People like the woods and this is a little bit different,” Wilton said.

Though the woods provide a clever alternative to the standard haunted house, they provide people an opportunity to explore another part of Michigan's heritage: the outdoors.

Joe Oberlee, president of the Oakland County Sportsmen’s Club, agrees, and said people are attracted to the forest for a couple of different reasons.

“People really like the unknown, and Halloween is a last hurrah before snow sports season,” Oberlee said.

Undoubtedly, though, Erebus is king. Named by the Guinness Book of World Records the Largest Walk-Through Haunted House in 2005, Erebus has maintained the title, always expanding and changing the frights to keep the house fresh from year to year. Dragons, monsters, mutant apes and people in gruesome makeup line the 9,800 square feet of pitch-black — and often cramped — hallways to create a truly sweaty-palmed experience. Around 90 employees, from actors to security personnel, ensure that the experience is always unique and frightening. If you think you can’t be spooked by a haunted house, then you haven’t been to Erebus. The crew rips out about 30 percent of the house each year, keeping some favorite elements and consistently adding new ones. With balls that swing from the ceiling, simulated swamps made of lasers and smoke, total body dismemberment and simple tricks with glass floors and claustrophobia, Erebus never disappoints.

Though Erebus seems out of place in downtown Pontiac, nestled in among the trendy clubs like Tiki Bob's and indie concert venues like the Crofoot, a warehouse that stood empty for 40 years made for the perfect location for a haunted attraction, and the feelings of loneliness and desolation is still apparent in many of Michigan's abandoned buildings like the hulking Michigan Central Depot in Detroit.

What started as a four-year plan for the brothers has turned into an all-out obsession, with Erebus expanding every year. Though Ed knows they have the best in the state, they never stop working toward improvement to bring the scares to Michiganders.

“Right now, our show is decent. I’ve been working for 28 years, and am I done learning? Not even close,” Ed Terebus said. “We’re only working at about 60 percent of our potential. Get us up to 80 percent, and then you’ll really wet your pants.”

Ed Terebus says expansion and the need to keep people uneasy throughout the house is a key component to getting people to come back for more and keeping the industry alive. One such trick (what Ed calls “Buried Alive”) that received strong support but isn’t featured this year drops thousands of plastic balls on a victim, giving them the feeling of claustrophobia.

“If you have your hand in the air, it’s staying there,” Ed Terebus said. “My ex-fiancé didn’t realize she was claustrophobic until it happened and she was freaking out and crying and I smiled, and thought, ‘Look, you’re freaking out!’ And that’s why she’s a former fiancé.”

It’s not just Michigan’s use of creativity and work ethic that has sustained so many different attractions for years now and what still fuels the new houses that enter the market every year. Halloween, unlike many other holidays, is steeped in the tradition of escapism. Especially in Michigan, whose economy has been struggling since the 1970s, people need a (relatively affordable) everyday escape from work and real life without actually taking a huge, life-altering risk. The haunted houses provide just the right kind of catalyst for it all.

“Around Halloween, you can be whoever you want, and no one will give you a second glance,” Ed Terebus said. “Our house is a safe way to live on the edge without actually jumping out of a plane.”

But what brings someone like Ed Terebus back for more every year?