Awards

*First ever Two-Time Frightmaster Award Winner!!! (2002, 2005) Tour Review: The Baxter Ave. Morgue is the first attraction to receive a rating of "Frightmaster" with a better than perfect score of 11 out of 10! We had been to the Morgue in 2002, and loved it! This was a large part of the reason we chose to come back to Louisville this year. Honestly, we thought so much of our experience in '02, that we didn't think there was any way to do any better... we were wrong!

The Baxter Ave. Morgue managed to change the layout to make it new, without changing their award-winning style. This is still the most unique concept we have ever seen. The Morgue strays away from all of the stereotypical haunted house ideas which have been overused in other attractions, and it is extremely refreshing. They manage to come up with new and unique ideas, and were able to scare even the most veteran haunted house tour members!

The decision to make the Baxter Ave. Morgue the 2005 Frightmaster Award winner was an obvious choice, and we would like to congratulate them on their second Frightmaster Award! They are the only attraction ever to win 2 Frightmaster Awards, and they also won the 10th Anniversary Award! If you have not been to the Morgue, you need to get there! And if you've been there before...go back! It is well worth the trip. We drove 2+ hours to visit the Morgue, and would love to do it again! GREAT JOB on another great year for the Baxter Ave. Morgue! Congratulations!

10th Anniversary Award Winner (2004): Baxter Ave. Morgue - Louisville, KY:

Congratulations! We feel this is still the most unique haunt we have been to in 10 years of touring. This was a difficult decision based on how many great haunts we have been to, but we were so impressed with the Morgue, we had to make it our 10th Anniversary Award Winner! If you have not been there, the trip is worth it, it will not disappoint! IT IS A MUST SEE!

2002 Frightmaster Award - Baxter Ave. Morgue - Louisville, KY:

Tour Review: This house was rated EXCELLENT, the highest honor of the year! In years of haunted house tours, and multiple cities, we haven't seen a more unique, and truly scary haunted house. The website was a great way to tell the background story, and the staff was extremely professional. The best part about the house was the eerie silence. Most attractions overuse loud noises for scare factor, but this house's mystique is a MUST SEE for any true haunted house enthusiast! Great work on a truly frightening haunted attraction!

CITY BLOOD OHIO HAUNT REVIEW

The basement of the old Baxter Avenue Morgue lies restless waiting for another victim to enter it's dark corridors. Once people enter into the old morgue, the walls come alive and the creatures inside reach out for another soul. Are you ready to enter the basement of Baxter Avenue Morgue?

Length-9: It will take you nearly 20 minutes to tour the dark basement of Baxter Avenue Morgue. While there are few dead spots, there are a couple scenes dying for the addition of more actors to make the rooms come alive.

Design-9: Baxter Avenue Morgue is not like your typical haunt. While many haunts you'll come across have various themed room you enter, this is not the case with the majority of the morgue. It's one continuous room with tight and twisting turns that centers around one theme and that's a haunted morgue. Scenes you'll enter are a haunted graveyard, doll play room, mad clown house, spider cave and much more. While there aren't many new additions that have been made this year, the rooms have almost the same impact they did years ago.

Props/Animatronics-9: Baxter Avenue Morgue doesn't rely on a large amount of animatronics to fill its rooms. The props they have go perfectly with the morgue theme and almost seem as if they are real. Shaking coffins, rotting tombstones, hanging body bags and much more only describes a bit of what you'll see while touring the haunted morgue. While many haunts don't show case their props well, this isn't the case with Baxter Avenue Morgue. Lots of time and effort has been used to perfect their use of dynamic lighting and it pays off big time when showcasing various rooms at Baxter Avenue Morgue.

Acting-9: The actors are intense and in your face at Baxter Avenue Morgue and never come out of character. While many of the characters you'll come across lack dialog, they make up for it with sheer enthusiasm and dedication to their roles. My only gripe is that a few actors were missing this year such as spider boy and a couple others. While spider boy was replaced a few years ago by a sliding corpse prop, it still drastically effects the spider cave scene. And while we were entering into that scene, the sliding corpse wasn't working properly.

Scare Effect-9: Just imagining that this building might possibly be a morgue puts chills down your back and once you enter the scares never stop. But without the intense and dedicated actors at Baxter Avenue Morgue this would be your typical haunt. While little changes from year to year, it's still one of the most intense haunts around and has become somewhat of a cult favorite among haunt enthusiasts.

Fright Value: $15 is a bit high for a haunt, but if it's your first time touring Baxter Avenue Morgue it will be well worth the price of admission. Depending on the night, the line may be extremely large, so make sure and pay for the VIP line so you don't have to wait a few hours to enter the morgue.

Final Stab- 9.0 : Once again Baxter Avenue Morgue doesn't disappoint. While I would like to scene some more inventive scenes added to the design, it's still one of the better haunts around. It's a unique frightening experience that is hard to replicate.

