Yes, Horrors Untold boasts an atmospheric found-footage original narrative and a whole slew of mindbending puzzles and riddles, but the core of its experience is an extensive and comprehensive guide to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando Resort. This was, in fact, the inciting impulse behind the entire crazy, convoluted project, and we on the creative team knew that it had to be the very first element that we got exactly right – there are a lot of fans for the event the entire world over, after all, and there are also a lot of outlets for them to learn about, and obsess over, their favorite Halloween celebration. We aimed for 100% factual correctness, and, moreover, something that other HHN resources can’t or won’t provide: a certain sense of cohesiveness or clarity.

And that cohesiveness starts with the breadth and depth of the chapters that are devoted to the horror subject:

1. Overview of HHN Orlando
2. The lore of HHN Orlando
3. The history of HHN Orlando
4. The most influential IPs of HHN Orlando
5. The food and merch of HHN Orlando
6. HHN Orlando outside of Universal Studios Florida
7. HHNs around the (Universal) world

(If you’d like an expanded breakdown of these, seeing what subsections are included within each chapter, just jump right down to the very bottom of this post.)

As that list suggests, this “guidebook” to the country’s premier Halloween event isn’t like the other reference materials you can find out there: at the risk of repeating myself, our little first-of-its-kind book doesn’t include a rundown of any particular year’s food and drink offerings, or a list of ticket prices, or any type of touring plan whatsoever. While there’s a very clear usage and, indeed, need for such guides, we felt like (a) they already exist, (b) that type of year-specific info is probably best reserved for websites, anyway, and (c) we wanted to create something far more comprehensive, and thorough, and evergreen. So that’s why we turned to the first 32 event years, ranging from those initial, tentative Frights Nights days in 1991 to the expansive, well-oiled machine that was HHN 32 in 2023, and we treated it like one story, with its own beginning, middle, and (sort-of) end – making neat and tidy, in other words, what is otherwise sprawling and unwieldy.

The best example of this comes in the form of our lore chapter, which actually doubles as a type of encyclopedia of HHN content. From the icons – those characters who headline a particular event year, commandeering the marketing and merchandise and, typically, claiming a haunted house or scare zone (or two) as their own – to the major recurring locations and faces, we present all the highlights, fleshing out their backstories in a simple, straightforward way. (And the found-footage nature of the book really comes in handy here, allowing us to insert a handwritten note or a scrap of paper with musings on it to point out certain, in-the-real-world observations, such as why Universal’s Art and Design team decided to go in a certain direction or when, say, the 2023 additions to Dr. Oddfellow’s backstory didn’t quite match up with what was established in the previous decade.) This whopping behemoth of a chapter, which clocks in at 48 pages, even has its own mini-table of contents, allowing you to hop around between any of the entries at will – making it, we hope, the ultimate resource for both diehard veterans who need a quick refresher and the newbies who may otherwise be too overwhelmed by an array of wiki entries. (We also, it goes without saying, hoped to be far better written than any wiki, no matter how helpful they may otherwise be. This point isn’t just academic; one of our principal goals was to make Horrors Untold as seamless and enjoyable a read as humanly possible, in order to make the event itself as understandable as possible.)

This pursuit of exhaustive excellence manifested itself in a number of other ways, both big and small, in all the other sections, as well. In the history chapter, for example, we retrace the very first Horror Nights baby steps in 1986 Universal Studios Hollywood before hopping over to Florida and walking you through the various eras there, tackling Robosaurus, the birth of Jack the Clown (and all the other icons), and the momentous arrival of The Walking Dead (and all the other dominant intellectual properties) – but what really steals the show here are two stop-you-in-your-tracks elements: the inclusion of a custom-made, beautifully illustrated map of Islands of Fear, the seminal 2002 event, and an almost scene-by-scene walkthrough of Dungeon of Terror, the first-ever HHN haunted house. Since Dungeon’s exact innards are lost to the annals of time, having this reconstructed experience, which essentially walks you through from room to room, is the closest any of us will ever get (sadly) to being back in those primordial horror days of the early ‘90s. Both of these items took great time and care to research and lay out, and all of us on the creative team couldn’t be prouder of the way they turned out.

