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"Everyone's a critic," people often say. Maybe that's because there's a critic for just about everything.

There are movie critics, music critics, book critics, television critics, food critics, theater critics, computer critics and Web site critics, among many others.

You can add haunted house critics to that list. These include City Blood Ohio Haunt reviews and Ohio Valley Haunts, both Web-based operations out of Cincinnati.

Jim Massie, the webmaster of Ohio Valley Haunts, managed to turn a childhood fascination into a sort of line of work.

"I've always been a haunted house enthusiast since I was a kid. I've been to numerous, numerous attractions," he said.

Ohio Valley Haunts debuted in 2002. Today, it posts reviews of more than 50 attractions, ranging from local haunted hayrides to the Haunted Prison in Mansfield, a historic site where the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" was filmed.

The reviews rate the attractions based on several criteria, from a scale of 1 to 10. The criteria include length, actors, design, props, value, and of course, scariness, which carries the most weight. The Chambers of Horror in Middletown has an overall score of 8.

The site says of the Chambers: "From the wait outside the double doors, to the timing of the scares, they encourage your own emotions to play a role in allowing your fears to surface, then they exploit them."

Although Massie has been to dozens of haunts multiple times, he still gets scared by the better attractions.

"I want to see the spookiness of tombstones and vampires, like the unnerving effect than the in-your face scare. ... That's a talent that's not easily created," he said.

Also in this fray of fright is the Web site City Blood — Ohio Haunt reviews, which began in 2003 and is run by Noah Wullkotte of Cincinnati.

He and his crew also review some 50 haunts a year, using a 1-10 scale similar to Ohio Valley Haunt's.

At City Blood, the chambers rate an 8.2, Of the haunted house, City Blood says: "The Chambers of Horror hasn't resorted to using high-end animatronics or Hollywood lighting, but it doesn't need to. The people that put this haunt together love to scare and that is exactly what they do."

As for what scares Wullkotte, he said: "I'm scared of things that are out of the ordinary that you don't usually see in a haunt. Someone getting their head ripped clean off their shoulders is really shocking and I've seen that simulated in a haunt before. ... some people really have a twisted mind, including me."

As for what doesn't scare him, Wullkotte says, "Without a dedicated cast a haunt will fail to draw you into the experience and ultimately you won't be shaking in your boots or have chills up your spine at the end of the night."

To hear Wullkotte tell it, being a haunted house reviewer isn't all fun and games. But he's not about to quit.

"I'm responsible for 98 percent of everything that goes into the site, and you wouldn't believe how time consuming it is, but it's well worth the time and effort put into it.," he said. "You really have to love the industry to be able to focus so much time into something you're not getting paid for."

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2836 or erobinette@coxohio.com.