Twisted twins brew up Temecula Terror
Brothers fill mazes with lifetime’s worth of scares, including own family oddities
Once the sun dips behind the hills at Temecula’s Galway Downs equestrian facility, Temecula Terror begins. The independent haunt event is an outdoor experience about a creepy small town hosting its Halloween Harvest Carnival. Featuring three new mazes filled with scares, the event is open Thursdays-Sundays through Oct. 31.
Here are the three mazes visitors will encounter: 301 Hyde Street, where town recluse Otis Hatcher lures trick-or-treaters deep into his house of horrors; The Crypt, where guests venture into catacombs; and The Butterfield Asylum, which gives Temecula history a twist as producers imagine the dark side of the reallife Butterfield Stage route in the mid-1800s.
The experience was created by identical twins Zachary and Je- romy Ball, known professionally as The Bloodshed Brothers. The duo has been building scary attractions for years, starting in the front yard of their Temecula family home.
It all began in the fourth grade when Jeromy got invited to a party on Halloween night. His dad helped him create a Jason Voorhees costume from “Friday the 13th.” Though Jeromy had never watched the movie, he liked the character. But when he arrived at the party, no one had dressed up in a scary costume but him.
“It was the most boring thing I could have gone to,” he said during a media preview of Temecula Terror last week as a werewolf howled and frightened guests screamed in the background.
Zach was not invited to that long-ago Halloween shindig. Back then, Jeromy and Zach fought constantly, so they had separate groups of friends and were in different classrooms at their mother’s request.
“They were inside making cookies, so I went outside and started scaring the trick-or-treaters,” Jeromy recalled of that evening. “I went home and I was like ‘Zach, some [stuff] went down tonight and it was so much fun!’ The rest of the night we were outside scaring people, and the following year, fifth grade, we never trickor-treated
Jeromy Ball stands amid props that he and his brother, Zach, have collected over years of constructing scares and are putting to use at Temecula Terror. The event also has a softer side for younger kids, including a pumpkin patch and craft activities.
TEMECULA TERROR
When: Through Oct. 31. 7-11 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, 5-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays.
Where: Galway Downs, 38801Los Corralitos Road, Temecula
Tickets: $20-$25adult general admission, $30-$35adult VIP admission, $10for children 11or younger, $5-$10parking. All ticket types are available at temeculaterror.com.
again and we built our first haunted house in the front yard.”
The passion for horror bonded the brothers, and they have not gotten into a fistfight since. Working together, they even won third place in a costume contest for dressing up like the Grady twins from “The Shining.”
“Haunted houses may have saved us, but also being twins we realized if we joined forces we could gang up on the parents instead of ganging up on each other,” Jeromy added.
Temecula Terror is a true family affair. The twins’ younger sister helps coordinate the actors, their mother does costumes and their father helps run security. They were all on-site, braving the heat over the past several weeks to build the various attractions.
The brothers, along with fellow event producer Alexandra Berru, chose this spot in Galway Downs because it was a blank canvas, surrounded by foliage and off the beaten path.
“It had this amazing vibe and we could really build a world within it,” Berru said. “It’s outside of Temecula proper, so you really do feel like you’ve entered some other sort of space, out in nowhere.”
The venue does have a creep factor. It’s off a dirt road and guests have to walk through some trees and along a dirt path to reach a creepy, fog-filled tunnel to enter. The mazes are detailed and unnerving. The monsters are spread out and music and spooky sound effects build suspense between jump scares.
301 Hyde Street is the evolution of every haunted house the brothers have ever built, Jeromy said. It encompasses the backstory of previous events and is filled with an impressive collection of vintage Halloween decor.
“It was inspired by us just loving Halloween, and our parents and grandparents loving it too and being super supportive of us,” he said. “A handful of the items inside there are actually family
heirlooms. There’s a costume my grandmother owned; one of the witches and one ghost are from my mom; and there’s at least two things in there I bought with my own money at 13 years old when I started buying Halloween props for the very first time. There’s a hanging ghost in there, in the dining room, that used to hang from a tree at my parents’ house. They got it in 1989 and it still works.”
The Butterfield Asylum maze is loosely based on the history of the area and plays on tales of workers who went mad when the stage stops were being constructed.
“Sometimes they used prison labor to do it and some people would — what we would consider now just exhaustion, dehydration or exposure — they went crazy in the sunlight, so that’s the loose theme of the asylum,” he said.
The Crypt started as a simple blackout maze where patrons would have to feel their way through to get out. Ball said it was a simple and easy way to do an attraction, but it began to evolve. It’s now a creepy cemetery that leads into extremely detailed catacombs with lots of skeletons, spiders and other terrifying creatures lurking within.
Since Temecula Terror is a family affair, it was important to create a family-friendly element as well. The main event is recommended
only for those 12 or older, but from 5-7 p.m., $10 tickets for kids are available during Family Fright Hours. That time frame includes a pumpkin patch, painting, carnival-style games and rides, shopping, and treats and beverages for sale from local vendors.
“Temecula is such a family town, so we wanted to make sure our little monsters could still enjoy it,” Berru said. “We kept parents in mind, too. So when you buy a ticket to bring your kid to the Family Fright Hours, you will receive a wristband to come back on a different night, maybe when you have a sitter, to experience the whole thing.”
While those showing up later can enjoy all of those activities and treats as well, there are also two general admission bars and one VIP bar on-site for those 21 or older to enjoy beer, wine and other cocktails. There’s even a hidden speakeasy inside the VIP bar with cocktails crafted with alcohol from Galway Spirits Distillery. Some of the $12 concoctions include the Witches Brew (blood orange vodka, Cointreau, red wine, apple, strawberries, lemon, lime, clove and cinnamon) and the Corpse Reviver (gin, Lillet Blanc, elderflower, lemon and mulled blackberries) and both are served with dry ice for a fun smoking and bubbling effect.