This Halloween, House of Frankenstein in Bath unveils Parasomnia — an immersive nightmare where darkness and a 300-year-old building out-scare any scream park. P M BUCHAN steps inside ten chambers of waking terror
Literary Bath’s dark side
Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein occupies five floors of a 300-year-old building in the heart of Bath, only doors away from the Jane Austen Centre.
The year-round museum celebrates Mary Shelley and her gothic masterpiece. She lived in Bath from 1816-1817 and wrote the majority of Frankenstein here.
The museum features the world’s first faithful recreation of the creature as Mary actually imagined it: an imposing 8-foot figure that bears little resemblance to the green, bolt-necked icon of popular culture.
Every October, the building transforms for After Dark sessions, plunging five floors into darkness for a Halloween scare experience.
The 2025 iteration, Parasomnia, promises “a twisted journey through waking terror where the lines between reality and nightmares are erased.”
Ten chambers of terror
Our visit was an all-out assault on the senses. The darkness within the building is absolute, but actors are armed with different kinds of intense lights that they employ strategically to dazzle and confuse visitors. From ghosts and ghouls to period soldiers in gas masks, the theming changes as you traverse the building, so you never know what to expect on any level.
Admissions are carefully staggered, allowing actors to effectively isolate groups despite the inevitability of paths crossing.
This attention to pacing ensures scares land properly and maintains a sense of genuine isolation throughout, which stands in stark contrast with the conga-line queues that plague larger horror attractions.
Like Bodmin Jail’s short-lived Lights Out experience, the House of Frankenstein is a static building with considerable exploration and backtracking. The constraints become advantages. Actors grab you, redirect you, and separate you from your group. The 300-year-old architecture provides atmosphere that temporary structures can’t match.
The darkness can become overwhelming, particularly when actors reach out to touch you. At one point an invisible pair of hands stroked my face and I recoiled in repulsion, proving that House of Frankenstein can offer scares on a par with anywhere in the country.
Two bars at different set points offer themed shooters to calm nerves. The Carnival Bar served horror-themed shots that add to the disorienting atmosphere.
The Basement: Relentless terror
The highlight was the final section, the basement, which operates as a scare area during normal museum hours and becomes brilliantly enhanced during After Dark.
After being encouraged to crawl headfirst through pitch-black tunnels, a couple of particularly grotesque actors slithered out of the darkness and caught us unawares. It really was a relentless experience, and I had a great time listening to my companions’ screams. The intimacy means you’re acutely aware of your group’s terror in ways that larger attractions don’t allow.
The verdict
House of Frankenstein After Dark is a brief experience. Our group of four finished in forty minutes total but could easily have finished in twenty without stopping for a break at the bar.
This is comparable to a single quality scare maze from larger scream parks, but priced accordingly at £15.50.
Giant events like Tulleys Shocktober Fest might win more prestige and accolades, but I queued in a conga line through most of the attractions there, undermining the atmosphere. I spent considerable time in the House of Frankenstein alone with horrific actors, isolated in absolute darkness. That difference matters more than production budgets or maze length.
The 300-year-old building provides foundations that purpose-built temporary structures cannot match, and the commitment to absolute darkness creates genuine disorientation that larger attractions struggle to achieve.
House of Frankenstein After Dark won’t rival the scale of Farmaggedon or major theme park production values, but it occupies a distinct niche: intimate, literary-themed horror in the heart of one of England’s most beautiful cities.
For Bath residents and visitors, it offers excellent value as a complete evening out. The brevity works in its favour. Forty minutes of sustained tension is exhausting in the best way, ending before fatigue sets in. That’s worth considerably more than the asking price.
P M BUCHAN is a writer whose stories have featured in Rue Morgue, Kerrang!, and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine. He writes about culture, horror and dark art here.
