When Rob Zombie isn't scaring people with his music or movies, he's doing it through a haunted house. But the "Dragula" singer's most recent Great America Nightmare attraction is getting slammed for the inclusion of a room dedicated to serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
As Blabbermouth points out, the haunted house is located on the outskirts of Chicago and contains rooms for Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer and Gacy, whose killing spree occurred in the same vicinity as the scary attraction. "The kids killed were from the Northwest suburbs and Northwest side of Chicago, not too far at all from [the haunted house]. It's a little too close to home and might open some old wounds. Not enough time has passed," Robert Egan, a former prosecutor on the Gacy case, told The Daily Herald. "I don't argue with Rob Zombie's right to do what he's doing. But it's a shame that what he's doing is causing the victims' families pain."
In the room, an actor dressed as Gacy makes balloon animals as two ghoulish boy scouts sit on a couch.
Zombie finds the room comical. "The Gacy room is funny," Zombie told the Chicago Tribune. "Last year what it was was these little dead kids lying around and John Wayne Gacy is sitting in the chair folding balloon animals for you." The rocker went on to point out that when the attraction was in California in 2013, the public was upset with the Manson room.
Gacy was found guilty in 1980 of the sexual assault and murder of 33 teenage boys and young adults that took place between 1972 and 1978. The murderer was put to death by lethal injection in 1994.
Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare is open in Villa Park, Ill., until Nov. 1.
