As I have written several times so far this year in reference to Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) 2022, speculation season starts long before the event. An entire fan obsession develops each year predicting the houses, scare zones, and even the shows. When the first official speculation maps started appearing online, an original themed house with a challenging name appeared. The “El Chupacabra” house was listed as a predicted house as early as February 2022. In following speculation maps, fan sites, podcasts, and other HHN rumor sources, this same predicted house has lasted into August 2022 speculation. As of time of writing, HHN 2022 conducts Team Member preview night in basically two weeks. With only four houses announced, this speculation season has lasted longer than expected.

Many people had to brush up on their Spanish with this house. The combination of two Spanish words gives us as idea of the type of monster we might encounter in “El Chupacabra” HHN house. These fictional creatures share some traits with the more USA based legend of Sasquatch. Also, if you are a goat, this might not be the house for you to enjoy. Based on previously announced HHN 2022 houses, I find it interesting that many legends of these monsters come from the 1970s. Two of the intellectual property houses, already announced, involve a setting from the 1970s already.

According to HHN lore, this style themed house, with El Chupacabra, was supposed to be a part of HHN 22. However, if you believe the stories, the construction of the then new Transformers attraction caused this house to be cancelled. If that is true, Universal Orlando’s incredible team possesses at least ten years of pondering this house.

Around July 4^th, Hallowed Out Horror released a speculation map with a full title for an El Chupacabra house. They also released another one on July 15^th with the same title. The title shown with specific font reads “Urban Legends: Mystery of El Chupacabra.” The “Urban Legends” title drew interest from HHN fans since most speculation about the California Halloween Horror Nights involved a house with “Urban Legends” in the title also. Since we know the two “Universal Monsters Collide” houses on both coasts have slightly different storylines, could these two speculated hours be connected also? Would this mean another dual bi-coastal announcement of HHN house except with slightly different themes? Would they be connected somehow like the storyline of the two different houses but similar like the classic monster’s houses? For HHN fans, the interest grew.

Some theories grew about a “Day of the Dead” element also with this house. Will we see these fictional creatures become part of something bigger? How would “Day of the Dead” type idea connect to this?

Of course, the suspicious “leaked” HHN house shirt started traveling around the internet on July 25^th. This “leaked” photo indicated that the house name would be “Fiesta De “Chupacabras.” Based on that, it sounds like the “Urban Legends” speculation did not hold up. With that title, I think it is easy to see how the “Day of the Dead” aspect could connect with El Chupacabra. Could this be like the previous “Yeti” house that sucked fans into legendary creatures? Are we going to celebrate a holiday or is some other celebration happening with these creatures?

Universal Orlando cleared that up recently. We now know the house name officially, Fiesta de Chupacabras. Universal says that the mountains of Latin America are filled with many wonderful traditions. In one tiny village, they pay tribute to the legendary creature Chupacabras with an annual fiesta. In “Fiesta de Chupacabras,” there’s more to the legend than meets the eye. And in this colorful village, the streets are lined with the crimson blood of visitors.

HHN 2022 got a bit creepier. Also, we will wait to see how this house works for HHN 2022.