{"id":31049,"date":"2025-10-31T00:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T00:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/31049\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T00:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T00:32:09","slug":"halloweens-over-but-year-round-haunt-is-open-at-anaheim-gardenwalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/31049\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween’s over, but year-round haunt is open at Anaheim GardenWalk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jesus \u201cChewie\u201d Garcia wasn\u2019t really into scary movies while he was growing up.<\/p>\n

But when the 32-year-old Santa Ana resident was 18, he became interested in haunted attractions. At that time, he started looking for one to visit around early August.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was one open, and it so happens to be at the GardenWalk,\u201d Garcia recalled.<\/p>\n

It was called The Empty Grave and was open early for the Halloween season. Garcia said he enjoyed the attraction so much, he went through it four or five times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next day I brought my sister and my mom chickened out in the first room,\u201d he said, but he was hooked by the experience. \u201cI asked them for a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been a full-circle moment for Garcia, who opened his new year-round haunted attraction, Eulogy Collective<\/a>, at the Anaheim GardenWalk Oct. 10. The current theme of the seven-room attraction is \u201cDeadly Sins,\u201d which takes guests through detailed sets and live characters depicting pride, envy, lust, greed, wrath, gluttony and sloth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot more emotional to me,\u201d he said of the enterprise. \u201cThe GardenWalk, they know my story that \u2026 I started here, like this is my stomping ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attraction also houses a storefront with horror-themed collectibles, purses, decor and more available for purchase. Eulogy Collective is open various nights through early November starting at 6 p.m. with general admission tickets available on their website, eulogycollective.com<\/a>, for $24.<\/p>\n

\"Each <\/p>\n

Each of Eulogy Collective\u2019s rooms features a different \u201cdeadly sin.\u201d This room puts the spotlight on the sin of envy.<\/p>\n

(Jessica Peralta)<\/p>\n

The plan is for the attraction to close in late November and then reopen in December for a Christmas-themed overlay. Garcia said the attraction may also open for other holidays like Valentine\u2019s Day and Easter \u2014 with an overarching horror theme, of course.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re already thinking of the next things to do, you know, how to improve the haunt here,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cWe\u2019re already planning December since we\u2019re year-round. \u2026 February is in the plans already.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"One <\/p>\n

One of the Eulogy Collective characters stands in the room that represents \u201cgluttony.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Jessica Peralta)<\/p>\n

Prior to opening Eulogy Collective, Garcia was building his reputation in local haunted attractions through Santa Ana Haunt, which he started in 2020 at his father\u2019s home in Santa Ana.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had lost my grandpa \u2014 that was like the biggest loss I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI was just kind of in a dark place and there was nothing going on. Halloween has always been a big thing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He texted some friends and crew from other haunted attractions where he\u2019d previously worked about putting together a small display.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll scare in the front yard, like keep our distance, wear a mask under our mask,\u201d he said of the pandemic-era debut. \u201cWe\u2019ll just do a little display for the neighborhood. They\u2019re like, \u2018Yeah, sure, let\u2019s do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia slapped together a shirt that said \u201cSanta Ana Haunt\u201d with a phone app and scored some building panels from another haunted attraction that was relocating.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo our little display went from like a display to a haunt,\u201d he said. \u201cGuys were on stilts to avoid being close to people and, man, everybody loved it. We were like the only little Halloween thing going on in 2020, at least in our area. We were spraying people\u2019s hands with sanitizer in the front yard, we were drawing chalk lines on the ground and we had like 2,000 people come that year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Eulogy <\/p>\n

Eulogy Collective\u2019s current theme is \u201cDeadly Sins.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Jessica Peralta)<\/p>\n

It kept growing from there. Garcia went on OfferUp and Craigslist and started buying supplies and Halloween decorations for pennies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d show up to people\u2019s houses, where I\u2019m buying a 10- or 15-dollar piece, and they\u2019d offer me their whole garage full of stuff for $200,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Last year, Santa Ana Haunt partnered with local attraction OC Nightmare to create a vampire-themed maze for the Halloween season at the GardenWalk.<\/p>\n

John Hsu, chief executive of Anaheim GardenWalk, said one of the things the venue values is culture and the arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe welcome any kind of very genuine and very original ideas \u2026 so that way people can come here to always find something that\u2019s really unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Garcia and his team are very talented and last year\u2019s attraction at the GardenWalk was very well received.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to be one-of-a-kind, they want to go above and beyond,\u201d Hsu said. \u201cThey really spend a lot of manpower, resources, and we also invested a lot of our resources into this, wanting to make this one of the best in the area. \u2026 We\u2019re building something that\u2019s Disney quality and something that people will treasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia said this all happened because he fell in love with what he calls \u201cthe art of the scare\u201d all those years ago. In that time, he\u2019s built a team of friends \u2014 along with his family \u2014 who\u2019ve come along to help and work whenever needed. His oldest daughter, 15, actually scares in one of Eulogy Collective\u2019s rooms. And he attributes many ideas, including the \u201cDeadly Sins\u201d theme to his wife, Melissa Diaz. <\/p>\n

He said ideas are often a process and they change and develop as he and the team work through them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t decide everything in one shot,\u201d Garcia added. \u201cWhen you\u2019re able to make these little changes throughout the buildout, I feel like that\u2019s what makes it more unique. \u2026 Our haunt has that Santa Ana Haunt, Eulogy Collective flavor, like when you\u2019re going through any of our attractions, you know it\u2019s us that built it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jesus \u201cChewie\u201d Garcia wasn\u2019t really into scary movies while he was growing up. But when the 32-year-old Santa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,22733,165,164,22737,22731,14897,585,3908,3907,22735,1741,22736,592,22732,427,72,22734],"class_list":{"0":"post-31049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-gardenwalk","10":"tag-anaheim-headlines","11":"tag-anaheim-news","12":"tag-current-theme","13":"tag-eulogy-collective","14":"tag-garcia","15":"tag-halloween","16":"tag-halloween-season","17":"tag-haunted-attraction","18":"tag-little-display","19":"tag-lot","20":"tag-next-day","21":"tag-people","22":"tag-santa-ana-haunt","23":"tag-team","24":"tag-year","25":"tag-year-round-haunt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}