OHIO VALLEY HAUNTS

TOP 2005 HAUNTED ATTRACTIONS

The Best of 2005 (top 13) Best Haunted Trail

1.    Baxter Avenue Morgue - Louisville, KY Nightmare Forest - Louisville KY

2.    House of Nightmares - Mt. Vernon, OH

3.    Haunted Hotel - Louisville, KY Best Timed Scares

4.    Dead Acres - Columbus, OH Haunted Hotel - Louisville, KY

5.    Waverly Hills Sanatorium - Louisville, KY

6.    USS Nightmare - Cincinnati, OH Best Animatronics

7.    Ohio State Reformatory Prison - Mansfield, OH Dead Acres - Columbus, OH

8.    Ghostly Manor - Sandusky, OH

9.    Haunted Castle - Fort Wayne, IN Best Make-up/Costumes

10. Bull Run Farms Haunted Hayride - Lebanon, OH USS Nightmare - Cincinnati, OH

11. Terror Park - Columbus, OH

12. 97.3 Haunted House - Cincinnati, OH Best Multi-Haunt at one Venue

13. Hustonville Haunted House - Hustonville, KY

The Baxter Avenue 2007
adventure gets underway with a nerve wrecking seclusion of your group in a quiet funeral parlor, alongside an open, skeleton containing casket. Articles and photographs of The Morgue’s “history” adorn the walls, and prepare you to set foot inside an intimidating iron door into the presence of mortician Warren Vanderdark. Following a few words of encouragement, he releases you into the facility. Masterful lighting effects bring scenes to life as you approach, then find them disappearing back into darkness again as you walk away. Subtle scares come from the grasp of hands tugging at your leg, or on the back of your shirt as you progress through darkened corridors, and from scene to scene. Unsettling music and wicked laughter accompany the journey through the macabre world of hospital gurneys and realistic body bags, and into an atrocious kitchen scene, where a deranged character slams a freezer door shut, trapping his unfortunate victim inside, as she desperately screams for help! Blood soaked walls, and mutilated dolls decorate a little girl’s room, as the progression through various scenes of death continues. Clowns impede your progress, as does an irate, bloody mouthed, human arm eating, hunchbacked creature , who stubbornly blocks the path, and adamantly refuses to let you pass. A spooky cemetery scene where some ungodly ceremony restores life to a blood thirsty corpse leads to a ghost apparition of a surgeon operating on a distraught patient, a short trap door maze, and a surprise encounter with a blonde girl “innocently” admiring herself in the mirror. Body vaults open and close of their own volition, as you pass through an upright coffin, to a confrontation with a spark emitting fiend en route to a double chainsaw, false finish including, chase-out of The Baxter Avenue Morgue.

Analysis:
LENGTH - 8½, Approaching 15 minutes
ACTORS - 9, Outstanding make-up creates some uniquely grotesque characters. A variety of characters, some really intense (arm eating hunchback, and cemetery ghoul restored to life), while a few others passed right on by nearly unnoticed. Actually being touched or gently grabbed at by the cast is a great aspect, and adds a degree of legitimacy. Loss of Grave Digger and Spider Boy are unfortunate. Good riddance to Crazy Ernie selling casketd, but joking clowns are just as out of place in The Morgue as he was. Warren's introduction is classic.
SCARINESS - 9½, Darkness gives way to chilling scenes that wreck havoc on your emotions. Having the actors occasionally come in contact with you in order to instill additional fear is outstanding, and done in a tasteful way not to offend. The Morgue setting is tremendous, and makes your skin crawl practically from the beginning. Playful clowns are a detriment to the unnerving experience.
DESIGN - 9½, The Morgue theme, along with the ever present feeling of death holds practically throughout, except for Diedra, mirror surprise, and clowns. Not much has changed, and the course is practically the same as last year, with only a few minor alterations. False finish is an unexptcted twist.
PROPS - 9½, Amazingly realistic décor, along with some nicely located animatronics. Blood spewing forth from a “corpse” was eliminated and Spider Boy’s rails are still un place, but occupied by a skeleton. Not much in the way of additions, and none of the year's latest technology.
VALUE - 9, $15 makes it one of the most expensive attractions around, but certainly a very intimidating scare.
RATING: 9+, This former "HAUNT OF THE YEAR is still one of the most fear instilling experiences around! Just entertaining the notion of entering into a Morgue is too much for some to handle. What an ideal place for a scary Halloween attraction! Folks are dying to get into The Baxter Avenue Morgue!

HAUNTED CINCINNATI
2006 Baxter Avenue Morgue Review by R.Karshner

On Friday night despite several shortcomings the haunted Cincinnati crew arrived in Louisville to attend Baxter avenue morgues media night and sample their horrific changes for the year. While this was my first year being able to visit the morgue I have heard only good things from everyone about them. After visiting with the Ohio Valley Haunts gang who also attended, and kicking back a brew we decided to take in a few moments of the terpsichore dance company who were performing their interpretation of thriller ever thirty minutes. After being ushered inside the house, those from the media were slowly escorted in smaller groups to be introduced to Vanderdark who told us the rules inside his establishment. The morgues strongest point was their ability to create believable scenarios with the help of the talented actors. The morgues acting team play their spooky characters down to the wire. One of the other things which make the morgue stand out is their policy of having an actor dressed as a pallbearer follow you while you explore the house. The only shortcoming I have (no pun intended) is the length of the house. While I didn’t actually pull the stop watch out, and perhaps I was simply drawn in to the incredible sets and actors loosing track of time it seemed like it was only a ten or fifteen minute jaunt through the morgue. While it was shortest in length of haunted attractions I have visited it’s easily made up by the jaw dropping set design. It also features several effects that I have not seen in a local attraction before such as an illusionary pepper ghost effect, or a rig designed to let an actor slink across the ceiling much like a vampire. The morgue is also more mature themed towards adults, with lots of gore and simulated violence. I would not recommend this for younger children. I had an awesome time in Louisville thanks to the Baxter Avenue Morgue! I would highly recommend this to everyone (save for children). Thanks again to Joey Arena for inviting us down to see his horrific creation! They are open every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in October. Thursdays and Halloween they are open from 8pm -11pm, on Friday and Saturdays they are open from 8pm to 1am. General admission is $15 a person, $8 for children 12 and under. Additional information can be found by visiting