What a fever dream.
I visited the House on the Rock (HotR) when I was in junior high and the only room I could remember from it was the Infinity Room and how terrified I was being up that high. Now that I've visited as an adult, my list of nightmare fuel from this bizarre attraction has grown longer and I can't wait to share them with you.
A bit of backstory, the House on the Rock was built by Alex Jordan Jr., an architect from Madison, Wisconsin. He started building his home located on top of a rock in the 1920s and due to its unique location, people were interested in seeing the inside. He began charging people pennies to come in and now the HotR has become an absolute spectacle.
A note: Through this article, I may have my rooms out of order going through the post. It's been almost six months since my visit and can't remember the exact order of the house.
The first building you enter when you arrive is the ticket booth.
Tip: This is where you can exchange money for tokens and you'll need some tokens for the duration of your tour to operate machines. But, you don't need a ton because other people will be in the same areas with you and they'll also use some of their tokens.
Once you get your ticket, you start your tour in a small museum that talks about Jordan's life. How he started to build the house, why he started to build it, and all of the things he kept from the house's opening (including all of the admission ticket stubs.)
Then, it's into the Japanese Gardens.
Then you head into the first part of the tour, Alex Jordan's home, the actual House on the Rock and sometimes the music from this section haunts me. Throughout the tour there are machines that you'll need tokens for where machines play music on their own. Here, there are no tokens yet, just self-playing instruments that greet you as you walk into a dark, dank home. There are trees growing inside of the house, most of the furniture is upholstered in red.
You can likely smell the mold through these photos and that smell will follow you throughout the tour, out of the house, into the museum- the entire time. So will the music, but that will also follow you home and into your nightmares.
At the end of the home, you walk up to the Infinity Room. This is the only part of the tour that I remembered from my last time there and it was so much scarier before, but it's also the focal point of a lot of photos.
As you make your way to the tip and more people enter, the ground starts to shake and it's terrifying.
Onto a little more of the house itself which is just as dank as the photos make it look.
After the Infinity Room, you make your way out to the Mill House, followed by the beginning of the museum.
After The Mill House, you reach the Streets of Yesterday. It's lined with shop windows you can peek in that are full of things Alex collected and ends with your first large band that you enter your tokens into and these fake people will play instruments and it's a bit off-putting, but that's a theme that runs through the whole house.
After the Streets of Yesterday, we reach the Heritage of the Seas. This room has an underwater theme, in case you didn't gather that, and in this room there is a life-sized blue whale that's on the second floor and I have megalophobia and if you also have megalophobia, this is not the place for you to go. But, he is quite the spectacle up close.
Next stop is the Tribute to Nostalgia which is another vast room full of stuff, which is the theme of the House on the Rock. Most rooms you come in on the first level, but after leaving the Heritage of the Sea you come in on the second level here. It smells like pizza in here because there is a small cafe that serves really quick pizza and drinks, nothing fancy, but a great option for when you make it this far.
Next is the Music of Yesterday and this is where your tokens come in handy. This is a hall almost completely made of self-playing instruments. You can walk and sit in a room, take in the decor, and watch instruments play themselves through the entire hall.
The highlight of the house for many people, including myself, is the carousel. It's noted as the largest carousel in the world and it's gorgeous. While the rest of the house was a bit creepy, and this room has angel mannequins on the ceiling so it's not far out of line, but there is a hallway you walk down to get to the carousel and the reveal is incredible.
And then you leave the carousel room out this doorway, so we're right back on theme:
Into the next room, maybe my least favorite as I'm also afraid of heights, but it's the Organ Room. Filled with a collection of organs with walkways that take you up and down stairs throughout the room.
None of the walkways feel very stable, either, in case you couldn't gather that. They shake a bit, and squeak, which doesn't help if you're afraid of heights at all, but if they've lasted this long they are stable enough for me to walk across really quick.
I don't have many phots from the rest of the house, but you will visit The Spirit of Aviation, the Circus Room, the Doll House room, and you'll end with a trip through the Galleries which is a maze of glass containers they have put more things behind that didn't really have a place through the rest of the museum.
You'll end your tour with a visit of the carousel from the second floor which, unfortunately, brings you closer to the angel mannequins hanging from the ceiling.
I almost didn't put this photo in, but I really had to because if I had to see it, so do you all.
But, fortunately, spits you out into the gift shop.
All in all, I believe that I have seen it once and don't really need to see it again. Though I did find out they host a Halloween event called The Dark Side which has piqued my interested because the house itself is already so unsettling, a Halloween event would be so bizarre.
My cousin visited because it's referenced in American Gods and she loved it, We, on the other hand, have little desire to go back. Have you been? Were we all a bit scared of it? What was your favorite part?
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