After being let loose to haunt horror fans in the Los Angeles area, the macabre, frightening creatures that make up this sinister Halloween experience are coming back to where it all started.
And they want to pull you into the depths of a turn-of-the-century manor.
“When you step into this house, you’re already stepping back in time 100+ years. So, what this house adds is the element of authenticity to the story we’re trying to tell,” said Jon Braver, writer, director and creator of the Delusion immersive theatrical horror experience, which returns Sept. 17-Nov. 8 to the historic 1905 Beckett Mansion in the West Adams District where it first launched in 2011.
“Delusion is like nothing else in the world. It is interactive theater so you’re not sitting down watching a play, you’re inside of the story, you’re playing a part in it,” Braver added as he sat in the two-story mansion while he and his crew transformed the ornate structure and its labyrinth of hallways and rooms into a 1920s New Orleans bordello for his latest dark tale, “Delusion: Den of the Mosquito.”
The upcoming horror theater experience will immerse guests into a world haunted by a supernatural tale of crime, a sinister family, mobsters and monsters, and even a few vampire courtesans who lurk at the center of its mystery in the grand Colonial Revival mansion.
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Jon Braver’s immersive horror theater experience, “Delusion: Den of the Mosquito,” returns to Los Angeles at the Beckett Mansion from Sept. 17 through Nov. 8, 2026.(Photo by Andy Holzman, Contributing Photographer)
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Jon Braver’s immersive horror theater experience, “Delusion: Den of the Mosquito,” returns to Los Angeles at the Beckett Mansion from Sept. 17 through Nov. 8, 2026.(Photo by Andy Holzman, Contributing Photographer)
Home is where the haunt is
The towering white structure, with its recessed entryway and blue front door didn’t just feel like a homecoming for Braver, it also served as another character and inspiration for his new show.
“When you first see the house with the big white columns, it looms over you. This house is ready to swallow you. So, I felt that — I felt small as I walked through the columns and the door opens up and it’s dark inside,” he said. “It was like this place was always here and it was always reaching out to me and it always wanted me here. Once I stepped in, we were one — we were connected.”
Braver, a film and theater writer/director, stunt coordinator and creative consultant for Netflix and Disney, got his start in the scare business long before he arrived in Hollywood. The horror fan put on his first interactive play at his home in Chicago when he was a kid and convinced his parents to let him have the run of the house.
“The neighbors just came, and they brought all their friends, and it was like a seven-minute moving play, and it felt euphoric. It was the greatest thing to see people go on an adventure that you created,” Braver recalled.
As he worked in Hollywood, he wanted to return to those roots, and in 2011 he put on the original Delusion at the mansion after a location manager found the house for the event.
“I took a tour of the house, and Delusion is site-specific, so when you find a venue like this that has such an energy and story behind it, already it’s so intoxicating,” he said.
With an ever-changing storyline, Delusion returned to the Beckett Mansion in 2012, where Braver continued to establish the series’ blend of cinematic storytelling, live performance, practical effects, and audience participation. Delusion ended up moving around to different locations through the years, like a Silverlake church, a Pomona mansion and, most recently, at the five-story Italian Renaissance-inspired Variety Arts Center, which was built in 1924.
While all those venues provided fitting environments for Braver’s immersive horror world, coming back to the Beckett Mansion was instrumental in this year’s storyline for the entire crew.
“It was basically a big canvas,” said Ji Young Lee, the Delusion production designer whose job entails creating the mood and atmosphere for a story that focuses on Anomaly, a clandestine organization that’s investigating supernatural threats.
“The house already has so many great architectural details from the old era and a lot of history comes with it, so it was very easy to get inspired by it,” she said.
Living the story
During the experience, which is produced by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, horror fans will become agents of Anomaly as they walk through the mansion: It’s got creaky, wooden floors and aged walls, tiled fireplaces and hallways, crystal chandeliers and antique furniture and a flight of stairs into a pitch-black, eerie basement.
“You are moving through the story. It’s unfolding through actions that you have to perform. It’s like living inside a psychological thriller,” Braver said.
Each performance is an approximately 50-minute narrative play, limited to a group of 10 people — who often have to take different paths as they interact with the characters — all under the roof of Delusion’s first home.
“I walked through this place, and a story started to develop in my head, the idea of a New Orleans vibe, and I started to hear mosquitoes buzzing and frogs and strange creatures in the bayou. So that was all harkening back to the first time I walked into the mansion and felt that connection,” Braver said.
Delusion: Den of the Mosquito
When: Sept. 17-Nov. 8
Where: Beckett Mansion, 2218 S. Harvard Blvd., Los Angeles
Tickets: Tickets start at $143 on select nights. The show is for adults over the age of 18 only.
Information: Enterdelusion.com