There’s a house on South Street in Spencerville, Ontario, that seats exactly eight strangers a night, serves a multi-course dinner between magic tricks, and ends the evening with a full Victorian-style seance.
It sounds like fiction, but it’s a real, bookable event that has quietly become one of the most searched-for things to do in Eastern Ontario.
If you’ve stumbled across the name “Diablo Manor” on Ticketscene and wondered what exactly you’d be paying for, you’re not alone, and the answer is stranger, more theatrical, and more historically rooted than most people expect.
This guide breaks down the who, what, where, when, and why of Diablo Manor so you can decide whether it belongs on your calendar.
This Is Diablo Manor
Diablo Manor is a private, ticketed dinner-theatre experience hosted inside the actual home of Scott McClelland, a lifelong Canadian sideshow performer and the founder of the touring show Carnival Diablo.
Guests are welcomed into the house for a guided tour of McClelland’s personal collection of oddities, seated for a themed multi-course meal, entertained with an intimate Victorian-style magic and sideshow performance, and sent off with a group seance to close the night.
This isn’t a haunted house, a museum, or a restaurant in the traditional sense. It is simply Diablo Manor.
Who Is Scott McClelland? The Showman Behind All Things Diablo Manor
Understanding Diablo Manor really starts with understanding its host, because the entire experience is built on his personal history rather than a corporate concept or franchise.
Scott McClelland’s connection to Canadian sideshow tradition runs three generations deep.
His grandfather, Nicholas Paul Lewchuk, operated Canada’s largest travelling sideshow from 1920 through 1968, building a show that grew from stage performances like sword swallowing and seances into a full touring attraction with rides and live animals. Nicholas performed many of the mental acts himself while his wife Anastasia worked as the show’s sword swallower, and the family kept the attraction running as a stationary show until 1987.
McClelland didn’t inherit the business so much as apprentice into it from childhood.
He began learning under his grandfather at age 13, and by 1978 he was already producing his own touring act, a vaudeville show called Prof. Crookshank’s Travelling Medicine Show that ran at the Calgary Stampede, Edmonton’s Klondike Days, and Regina’s Buffalo Days through the mid-1980s.
The credential that actually built his public profile, though, is Carnival Diablo.
Scott McClelland launched Carnival Diablo as “the Ultimate Sideshow” on April Fools’ Day in 1992, and it has since performed at major Canadian fairs including the Calgary Stampede, Edmonton’s K-Days, Regina’s Buffalo Days, and the Canadian Tulip Festival.
The troupe follows a traditional Ten-in-One sideshow format, with acts like fire-eating, sword swallowing, and a human blockhead routine, in shows that run about two and a half hours. Carnival Diablo has appeared on National Geographic Channel’s Taboo, among other features over the years.
In 2010, the show’s exhibit at the Ottawa SuperEx placed third overall for Best Attraction, and McClelland gave nightly lectures there on sideshow history. McClelland has had 44 years of experience producing shows since 1979. Whatever angle you look at it from, the person running the show at 10 South Street isn’t a hobbyist; he’s a fourth-plus-decade professional showman whose family literally built part of Canada’s sideshow history.
What Actually Happens During an Evening at the Mysterious Diablo Manor?
The structure of a Diablo Manor evening is consistent across every event listing, whether it’s a regular “Evening of Enchantment” date or a themed seasonal edition.
The night opens with a guided tour of the house itself, led personally by McClelland, past a collection of oddities the site describes as including mermaids, jackalopes, mummies, shrunken heads, and an Elephant Man display among other curiosities.
From there, guests move into a dining portion described on the official site as devilish hors d’oeuvres, a delightfully sinister dinner, and a diabolical dessert, phrasing that signals the meal is themed rather than a straightforward catered dinner.
Earlier iterations of the event credited specific cooks by name, with menus prepared by chefs like Gina Vacchio and, in later seasons, Steph Legari, so the culinary side has evolved even as the format has stayed intact.
Once dinner winds down, the evening shifts into what the venue calls an intimate Victorian production of mystifying wonders, essentially a close-up magic and sideshow-style performance delivered by McClelland in character.
As mentioned, the night concludes with a group séance.
Two practical details worth flagging up front. There is a strobing-lights warning attached to any event at Diablo Manor, and guests are asked to bring slippers or indoor shoes, since outdoor footwear isn’t permitted inside the house.
*Both are the kind of small logistical notes that rarely make it into marketing copy but matter enormously for anyone actually planning to attend.
Where Is Diablo Manor Located, and How Do You Get There?