Or take the “Most Influential IPs of Halloween Horror Nights Orlando” chapter, which briefly breaks down the history of each of these six pivotal franchises – Walking Dead, Halloween, American Horror Story, Stranger Things, the Universal Monsters, and Chucky – and then lists out every house and scare zone to have brandished them (not to mention, yet again, the presence of some pretty stellar original artwork representing these legendary properties). The food and merch chapter, meanwhile, not only quickly hits on the progression and proliferation of the various bites and drinks of Universal’s proceedings, with a special spotlight on the (infamous) Blood Suckers, it also lovingly pays tribute to the absolutely legendary Tribute Store by loosely replicating its various spaces typographically. It’s a fun way to get to know each of these different facets of the event, and it also hints at one of the many other layers that has gone into helping shape and mold these sections of the book: whether screenshots of blog articles, unpublished docs, or hidden files, nearly every single Horror Nights chapter deploys a different format, which means it sports a different look and feel. The grand result is yet another way we strove to make the material interesting and visually dynamic, and it also helps to live up to the “found” part of the found-footage subgenre – still, perhaps the biggest item of note here is the way it helps move us towards the original-narrative portion of the experience, which takes this idea of different forms and functions and really runs wild with it.

(Okay, just one more quick example of how the book can really shine a unique spotlight on HHN: our exploration of the now-legendary Eternal Rest Package, a short-lived, fully themed stay at Hard Rock Hotel from 20 years ago that sounds absolutely unbelievable in the modern, safer, and more mass-produced days of Universal’s horror fest. Just like with our walkthrough of the Dungeon of Terror haunted maze, it took copious amounts of research to piece together this elusive experience, and we think it’ll be yet another crowd-pleasing part of Horrors Untold, whether the “crowd” in question is a battle-hardened vet or a rookie attendee.)

While Horror Nights will continue to grow and evolve over the next 32 years, you can still think of this as a timeless document, reference material that can be turned to time and again for a quick refresher on that one specific element or for an annual reread to help get you pumped for the start of the next spooky season.

So, what, exactly, is included each of the seven Halloween Horror Nights chapters? This expansive list of each and every section should more than answer that question:

Chapter 1: Overview of HHN Orlando

1. Quick stats
2. What is HHN?
3. Houses
4. Scare zones
5. Shows
6. Food and drinks
7. Shopping and merch
8. Event lore
9. Outside experiences

Chapter 2: The lore of HHN Orlando

1. Icons
   1. Fear
   2. Jack the Clown
   3. The Caretaker
   4. The Director
   5. The Storyteller
   6. Terra Queen
   7. Bloody mary
   8. The Usher
   9. Chance
   10. Lady Luck
   11. Dr. Oddfellow
2. Locations
   1. Carey, Ohio
   2. Terra Cruentus
   3. The Tribute Theater
3. Recurring characters/concepts
   1. Legendary Truth: The Collective
   2. Boris Shuster
   3. Eddie Schmidt
   4. Cindy Caine
   5. Samuel Meatz
   6. HR Bloodengutz
   7. Legions of Horror
   8. Dogs of War
   9. Pumpkin Lord

Chapter 3: The history of HHN Orlando

1. Origins in Hollywood
2. Fright Nights
3. The early Orlando years
4. Expansion: icons, Islands, and IPs
5. HHN today

Chapter 4: The most influential IPs of HHN Orlando

1. The Walking Dead
2. Halloween
3. American Horror Story
4. Stranger Things
5. Universal Monsters
6. Chucky

Chapter 5: The food and merch of HHN Orlando

1. Food and beverage
2. Merchandise
3. The Tribute Store
   1. History and evolution
   2. Seasonal merchandise
   3. Eats and treats
   4. Lore and Easter eggs

Chapter 6: HHN Orlando outside of Universal Studios Florida

1. Hotels
2. CityWalk
3. Mobile games

Chapter 7: HHNs around the (Universal) world

1. HHN Hollywood
2. HHN Singapore
3. HHN Japan
4. Scares @ Universal (Beijing)
5. Universal Horror Unleashed (Las Vegas)

This is part five of an ongoing series about Horrors Untold, the HHN guidebook/immersive horror mystery. You can read samples and buy your copy here or jump back to the table of contents here.