MANSFIELD — Clark Griswold in “Christmas Vacation” looked around at the disaster that had befallen his cherished family holiday season in the now classic 1989 comedy movie.
“How could things get any worse? Take a look around here, Ellen. We’re at the threshold of hell!” he exclaimed.
Griswold had no idea what hell awaits at the Ohio State Reformatory this holiday season.
Blood Prison stages its fifth-annual “Christmas Incarceration” event Dec. 5-6 and 12-13 inside the walls of the fabled prison at 100 Reformatory Road. Gates open at 6:45 p.m. each night and tickets must be purchased online.
Tickets are sold online only at https://bloodprison.com and the hours are 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. all four days. General admission tickets are $25 and instant access tickets are $60. Touch passes are also available for $5 extra on general admission tickets and touch passes are free for those who buy instant access.
“Step into a chilling holiday experience like no other at Blood Prison, Ohio’s most infamous haunted house. Set within the hauntingly beautiful Ohio State Reformatory, Christmas Incarceration transforms the festive season into a spine-tingling spectacle,” according to the Blood Prison website.
“The true spirit of Christmas takes a sinister turn as you wander through the shadowy cell blocks. Encounter the ghostly wails of the warden’s widow echoing through the corridors, and face apparitions of deranged inmates and nightmarish guards, all lurking in the dark recesses of this iconic prison,” the website said.
Blood Prison owner Vic Amesquita said the holiday haunt will again allow visitors to turn holiday stress into holiday screams as the old prison mixes in a bit of terrifying history into the season of yule logs, candy canes and eggnog.
“We keep adding more and more every year,” he said. “This is the fifth year of Christmas Incarceration and last year it got really big, so we had to expand to two weekends for 2025.”
“The Warden’s Widow changes herself to the Christmas Widow and still delivers her famous screams,” Amesquita said.
“Christmas Incarceration is a Christmas experience with a horror twist,” Amesquita said. “It’s a lot of fun and different from the Halloween experience.”
“We also have a lot of evil elves and of course the main man, Krampus,” he said.
Krampus is the horned, anthropomorphic figure who accompanied St. Nicholas in nocturnal visits to children, according to European Alpine folklore.
Saint Nicholas rewarded well-behaved children with small gifts. Krampus punished badly behaved ones with birch rods, perhaps scaring them back onto the right path — or kidnapping those who failed to see the light.
The haunt itself is a scaled-back and less expensive version of the popular Halloween haunt since the cell block areas are being used for tours and other things during December.
“It’s a different vibe when you jump into a Christmas haunt. It’s not all the same Halloween people. You get some Christmas people that come so you get a kind of a different mixture of people that come in for this event.
“It’s very well-received. We really theme out the haunt for Christmas. I’ve never had a complaint,” he said.
(Photos of the 2025 Blood Prison Christmas Incarceration.)
