Haunted Houses & Ghost Tours in Fulton, NY

The history

Oswego County's haunted ground is older than the county's farms and scream parks, and it stands on the Lake Ontario shore at Oswego. Fort Ontario was first erected by the British in 1755, and its early history is a cycle of destruction and rebuilding: American forces destroyed it in 1778, the British rebuilt it in 1782 and held it until 1796, and British forces destroyed it again in 1814. The star-shaped fort visitors see today dates to the early 1840s, with improvements made between 1863 and 1872, and the Army kept a post there through World War II.

The fort's most remarkable chapter is its last one. From 1944 to 1946, Fort Ontario served as the only refugee camp in the United States for victims of the Holocaust, sheltering mostly Jewish refugees under an executive order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The post cemetery on the grounds holds the graves of 77 officers, soldiers, women, and children who served at the fort in war and peace. The fort is now Fort Ontario State Historic Site, operated as a museum.

The county's second haunted layer is agricultural. Oswego County's fall haunts are farm operations — Frightmare Farms in Palermo, 13th Hour Rising and the Trail of Terror in Fulton, Demon Acres in Hannibal — built on dark rural land miles from any streetlight.

The legend

This section is folklore — reported by the Haunted History Trail of New York State and the fort's own event organizers, and never asserted as fact here.

Fort Ontario is on New York's official Haunted History Trail, and the trail's account of the haunting is specific: strange lights and music, a woman who appears in an upstairs window and vanishes, and a ghostly child calling for his cat. The trail notes that hundreds of soldiers and civilians perished on the site across its centuries of war. The fort's reported activity was also featured on the television program Ghost Hunters, in Season 8, Episode 17, per the trail's listing.

The scream parks' stories are a different kind of legend — fiction written by their owners, and labelled as such in their stories below. Professor Whitaker's cursed collection, the hillbillies of the Depths of the Dark Forest: these are storylines, presented by their parks as storylines.

Haunted today

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

• 13TH HOUR RISING HAUNTED HAYRIDE — haunted hayride, 84 Merrit Rd, Fulton, NY 13069
• Demon Acres Scream Park — scream park, 341 Co Rte 36, Hannibal, NY 13074
• Frightmare Farms Haunted Scream Park — scream park, 80 Thompson Rd, Fulton, NY 13069

Attraction stories

Frightmare Farms Haunted Scream Park

Frightmare Farms, at 4816 State Route 49 in Palermo, is Oswego County's biggest scream park: four haunted attractions on one farm. The Professor's Haunted Estate is the flagship — an immersive walk-through of detailed sets. Around it are the Twisted Labyrinth, built on darkness and disorientation; the Terror Trail (in some seasons the Condemned Mine Trail), an outdoor trail through the woods; and the Forbidden Forest Haunted Hayride, a seated ride through large-scale scenes and creatures. The park's own FAQ says the attractions' themes, storylines, and scenes evolve from season to season.

The park wraps all four in its own fiction. Its Haunted House Association listing tells it this way: Professor Whitaker has searched the globe for supernatural antiquities — objects any man would be too terrified to possess — and the Estate holds what he brought back. Recent seasons have named the Estate's storyline "The Reckoning II: Revenge of Mariam Whitaker," the Labyrinth's an infestation of Gourd Lords overrunning a Museum of Fright, and the Mine Trail's a pharmaceutical company's experiments on an ancient bog. That is the park's storytelling, presented here as the park presents it.

Practically: the park runs Friday and Saturday evenings in season, typically 6:30 to 10 PM. Recent-season pricing ran from $20 for one attraction to $44 for all four, with a $65 VIP pass, per Syracuse-area listings; its own site carries the current year. The park bills itself as Central New York's most award-winning haunted attraction — its claim, and a plausible one given the local press coverage it draws.

*Website: https://frightmarefarmsny.com/*

13th Hour Rising Haunted Hayride

13th Hour Rising occupies a 200-acre farm — Chengerian's Tree Land, at 84 Merritt Road in Fulton — and its own about page supplies its credentials: it is owned and operated by Haunt Life Visions LLC, whose owners have been creating haunted attractions for over 30 years; this is their fourth professional location, with the layout built for the land.

The park has two attractions on one cash ticket. The second attraction, The Passage, is an indoor crawl-and-twist haunt the park describes as a portal: "is it just a mind game or did you delve into something much darker? You decide."

The park's own facts are refreshingly plain: admission is $40 cash at the gate for both attractions, the park is cash-only with an ATM on site, gates open weekends at 7 PM, and it operates rain or shine, with weather changes posted to its Facebook page. Its awards, per its own page, include Best Haunted Hayride in Central New York in 2024 and the same honor in 2015. There is no ghost lore here and the park claims none — the fear is engineered, and thirty years of practice shows in it.

*Website: http://www.13thhourrising.com/*

Demon Acres Scream Park

Demon Acres spreads across 25 acres at 341 County Route 36 in Hannibal, and its three main attractions are built to be done in order. First is the Extreme Haunted Hayride, "Depths of the Dark Forest": a wagon ride through Hollywood-style outdoor sets where, in the park's own telling, demented hillbillies, soul-stealing witches, torture areas, and clowns wait in the backwoods. Second is the Abandoned Jail, a handcuffed escape experience — your booking photo is taken, and you navigate the jail and its sewer tunnels trying to get out. The jail's backstory, as the park tells it, is that it was founded in 1979 and its owners discovered the tunnels by nearly falling down a manhole; that is the park's storyline, and this page keeps it attributed. Third is Demon's Den, the haunted house: 15 highly detailed rooms, in the park's description, where spirits of the dead lurk around every corner and a dragon waits in the shadows. The park also runs two escape rooms and an Insane Asylum audio experience.

The 2026 season ran October 2 through November 1, Fridays 7 to 10 PM and Saturdays 7 to 10:30 PM, with blackout nights on October 31 and November 1. A combo ticket covering all three attractions in order cost $40, the hayride alone $20, and an Express Fear pass $65. Bonfires and a food shack fill the waits between attractions.

Demon Acres claims a demon in its Den and hillbillies in its forest as theatre, not as history. It publishes no real haunting, and none is reported here.

*Website: https://demonacres.com/haunts.html*

Sources

• Wikipedia, Fort Ontario (anchor for the fort's history) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ontario
• I Love NY, Ghost Hunt with CNY Ghost Hunters at Fort Ontario — https://www.iloveny.com/event/ghost-hunt-with-cny-ghost-hunters/79661/
• Haunted History Trail of New York State, Fort Ontario State Historic Site — https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/explore/fort-ontario-state-historic-site
• Haunted History Trail of New York State, "Murder, Mystery and Mayhem" Lantern Tours — https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/events/murder-mystery-and-mayhem-fort-ontario-post-lantern-tours-oswego
• Frightmare Farms — https://frightmarefarmsny.com/ and https://frightmarefarmsny.com/faq
• 13th Hour Rising — http://www.13thhourrising.com/ and http://www.13thhourrising.com/about_us.html
• Demon Acres — https://demonacres.com/haunts.html