Terrifying Tour Tales: Escape Halloween 2024 Artists Share Their Scariest Travel Stories

There's nothing more hair-raising than a paranormal encounter. Whether it be a visual appearance or a disturbing sensation, these mysterious occurrences can be a traumatizing exposure, leaving anyone in distress.

Usually, these instances fade into the depths of one's memory banks, a casualty to time like most other human experiences. However, every year, as the temperatures drop and the nights grow longer, an appetite grows to share one's scary stories for others to feel that chill up their spines.

In the spirit of the spooky season, we scoured the roster of America's largest Halloween EDM festival to find the most frightening stories from their nights on the road. From sinister sleep demons to creepy cannibal lodgings, these are the terrifying tour tales from some of the acts performing at this year's Escape Halloween. 

Escape is scheduled for October 25-26 at San Bernardino's NOS Events Center. You can grab your tickets for the 18+ festival here.

Ghastly

"One time while I was touring in Germany, I was completely exhausted from having to go to the airport directly after the show. When I landed and finally got to my hotel room, I laid at the foot of the bed with my head facing the door and drifted off, thinking I was falling into a dream.

I realized I was actually wide awake when my hotel room door opened, and a large shadowy monster made of static began crawling toward me.

As it approached my face, the noise grew louder—static mixed with screaming and horrifying, negative words like "this is it, you're going to die." I was completely frozen, unable to move, overcome with terror to the point of insanity.

Finally, the sleep paralysis broke, and I could move again. In terror, I screamed, "GET AWAY FROM ME!" To my surprise, there was someone standing in the doorway — an cute older German housekeeper with a look of confusion and shock on her face.

She hesitantly said she would come back later as I tried to apologize and explain what I just saw, but that only seemed to scare her more. I'm still not sure if the sleep paralysis demon was real or not, but it's safe to say that I completely freaked out the housekeeper."

Softest Chyl

Softest Hard: "T-Pain had me come play a DJ set on his Wiscansin Tour and the last stop was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We were all recommended to stay in this hotel that was right across the street from the venue so it was easy to commute to the show.

We had arrived the day before the show and we just hung out in the hotel since it was the middle of winter and it was freezing outside, me and my tour manager walked into our room and it was already feeling a little off, the bed frame was very weird and it had these odd upside-down symbols on it that had us looking at each other in confusion. The hallways felt eerie and the light was yellow and the hotel was very old fashioned. My tour manager felt very unsettled so she took out one of those bibles that some hotels provide and we blessed the room.

Later on we got hungry so we walked down to the diner that was in the hotel, after we ate our food we made small talk with our server and asked her what’s Wisconsin famous for and she proceeds to tell us that we were staying in the infamous hotel where Jeffrey Dahmer would lure his victims to and we stayed in the room right below the room he was murdering people in.

Not only that, just down the street was where Dahmer’s apartment was where he did all the horrific acts of cannibalism and murder, we were told that apartment building was no longer there anymore and it was just an empty space.

The next day at the show the liaison was taking me and my tour manager to the green room and to get there you had to go down stairs to the basement and past this humongous indoor pool that was empty and filled with graffiti, we were told that the venue we were playing at was also haunted and that a little boy and a man hung themselves down stairs by the downstairs/pool area.

I love the friends that I made there but sorry Wisconsin I don’t think I will be coming back anytime soon.”

RayRay

"After a show in Vietnam, I stumbled back to my hotel around 3am, drained from the night. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I heard it—a steady flow of water. I looked over and saw the bathroom faucet running full blast. Weird. I wanted to get up and turn it off, but I was too exhausted. As I rolled back over, something felt wrong, like I wasn’t alone. But sleep pulled me under before I could figure it out."

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