Denver Haunted House Wicker Manor Glows Up on National TV

This will be the first October in nearly a decade in which Sean Herman will be able to park his car in his garage.

Nearly every year before, the Herman family’s home in the Central Park (formerly Stapleton) neighborhood has been full of haunts – that is, scares decidedly designed to delight during the Halloween season. But this is the first year that Wicker Manor won’t be lighting up the suburban streets with happy haunts. Herman was right when he predicted in our interview last year that 2022 might mark the last time in the garage space.

But there’s a good reason that Wicker Manor isn’t running this Halloween season. A few, actually.

It’s been a whirlwind of a year for Wicker Manor. Since last year, “things have gotten exponentially crazy,” according to Herman. It began right after the new year turned, when he was contacted by Midsummer Scream, which bills itself as “the world’s largest Halloween and horror Convention.”

“They invited us to drive our entire haunted house out there to the convention center in Long Beach, California,” Herman says with a cocked eyebrow. “That’s quite a drive. And it wasn’t just driving it all there, which took three days. It was also setting up the experience for fans in only two days. This is a process that normally takes us about two months. I mean, we’re doing it when we have time and so on, but we’d never had to put it up so quickly. I’ll put it this way: It takes us two months to put it up without driving ourselves crazy.”

Sean, his wife and kids pondered the invite and its practicality. “It was a huge deal for us,” says Herman. Not only was it going to be a lot of work and a lot of time out of their normal schedules, but it was going to cost between $5,000 and $6,000, between renting a thirty-foot U-Haul and gassing it up there and back, as well as providing lodging for the family on the scant hours they had to sleep. “In the end, we decided to do it,” Herman says. “We were going to be the first out-of-state haunt to appear at Midsummer Scream, and that was a thing, you know?”

But before they could even make the trip, another opportunity popped up like a jump-scare. “While we were still in the planning stages of that convention trip, we got a call from ABC,” Herman recalls. “They wanted to see if we were interested in being cast for season two of the Great Halloween Fright Fight. We were like ‘Oh, man. Can we do both of these things? Is it even possible?'”

It was possible – barely. They’d have to make the trip to Long Beach for the convention, exhausting in and of itself, and then rush back to Denver to set up for the ABC show. “It was literally the day we got back,” Herman says, shaking his head. “But we did it. I’m not sure how, looking back, but we did.”

Wicker Manor also had to change slightly in order to accommodate what the ABC show wanted. “We had to introduce our Haunted Mine in a new way,” Herman explains, “to custom-fit it to this celebrity judge guy who was coming through.” That celebrity judge guy was HGTV’s Carter Oosterhouse, host of The Great Halloween Fright Fight, now streaming on both ABC and Hulu.

Filming took three days, with ABC showrunners often filming into the wee hours of the morning. “It was a huge production,” says Herman. “Full rigs, porta-potties, a full filming crew – the whole layout. My neighbors were, as always, pretty cool about it.”

Right after filming wrapped with ABC, Wicker Manor saw another moment of recognition: It won 2022 Best International Haunt from the Canadian Haunters Association, one of the leading haunted-house organizations in North America.

And all the while, Sean Herman was working to take Wicker Manor to the next level locally. “We’ve known we were outgrowing the garage for a while now,” he says, “but it took some time for us to make the jump. Or even know where or how to do it.”

The “where,” it turns out, is the area of 13th Avenue and Osage Street, close to where Colfax hits I-25. That’s the site for the new iteration of Wicker Manor, still currently in the planning stages. But Herman is closing on the property this month, and construction will start soon after. “There are three warehouse-type buildings on the property,” Herman says, ticking them off on his fingers. “One will be devoted to the new iteration of Wicker Manor. One will house my design studio, Herman. And the last is a super-secret project that I can’t talk about yet. But it’s so very cool. People are going to love it.”

As Wicker Manor outgrows the garage, Herman also wants fans to know that it’s not just going to be a haunted house anymore. “It’s so much more theatrical,” he says. “We’re envisioning it as an entertainment venue, not just something you go stand in line and walk through and then go home. It’ll be a ticketed event. We want it to be a full experience, something that families can do together again and again.”

The family-friendly aspect is one that Herman wants to carry over from the garage-bound Wicker Manor. “It’ll be scary, but in a spooky way, you know?” Herman says. “No one’s ever going to chase you down a hallway with a chainsaw. Think Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, not the 13th Floor.”

Herman says he’ll soon be launching a Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds and local support for the project overall, which is projected to open in 2025. “It’s really a way to get people excited about it,” he says, “and give them a little sense of being part of what we hope will be a Denver tradition.”

One of the rewards planned for the Kickstarter is to get your family name on one of the headstones in the cemetery part of the experience; another is to have your portrait painted for the Gallery room. “There’s a lot of cool ways for people to get involved. It’s going to be fun. That’s always been the idea, always been our goal. We’re just taking it to a whole new level.”

And freeing up some garage space.

Follow the plans for Wicker Manor’s big move – and the associated Kickstarter – on the Wicked Manor website. Stream The Great Halloween Fright Fight on ABC and Hulu.