would isolate and subdue their victims in the labyrinthine tangle of tents and wagons and those that weren’t suitable for sale at port would discover a truly terrible fate at the hands of their captors. Today they have returned to Oaks Park to continue their evil ways.

Scare rating: 4.5/5 for moments of horror violence and terror, clowns, crude humor, blood/gore and language.

Site 13

Testing Site 13 was part of the network of FEMA camps hastily set up to help identify and contain the spread of a new and little understood fungal outbreak. Patients infected with the fungus slip into a deep sleep and it’s unknown how the fungus infects its victims or what it does once they succumb to its dark embrace. Contact with Site 13 on the banks of the Willamette was abruptly cut off and the last transmission repeats on a constant loop, a mysterious warning to those that would seek answers to what befell those doctors and scientists at the site. It seems as though the head of field research was on the cusp of a breakthrough when something very unexpected happened.

Scare rating: 3/5 for moments of thematic horror, mild violence, and some blood.

Green Run Asylum

The mysterious Dr. Engel arrived at the Green Run Asylum late in his career, after receiving much notoriety for pioneering radical and groundbreaking treatments for a number of illnesses. He would take his residence in the Eastern Wing of the facility where he was allowed to work in secret. Only a few of his most trusted orderlies and the subjects of his experiments were allowed access. Years of experiments were shrouded in secrecy until one tragic night when fire engulfed the campus and all those inside perished in the cruel flames. First responders discovered a trove of torment unlike anything they could have fathomed. Determined to keep the secret of Green Run they all swore a vow of silence and let the earth reclaim the evidence of Dr. Engel’s depravity. Years after the destruction of Green Run, the first responders began disappearing, one by one, never to be seen again.

Scare rating: 3/5 for thematic elements of horror, some violent content and frantic situations, electric FX, and mild blood.

Haunting at Hill House

There’s an ancient house with a dark and terrible history that is all but forgotten in the area, the steady mark of time trampling out all but rumor as to what befell the original inhabitants. Some say they were medlers in the dark arts, wizards and sorcerers seeking forbidden truths, some say simple commonplace criminals that got a just reward for a life and fortune derived from lawlessness and decadence. Still others whispered of a calamitous curse cast on the family. To this day, no one knows the truth, but the people from the area avoid the house at all costs. Many say the family still continues their mysterious ways, roaming the halls and terrifying guests for an eternity. It’s up to our visitors to uncover the truth and finally lay to rest the mystery of the Haunted Mansion. 

Scare rating: 2/5 for mild horror content and some thematic moments involving ghosts, spirits and other apparitions.

Event dates

Oaks Park Haunted Drive-Thru is taking place on select nights in October, including October 9-11; October 16-18; and October 22-November 1. Hours are 7 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday, and 7-11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.

The event will have two nights of special family-friendly matinee performances. This will take place October 24 and 31 from 5-7 p.m.

Tickets

Tickets must be purchased online in advance. Prices start at $69.99 per vehicle. Here is a breakdown of the ticket pricing:

• Peak hours (7-8:30 p.m.): $79.99
• Slasher hours (9 p.m.-close): $69.99
• Family Friendly Matinee (Oct. 24 & 31, 5-7 p.m.): $69.99

Get your tickets on the event website.

One way to distribute the ticket price is to fill every seat in your car with your quarantine buddies and have each person pay their way. This works out to about $15 per person.

If this is out of your budget, I have another option for you. For a comparable event at a third of the price with only one main attraction, check out the Clackamas County Scare Fair.

Oaks Park is located at 7805 SE Oaks Park Way in Portland. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Oaks Park Haunted Drive-Thru website.

Want more Portland freebies, events and deals? Subscribe to my newsletter (only one email a day), and follow me on Facebook and Twitter!

You may also like:

Portland Area Haunted Houses, Drive-Thrus and Mazes

Portland Pumpkin Patches, Corn Mazes and Hayrides