Tehachapi Terror Haunted House

It’s Sponsor Spotlight Sunday, and we’re so happy to welcome back RISE Renewable Energy, LLC for their THIRD year of supporting Tehachapi Terror!!

Rise Renewable Energy offers comprehensive training programs specifically designed for the renewable industry, covering vital sectors such as Wind, Solar, and Battery Storage. Their training initiatives are meticulously crafted to enhance your employees’ capabilities and boost their productivity.

Be sure to check out their website to learn more about this stellar local business: https://riserenewable.energy

Thank you again to Rise Renewable Energy, your generosity and support of our event goes further than we can even express!

This week we’ve had the joy of bringing out so many old friends that we didn’t think we’d get to see this year. And just look at that beautiful smile!! I think Kettlecorn’s just as excited to see you all. 🥰🤡

We sure have our work cut out for us to pull this off though, and could sure use our community’s support! Especially with this year being free-to-enter, we’re struggling with a hefty insurance bill, lumber costs, a huge U-haul for before AND after, airbrush makeup, etc.
Please consider making a donation of any size to our GoFundMe!
Link is in the comments below! (It’s also in our page’s description, because it seems like maybe Facebook doesn’t support links in comments anymore?)

We are so excited for our 3 nights at P-Dubs Brew Pub/Mountain Bowling next month, and are even MORE excited to announce that they’ve been willing to give us a little extra time for setup!
As such, we’ve decided to give this everything we’ve got, and are actually gonna build some real wall panels instead of relying on canopies and tarps.

So while the overall size of our maze will still only be about 1/4 of what it was the last two seasons, we’ll still be able to bring back a lot of the quality.

However, all of this does still put us right back where we were a month ago! We still are facing big costs with insurance, lumber, U-Hauls, makeup, etc.

So we’ve relaunched our GoFundMe!
🤡 https://gofund.me/c717605fe 🤡

If you’re interested in helping Tehachapi Terror make this 2026 comeback, please consider making a donation of any size. Every penny helps immensely.

We’re also looking for local businesses to join our team of sponsors!
Sponsors receive their logo on all of our personal promotional material and posts on social media.
Please PM us if you’re interested in helping support this free community event!

Tehachapi Terror is kinda sorta back!(?)
Although our larger event is still a no-go for this season, we’re partnering with P-Dubs Brew Pub/Mountain Bowling to bring Tehachapi a smaller version for 3 nights this Halloween!

Right off the bat, I want to set realistic expectations for our guests. If you have attended the last 3-4 years of Tehachapi Terror, this is not the same event.
This year will be more akin to our first or second years in terms of size and quality. We only have a few days to set up, so we’re opting to not get any of our scenic walls out of storage, and will instead put things together with canopies and pallets. We also have a lot of props we simply can’t get to.
As such, we expect the length of the maze to be about 1/4 of what it’s been the last couple years, both in length and quality.

Alright, with all that out of the way, what CAN you expect?!
Well, we plan on still packing in the best quality scares that we can under these circumstances, and will also have several actors roaming outside of the maze to interact and take photos with.
This year will also revert back to our free-to-enter model, but we will be accepting donations.
Because on a side note, we are desperately trying to raise enough money to buy a second shipping container to store the rest of our wall panels on our property. 🙏
We have to clear out of a rented unit in early spring, and are praying we’ll be able to just bring it all home with us, rather than having to scramble to find somewhere else.

But all that aside, we are just so glad to be able bring this event to our community for another season, even if it looks a little different than the last few years.
To our generous GoFundMe donors, that money will be going to good use! We still had to purchase an insurance policy for the event, and we’re looking at a hefty bill for our U-Haul and other materials we’ll need to make this all happen.

So thank you all for your support, we have felt SO much love from everyone these last few weeks.
And thank you to P-Dubs, who came through for us and the community in this tricky situation!

We have a very sad, unexpected announcement to make.

Sadly, Tehachapi Terror will not be returning this season.

