History

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You leave the comfort of a well lit foyer filled with interesting yet creepy things to look at, and find yourself in a much darker room. The door slams behind you and there is no turning back now. “Good evening and welcome to Terror on the Square,” avid fans may recall this as the greeting given by their guide to begin the tour. How good an evening it is depends completely upon how much you like to be scared out of your wits. The spirits are more restless than ever as we make our return to the historic square in Petersburg, IL for the 2022 season.

Shawn McKinney, our fearless leader, has been haunting since he was a child, building small haunts for trick or treaters to walk through at his parents home. He later ran the local Jaycees haunted house where he got to express a lot of his creepy creativity, but it wasn't until he branched out on his own and opened Terror on the Square in 1993 that he truly could tap into that side of himself. Inspired by the amazing illusions at Disney World, Shawn and the team continue to improve our illusions as technology advances, making highly realistic looking ghosts appear before your very eyes. We take great pride in the level of detail we put into each room, and we absolutely love dreaming up new ways to terrify our victims, sorry, I mean, guests.

After being shut down due to new state codes in 2013, we simply couldn’t turn off our haunted creativity and found a temporary home at the Menard County Fairgrounds. Our first year out there, 2014, brought with it many challenges, but we quickly learned how to overcome. We were able to make Terror in the Graveyard a really great show for the several years we spent out there, but our longing to be back home on the square never waned. Then 2020 happened and we had to make the tough decision to not open for the safety of our haunters and our customers. Sane persons may very well have hung up their hat then, calling it a good time to retire from haunting, but we don’t pretend to be sane. Instead, we worked harder than ever to figure out what we needed to do to be able to get back home to the square. The list is extensive, but we make these changes gladly. We were so pleased to be able to make the announcement at our 2021 stage show, Illusions Magic and Spirits On Stage, that we will finally be coming home in 2022.