Diablo Manor sits at 10 South Street in Spencerville, Ontario, a small community within the municipality of Edwardsburgh Cardinal in Leeds and Grenville County. It’s a genuinely rural setting, roughly midway between Ottawa and Kingston along the St. Lawrence corridor, and the venue leans into that remoteness as part of its pitch.
Diablo Manor’s official site describes the location as just 45 minutes from Ottawa, promising an eccentric, lugubrious host who will make visitors question everything they thought they understood about reality. For Ottawa-area residents, that puts Diablo Manor within an easy evening drive.
Spencerville itself has become something of a secondary draw because of the Manor’s popularity. Diablo Manor is one of its handful of highlighted stops, alongside Little Foot Alpacas, the Spencerville Mill & Museum, Happy Little Farmstead, and Spencer Street Muse, meaning a visit to the Manor can reasonably be paired with an afternoon exploring the surrounding village before the evening event begins.
Given that most Diablo Manor dates start at 7:00 PM, arriving with an hour or two to spare for a walk around Spencerville, or a stop at the alpaca farm, is a genuinely practical way to build out the trip rather than driving out for a single two-and-a-half-hour show and immediately heading home.
Because the venue is a private residence rather than a commercial event hall, there’s no large parking lot or public signage to rely on.
Ticket confirmations include a mapped address and driving directions, and it’s worth treating the drive itself as part of the plan, especially for winter dates when rural Ontario roads can be affected by weather.
When Can You Visit? Show Schedule and Seasonal Events
Diablo Manor doesn’t run as a nightly, year-round production.
It operates on a recurring calendar of scheduled dates booked through Ticketscene, Diablo Manor’s exclusive ticketing partner.
The core, standing offering is called “An Evening of Enchantment,” and it appears repeatedly throughout the year, sometimes several times a month, always at the same 7:00 PM start time.
Layered on top of that baseline schedule are seasonal, themed variations that shift the tone of the night without changing its underlying structure. Past and recurring examples include a Hell-O-Ween Extravaganza in October, a Valentine’s Extravaganza in February, an X-Mass Extravaganza in December, and, more recently, a “Septemberween” celebration in September designed to kick off spooky season a full month early.
As the venue has such limited capacity, dates fill quickly and the venue itself is upfront that events can sell out before the listed cutoff time.
Practically speaking, that means checking Ticketscene’s Diablo Manor page here is more reliable than assuming a specific date will still be open a week or two out, particularly around Halloween and the winter holiday season, when themed editions historically draw the heaviest demand.
How Much Do Diablo Manor Tickets Cost, and How Do You Book Them?
General Admission tickets to Diablo Manor are priced at $100.00 CAD per person plus fees, sold exclusively through Ticketscene.
That single price point covers the entire evening described above: the house tour, hors d’oeuvres, dinner, dessert, the magic performance, and the closing seance, so there’s no separate cover charge or add-on menu to budget for once you’ve bought a seat.
Listings are typically marked as an 18+ event, though at least one recent listing specified a General Admission ticket type open to ages 12 and up, so it’s worth double-checking the age restriction on the specific date you’re booking rather than assuming it’s identical across every listing.
The single most important booking detail, and the one that explains why tickets move quickly, is – once again – capacity. The evening is capped at a maximum of eight guests.
Booking itself runs through Ticketscene’s standard checkout flow: guests select a date, choose a quantity within the eight-seat cap, enter attendee names for eTicket delivery, and pay by card. Because tickets are digital and tied to a specific date and time, and because the venue explicitly warns that events can sell out ahead of the posted cutoff, booking as soon as a desired date opens is the most reliable way to avoid disappointment, particularly for Friday and Saturday dates or any of the themed seasonal editions.
Do You Dare Step Foot into Diablo Manor? What Awaits is an Evening of Wonder!
At its core, Diablo Manor offers something increasingly difficult to find in today’s events landscape: an authentic, small-scale experience built entirely around one performer’s genuine history rather than anything manufactured.
For those drawn to immersive dining, sideshow history, or an evening unlike anything else on Ontario’s events calendar, Diablo Manor is unlike an experience you will ever have and is well worth the drive to Spencerville, provided tickets are secured early enough to claim one of those eight coveted seats.
And when the seance begins and the candles start to flicker, you may find that Diablo Manor doesn’t let go of you quite so easily once the night is over.
Looking for tickets to the next Diablo Manor show? Buy your tickets here and book your date at Ticketscene today, reserving your seat on an evening of your choosing.