(GoFundMe refund information later in this post)

Over the last week, Paul and I have gone through some of the most intense emotional whiplash we’ve ever experienced in our lives.
One moment we had a confirmed location, a GREAT location. We were ecstatic. Then within 16 hours, that property owner suddenly changed his mind.
Then we had a smaller location that seemed like a perfect fallback, but unfortunately it wouldn’t pass city and fire inspection.

We are heartbroken beyond words to announce that, after 6 months of fighting, researching, cold calling, networking, even just driving all over Tehachapi looking for vacant buildings that would be up to code for us, we have truly hit a dead end.

Please understand that we truly exhausted every single viable option and followed every single lead.

We have absolutely loved entertaining our community since 2021, and rest assured we don’t plan on quitting anytime soon. We’re down, but not out. We have way too many big dreams and goals. Tehachapi Terror will return in the future, stronger than ever.

We have called Tehachapi home since 2020, and love this town dearly.
It hurts more than I can say to be disappointing so many of you.
I know that so many of you, from kiddos to seniors, love this event. I’m so sorry to not be able to bring that to you all again this year.

We have deactivated our GoFundMe, and our donors will be able to request a refund through this page: https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=4946054697115

I tried to find any option where we could manually refund it from our end, but it doesn’t appear to be an option. So I apologize for the inconvenience.
If you encounter any issues with the refund, please reach out to us and we’ll make sure everything is made right.

Lastly, we’re still hopeful we can do something small but fun on Halloween night. I still love the idea of hosting a big pumpkin carving contest, and I’m hoping we can still get a couple screams here and there. We will let you all know if we’re able to put something together.

And let me just repeat this again.
Tehachapi Terror is not gone forever.
2026 may have knocked us on our butts, but this isn’t the end of us. Not even close. I promise you that.
Thank you all for the amazing support you always show us. I hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day weekend and enjoy this gorgeous early fall weather.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

If you’ve attended Tehachapi Terror, we wanna hear from you!
Especially on the importance of having things like this available to the families and younguns in our community. The sappier the better. 🤡

Your comments may be included in a community support packet that we share with potential property owners and partners as we continue our search for a home!

For the past five years, Tehachapi Terror Haunted House has been a labor of love for our volunteers and a Halloween tradition for thousands of local families.

Unfortunately, we’re still searching for a location for our 2026 season, and there exists a very real possibility that we may not be able to open this year.

We’re putting together a collection of community testimonials to help demonstrate what this event means to Tehachapi and the surrounding communities.

If Tehachapi Terror has been a part of your Halloween traditions, we’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment sharing:

🎃 How long you’ve attended
🎃 Your favorite memory
🎃 What the haunt means to you or your family
🎃 Where you travel from to visit
🎃 Any photos you may have taken with us!

Your comments may be included in a community support packet that we share with potential property owners and partners as we continue our search for a home.

Thank you for supporting us over the last five years. We truly have the best community, and we’re not giving up yet. ❤️

It’s with deeply heavy hearts that we must announce that unless we can secure a location by this weekend, Tehachapi Terror will not be returning for a 6th season.

Please understand that we have genuinely exhausted every possible option we can think of. Kmart never replied, Woodward turned us down, and even the property up the road from last year said no, citing concerns about liability (even though we offered asking price, liability insurance, and a hold harmless contract).
Every other location we’ve looked into lacks the sprinkler and alarm system we require to pass fire inspection. This rules out barns, smaller retail spaces, etc.
Running our event outdoors is simply not an option for quite a number of reasons, and even if we got a tent to help with a couple of those problems, that then raises the issue of fire inspection again.

We’re also not interested in holding the event outside of Tehachapi, as this town is genuinely the very heart of it all for us.

Our hearts are slowly breaking, but we’re not giving up yet. We remain hopeful that, much like 2023, someone will turn up in the final hour with a solution.
Sharing our post helps the most, as what we ultimately need is for it just to be seen by the right person.

If nothing else, throughout this search we’ve felt so much love and support by our city and community. We didn’t realize just how many people we had rooting and fighting for us until now, and that offers so much comfort during this ordeal.