Rob Zombie’s haunted house is causing some controversy near Chicago
Rob Zombie—musician, filmmaker, and haunted-house impresario—has irritated some Chicago-area residents with Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare, a complex of scary attractions in Villa Park, Illinois. The houses pay tribute not only to Zombie’s fictional horror universes from House Of 1000 Corpses and El Superbeasto, but also to the real-life John Wayne Gacy, who raped and murdered at least 33 boys four decades ago—about 15 miles from the wacky theme park. According to Chicago’s Daily Herald, one of the houses features a “Gacy room,” complete with a likeness of the killer dressed as a clown (his real-life modus operandi) and a pair of dolls dressed as Boy Scouts on a couch. (There’s also a “Manson room” and some kind of representation of Jeffrey Dahmer, which would no doubt go over like gangbusters in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, respectively.) One of the prosecutors in the Gacy case spoke to the Daily Herald about its tastelessness, though stopped far short of suggesting the attraction be stopped. [h/t to Stereogum]