Walking into North Fourth Theatre this month does not just mean buying a ticket to watch a show — it means becoming part of one. “This is a Haunted House*” sets guests up as extras recruited to work inside a century-old haunted house, only for the orientation to spiral into a deeper mystery that suggests some of them may be trapped there for centuries.
The production is presented by ShortTerror Productions at North Fourth Theatre, blending traditional haunted-house scares with live theater, comedy and audience participation, according to abq.news. As KRQE reports, the show is an immersive Halloween experience that combines a haunted house, an escape room and a scripted play with a comedic twist, and it is directed by Rusty Rutherford and Charles Herrera. The audience is not a passive crowd shuffling through dark hallways — per KRQE, attendees become part of an overarching story that asks whether they can escape in time to reach the frontier before closing.
A Script That Shifts With Every Audience
The show is written, but never frozen in place. It is scripted, but it is always changing, even night to night, the production told abq.news, because actors adapt in real time to however attendees respond. KRQE notes the experience leans heavily on comedy-heavy and improv-heavy interactions between cast members and the crowd, so no two performances play out quite the same way.
That flexibility comes from a sizable local effort. abq.news reports that roughly 15 actors and a similarly sized crew helped bring the show together, after the production was developed collaboratively by seven writers over about six weeks. KRQE’s reporting puts the full team closer to about 30 local people, spanning actors, writers, audio technicians and costume designers, with the show credited as a collective creation by Jeff Andersen, Katie Farmin, Shannon Flynn, Magdelene Gallegos, Casey Powers, Chris Walsh and Amy Yourd.
Tickets, Timing and a Soggy Thursday Tradition
“This is a Haunted House*” runs Oct. 9 through Oct. 31, 2026, at North Fourth Theatre, located at 4904 Fourth St. NW, per abq.news. Tickets range from $26.78 to $31.98, and the event's own ticketing page on SimpleTix describes it as suited for Halloween fans ages 13 and up. According to the show's own site, Quarantine ABQ, this year's run lasts about 45 minutes and features two storyline adventures.
Thursday nights carry their own reputation. The show designates Thursdays as “splash the audience night,” when attendees are intentionally sprayed during the performance, abq.news reports. Rutherford told KRQE the production has seen a gradual increase in attendees and has drawn a mixture of laughter and fear from crowds, and that ShortTerror Productions hopes to sell out over Halloween weekend. His advice for anyone heading in: arrive open-minded and be willing to participate, since he said the goal is to bring people back to live theater and live performance.
Not ShortTerror's First Scare, Not Albuquerque's Only One
This marks ShortTerror Productions' first haunted-house-themed show, though the company has staged other immersive productions before, previously building experiences around zombies, ghosts and aliens, per KRQE. The team behind it also created the horror experience Quarantine, which SimpleTix describes as having run for 10 years.
Albuquerque’s Halloween scene this month has ranged from scripted scares to free community events. A free haunted house drew visitors to the Joan Jones Community Center on Rincon Road, where KOAT reported a family-friendly, wheelchair-accessible attraction featuring live music and themed scares. That roughly 30-minute experience used the theme “The Trails Have Eyes,” with scenes inspired by “The Purge” and “Squid Game,” and KOAT noted about 250 people attended the season's first event, with the attraction typically drawing around 2,500 visitors over the full season. The City of Albuquerque also listed a free haunted-house experience at the same community center among its fall calendar of events, according to the City of Albuquerque.
On the more extreme end of the local spectrum sits the NM Slaughter House, a longer-running attraction founded in 2012 at 1909 Bellamah Avenue Northwest. Per Hauntworld, the attraction says it was the first Albuquerque haunt to bring nearly 10,000 attendees through its doors in a season.
