Haunted Houses & Ghost Tours in Mesa, AZ

The history

Mesa was founded in 1878 on a bench of desert above the Salt River Valley, in a landscape the Hohokam had engineered centuries before with a network of canals. East of the city the skyline belongs to the Superstition Mountains, and it is the mountains, not the city, that gave the East Valley its haunted geography.

At the foot of the Superstitions, gold was discovered in 1892, and by 1893 the camp of Goldfield had a post office and roughly 4,000 people, with three saloons, a boarding house, a general store, a blacksmith shop, a brewery, a meat market, and a schoolhouse; for five years it looked ready to rival Mesa. Then the vein faulted, the ore grade dropped, and the town died the slow death of mining camps: the post office closed in 1898. Revival attempts between 1910 and 1926 — the camp briefly renamed Youngsberg under territorial secretary George Young — never restored the first rush, and a fire in the early 1940s finished most of what still stood.

Mesa itself grew the other way, into the East Valley's big suburb, and its modern haunted layer is the metro-Phoenix scream season: large seasonal haunted attractions in shopping-center and fairground spaces, of which Scarizona ScareGrounds and Sanctum of Horror are Mesa's two.

The legend

This section is folklore — the most famous lost-mine legend in American history, framed here as legend, exactly as its sources frame it.

In the Superstition Mountains, according to legend, lies the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine: a rich gold mine hidden somewhere in the range near Apache Junction. Wikipedia's account of the legend names its source: Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant — "Dutchman" was the period's American slang for a German, from "Deutsch" — who purportedly discovered the mine in the 19th century and kept its location secret until his death in 1891. Stories about how to find it have multiplied ever since; people still search for the mine every year, and some have died on the search. No verified mine has ever been produced. The legend is the attraction, and it hangs over every trailhead and museum case in the Superstitions, Goldfield included.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 3 places in Mesa, AZ. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• AZ Scream Park — scream park, 1901 N Alma School Rd, Mesa, AZ 85201
• Scarizona Scaregrounds — scream park, 1901 N Alma School Rd, Mesa, AZ 85201
• Scarizona Screampark — scream park, 1901 N Alma School Rd, Mesa, AZ 85201

Attraction stories

Scarizona ScareGrounds

Scarizona is Mesa's home-grown scream park, at 1901 North Alma School Road, and a family operation: its site says the event has been in operation for over two decades. The format is one ticket for everything — in 2026, three brand-new haunted houses at one price. Mayhem in the Madness is the clown haunt, set in a compound its own page says was a restricted, behind-the-scenes part of the show for years and opened to the public for the first time in 2026. Startled Darkness is the dark haunt. Dr. Death's Haunted ICU is the medical one. The midway, concessions, and roaming characters fill the ground between them.

The 2026 season ran select nights from September 25 through November 1 — 21 nights — with timed-entry check-in from 6:45 PM and general admission from $19.95 plus fees, fast passes $10 more, and free parking. For families, the separately ticketed Frights in the Lights is a mile-long drive-through Halloween light show on the same grounds, built for young children.

Scarizona publishes no ghost lore and claims no haunted ground; its scares are built, costumed, and rehearsed. This page reports it as what it is: the East Valley's longest-running haunted-house event, by its own account, and the anchor of Mesa's Halloween season.

*Website: https://scarizona.com/*

Sources

• Wikipedia, Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine (anchor for the legend) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Dutchman%27s_Gold_Mine
• Wikipedia, Superstition Mountains — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition_Mountains
• Legends of America, Goldfield (town history 1892–1988) — https://www.legendsofamerica.com/az-goldfield/
• Goldfield Ghost Town — http://goldfieldghosttown.com/
• Scarizona ScareGrounds — https://scarizona.com/ and https://scarizona.com/attractions/mayhem-in-madness/
• azcentral, haunted houses open on Halloween 2026 (Scarizona and Sanctum of Horror listings) — https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/events/2026/10/23/haunted-houses-phoenix-halloween-2026/91908401007/
• Mesa Historical Museum — https://www.mesamuseum.org