TORRINGTON – Motorcycle Madness Massage has converted into a haunted house for its sixth year. Owners Lacy Jo and George Rinehart gathered up volunteers to put together a fun Halloween event for the community. 

When speaking to Lacy, she shared how Halloween is her favorite holiday. She feels as though sometimes Halloween does not get as much love compared to the other upcoming holidays. For this reason, she wanted to do something to put Halloween out there and welcome in the community. So, she, and her husband George, turned their business into a haunted house. 

“I love Halloween, and I’ve always loved Halloween, and I wanted to do this for the community and for little kids to get them, you know, to get Halloween out there because it’s kind of a holiday that gets put on the back burner. So, I just kind of wanted to put this out there for everyone and give them something to do in the community,” Rinehart shared. 

This is their sixth year putting together their haunted house. For the last five years, it has just been her and her husband running the haunted house. They were about to get Chuck and Tommie Peters to assist them this year to make it even better. They were able to get quite a bit of help from local volunteers and the clients of their business are very supportive. 

“I’ve had the business for 11 years now, and so I’ve been in the same location here at 4708 Road 70 Y, and I just, like I said, six years ago we, you know, don’t have a building big enough for a bigger haunted house yet so we’re just doing the haunted house here at the business and all the massage clients, they get involved in it they think it’s really cool they love coming in during the process and watching everything go up and so they’re really relaxed about it and really supportive as well,” Rinehart said. 

She said it has taken a lot of teamwork to put things together this year. They started decorating the business back in September. Then, they opened for the season on October 5. They will be running every Wednesday through Saturday until November 2. 

Rinehart said this year has been great. They have had 10 volunteers for their acts. She’s hoping to have even more next year. In fact, she’s even had a few teenage volunteers. She is very happy to have to youth involved in a community event like this. Behind the acting scene, they had Chelsea McKnight, Bella Browning, Areya Christman, Lilly Babbitt and Freya Browning helping the attraction run smoothly. 

“This year has been a really good year for us. We’ve had 10 volunteers so far, to volunteer to scare act. And hopefully, we’ll get more next year. There’s been, oh gosh, four or five high school age volunteers which is really cool I think that’s awesome that they’re able to come out and volunteer and get involved in something like this,” Rinehart shared. 

It is a non-ticketed event. They do not ask for payment to visit the haunted house, and they run fully on donations. These donations go directly back into the haunted house. They use them for batteries to run their animatronics and such, to replace lights, or damaged animatronics. Rinehart said they also try and add something new each year. This year, they were able to add a new jump-scare bat and “the dark princess” to pop up and jump-scare visitors. They were able to do this due to last year’s donations. 

“I just want to thank the community and for coming out and supporting it and thank all of the scare actors that have been involved this year, because I think that’s really cool and, to me, it’s really important that they get recognized as well for volunteering their time to come out and do this so I think that’s important,” Rinehart added as a final note. 

The house is really awesome. They’ve got some very cool people out there working to make it fun for all ages. The attractions and animatronics are put together really nicely. They have had a pretty successful year so far.