Haunted houses have grown to be one of the most popular Halloween attractions. No, these aren’t actual haunted houses but created ones, complete with ghosts, goblins, witches, and more. Believed to be rather recent phenomena, haunted houses actually got their start during the Great Depression, around the same time as “treat or treating,” as a way to distract young people whose Halloween pranks had escalated to vandalism and harassment.

This mischief on All Hallows Eve ranged from the innocent theft of neighbors’ gates to more audacious acts, such as stopping trains by placing a stuffed “body” across the tracks.

Some people believed these activities to be nothing more than harmless fun, especially in the years before the Great Depression.. But they which ramped up the Halloween antics of young men, leading to increased public anger. In 1933, parents became outraged when hundreds of teenage boys flipped over cars, sawed off telephone poles, and engaged in other acts of vandalism across the country. That year’s holiday earned the ominous designation of “Black Halloween.” Towns responded to the Halloween mischief by organizing costume parades, parties, trick-or-treating, and haunted houses.

The first ones were amateurish, 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 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, having to crawl through long dark tunnels, and hearing moans and howls.

An outside entrance led to a rendezvous with ghosts and witches in the cellar or attic. Old fur and strips of raw liver hung on the walls. Participants had to feel their way to dark steps. Weird moans and howls echoed from dark corners as damp sponges and hair nets hung from the ceiling to touch particpants’ faces. Blocked doorways forced them to crawl through a long dark tunnel. At the end they would hear the plaintive meow and see a black cardboard cat outlined in luminous paint.

However, the origins of the haunted house date back to 19th-century London, when a series of illusions and attractions introduced the public to new forms of gruesome entertainment. In 1802, Marie Tussaud scandalized British audiences with an exhibition of wax sculptures of decapitated French figures, including King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat and Robespierre. When she set up a permanent London exhibition, she dubbed her grotesque collection the "Chamber of Horrors" — a name that has stuck to the wax museum to this day.

But by the turn of the 20th century, haunted houses began experimenting with macabre themes. In 1915, an English fairground in Liphook debuted one of the first "ghost houses," an early type of commercial horror attraction. The public appetite for horror was picking up.

By the 1950s, the haunted house had spread across the country. The United States Junior Chamber, also known as Jaycees, became famous for raising money through its haunted houses. In California, Knott's Berry Farm began hosting its own Halloween night attractions, which soon transformed into a multi-week slate of events. Every year, a man named Bob Burns attracted national media attention for his detailed recreations of classic horror movies.

The haunted house didn't become a cultural icon until Walt Disney decided to build one. Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion opened in 1969, The attraction, which was designed in the style of the Evergreen House and the Winchester Mystery House, quickly became a success. In a single day shortly after its debut, more than 82,000 people passed through it. The attraction's centerpiece was the Grand Hall, a 90-foot-long ballroom sequence of dancing ghouls at a birthday party. Disney brought the scene to life through an exceptionally complex series of illusions known as Pepper's ghost, which use refracted light to project and shape ethereal images.

What made the Haunted Mansion successful was its use of new technologies and effects. In it, ghosts were no longer simply sheets hung in a tree, but were instead actual shimmering translucent figures that moved, spoke and sang. A witch wasn't just a rubber-masked figure bent over a fake cauldron, but a completely realistic bodiless head floating in a crystal ball, conducting a complex séance. Within the next few years, commercial haunted houses, often set up in abandoned Victorian mansions began springing up throughout the country.

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.

Even community and home versions of haunted houses got a lift as Halloween decorations exploded onto the market.

The Great Depression, a period marked by economic hardship and societal upheaval, cast its shadow over various facets of American life, including the cherished tradition of Halloween. However, haunted houses have become an entity in themselves, separate from Halloween which wouldn’t be the same without them.