killed within its walls. The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California is considered one of the most haunted houses in America, although there are no primary sources for the many ghost stories about it. They were most likely inspired by Sarah Winchester, who had her strange, complex, often illogical designs incorporated into the house for almost four decades. Wukang Mansion, a historical house in Shanghai, has a reputation for being haunted because of the large number of suicides of celebrities, intellectuals, and state-persecuted people there. Halloween-themed haunted houses Halloween themed "haunted houses" began appearing around the same time as "trick or treat", during the Great Depression, as a way to distract young people whose Halloween pranks had escalated to vandalism and harassment of passersby. These first exhibits were low quality, being put together by groups of families in their basements. People would travel from home to home to experience a variety of frightening situations, such as hearing weird moans and howls, cardboard cutouts of black cats, damp sponges and hair nets hanging from the ceiling to touch people's faces, hanging fur on the walls of darkened hallways, and having to crawl through long dark tunnels. In 1972 Jerry Falwell and Liberty University introduced one of the first "hell houses" as an anti-Halloween attraction. Some Christian churches run these, which while being haunted houses, also promote their interpretation of the Christian gospel message. According to USA Today, in hell houses, "participants walk through several 'scenes' depicting the consequences of things like abortion, homosexuality and drunkenness." Commercial haunted houses The concept of the haunted house was capitalized on as early as 1915 with the Orton and Spooner Haunted House in the Hollycombe Steam Collection (England). The haunted house became a cultural icon when Disneyland's Haunted Mansion was opened in 1969. By the 1970s, commercial haunted houses had sprung up all over the United States in cities like Louisville, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio. These houses are stereotypically Gilded Age homes because changing tastes of the nouveau riche left these homes abandoned or poorly maintained. Hollywood slasher films such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th had a large influence on commercial haunted houses in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of these houses included characters such as Freddy Krueger and Jason. A less popular film titled Monster House suggests the idea of a spirit actually taking control of a