Halloween Horror Nights creative director John Murdy has written a fictional history for Dead, Deader, Deadest, one of Universal Studios Hollywood’s 2026 haunted houses. Universal published Murdy’s story on September 24, turning the house’s Deville Family Funeral Home setting into a century-long tale of scandal and decay.
In Murdy’s invented backstory, hotel businessman Maximillian Deville founds the funeral home in the early 1920s. The operation grows to include a morgue, embalming rooms, a crematorium, a mausoleum and a cemetery. Rumors then follow the family business for decades, until it closes in the late 1970s after director Ambrose Deville disappears.
The fictional story adds one final Deville mystery. Ambrose had tried to patent a drug called Ambrotox, which he claimed could make the dead look alive without embalming. Later rumors place him inside the abandoned funeral home, where lights and strange sounds keep the legend going.
Murdy’s complete Dead, Deader, Deadest story is available through Discover Universal.