he rode a blazing saddle, he wore a blazing star

"No one really knows what happened to the founding family of Adora Island. It's rumored that first winter was hard and long. Whatever happened on that ice locked Island, it wasn't discovered until the bodies were found that next spring."

It was an interesting premise. I had to find out more.

The Haunting at Adora starts off like any other haunt on the grid--a bleak terrain, headstones, insanely flashing pentagrams...okay, that last one is not usually seen, and it's beyond annoying. Still, it was a pretty setting. I decided to move away from the flashing thing.

Unfortunately, the path away from the big flashy pentagram is...yep, smaller, non-flashing versions. I don't know about you, but staying on the path of pentagrams floating above the soil? Doesn't ever feel like the safe or rational thing to do. Unfortunately, the haunt owners seemed to want me there. So off I went.

Leaping spider particles, somewhat spooky scrabbling, crunching noises, and a steadily rising clamor of various "ooh, spooky" sound effects led me to the porch. A cordoned-off area with a white-chalk body on the grass and scattered CSI markings was easy to move around to reach the front door. Okay, this might not be as bad as it looked.



The 'Condemned as Unsafe' poster was a nice touch, and spiders were prevalent throughout. It turned out to be your standard maze, with the expected haunted TV, spiders, webs, sacrificial altar, disturbing art....



And traps, which sent me to a hidden sub-basement to twitch and claw at the walls. Okay, effective, though the loop of children singing was getting decidedly old.



The first really effective room for me was the library--the floating books, the giant skull, the objects on the table--with zero explanation and a building soundtrack of doom, I felt the merest chill down my spine.



And thence to the attic, where things moved of their own accord, more blood was spattered, another altar replete with flames and floating spectres....nothing we haven't seen before.

And the story of the Adora family, trapped on the island, and what happened there? Well, we're never told. So the first haunt of the year? Seems trite and derivative from go.

Damn. I hope this isn't a premonition of the haunting season to come...