Key word: imagination.
Their challenge is to take whatever imaginative design and ensure it's scary, fun, safe, has proper capacity, isn't too expensive to build and operate, and can be widely enjoyed without guests needing a class in the subject matter to understand it.
I feel there's tons of European superstitions and stories they could play off of to break out of their creative rut, but they're limited by one or more of the aforementioned constraints.
Chances are that it's far cheaper and easier to do what they've done, and as long as they're seeing the profits they're after, there's no reason to change it.
I'll concede that a few generic houses over the years, like clowns and pirates, could possibly have attempted to make better connections to their respective hamlets but didn't need to do so to be fun.
However, since we don't have to adhere to their constraints, I think it'd be more interesting to try to take an idea such as yours and try to connect it to the hamlet it's to be set in in some way. Otherwise, there's a good chance we'd see a fairly similar concept used at any other haunted attraction... I mean, how many other attractions play off the theme of the devil collecting his due using a generic location?
(Think a literal walk-through of the Devil Went Down to Georgia vs. Man in Black [assumed Devil, could be a demon or the ghost of Johnny Cash instead] going to Kansas - outside of a few people from those states who may be able to tell from set dressing, who in Virginia is going to be able to discern the difference without being told?)
www.demonhouse.com
