Fifteen minutes before the Rocky Point Haunted House opens its 26th and final season, all manner of ghosts, goblins, serial killers, evil clowns and mad scientists gather backstage.

An eye-patched pirate, Rocky Point guiding light Cydney Neil, jumps up a step and gets the attention of all the chattering murder victims and the dual Freddy Kruegers, delivering her final first-night pep talk to a cast and crew of 150.

"This may be our last season, but this is going to be the best season ever," Neil said, interjecting motherly advice for her workers to stay hydrated and pace themselves through a long evening. "This is the last time I get to stand in front of you guys to open a new season and . . . I love you guys."

And with that, the cast and crew dispersed out to the many attractions filling roughly 60,000 square feet of joyfully murderous mayhem. At this year's Rocky Point Haunted House, visitors will find familiar frights like Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as modern horror heroes like Michael Myers from "Halloween" and Jason Voorhees from "Friday the 13th." They will also find a brand-new "Pirates of the Scare-ibbean" attraction that is uncannily accurate.

Neil said the creative exercise of constructing and adding a new feature to the long-running haunted house kept her from focusing too much on the fact that this is the end of the line for Rocky Point. The "Pirates" part of the show gave her and her cast something to recharge themselves for one more year entertaining more than 50,000 people on the weeks leading to Halloween.

"I don't know that I'll every have an opportunity to be part of something this scale again," Neil said, adding that the same "inspiration" that led the model and makeup artist to get into the fright-house biz is now inspiring her to leave it behind and try something new. "It will be the hardest thing in my whole life, to let this go."

It will be hard for the actors who work at Rocky Point, too, as well as the fans who make the haunted house a regular part of their fall. Friday, dozens of teenagers crowded into a parking-lot concert outside while others got in line to be among the first to see the latest edition of the haunted house that's won numerous awards and donated nearly $500,000 to Utah charities since first opening in Ogden in 1979.

Kylee Bouwhuis, an 18-year-old mohawked girl from Clinton, attended Rocky Point for the second time this year and said she was "pretty sad" the place would be closing, even though "the clown room scares the sh- out of me! I hate clowns!" Her friend James Silsby, a 17-year-old from Ogden, said he expected to still have a good time, especially with "all the zombies."

Rocky Point Haunted House

Rocky Point Haunted House is open Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. through September. Beginning in October, it will be open Tuesdays through Saturdays each week, and it will be open on Monday, Oct. 30, and Tuesday, Oct. 31. Admission is $16 for adults, $8 for kids 6-12, and children under 6 are free. For more information, visit http://www.rockypointhauntedhouse.com.