Feeding my Haunted House Habit

created by Jet-Poop

(idea) by Jet-Poop (2.5 hr) (print) ? (I like it!) 1 C! Thu Aug 10 2000 at 4:40:50

For several years, I used to participate in charity haunted houses every Halloween, 'cause I felt like it was the best way to celebrate the only really important holiday of the year. Playing around in a real haunted house might have been better, but I've never found one in over a decade of searching, so the spook houses are still my best bet.

The first year, I was a senior in college at Eastern New Mexico University. One of my friends and I got dressed up, dosed up on some 'shrooms, and went to his frat's haunted house (not a bad set-up--good makeup, sub-standard effects). When we were done with the tour, they let us help out. They stuck me in a closet, where my only jobs were (1) to pull on a string to make a bat flap up and down and (2) to jump out of the closet and scream when the marks were nearby. Not bad, but not that great either.

The next year, I was living in Levelland, Texas, and I really wanted to be in a decent haunted house, so I kept an eye on the local newspaper, and when I heard that the local EMS was putting a spook house on, I called 'em up and volunteered. This was a truly fantastic house. They staged the whole thing in a tiny, condemned building, and they really worked their asses off to make it cool. They used one of their safety harnesses to rig up a neat "hanged man" effect, and turned a bunch of styrofoam wig heads into stunningly gory props. We had some dry ice, but it wasn't doing a good job of making fog, so we used it to keep the beer cold (Note: Do not use dry ice to keep beer cold--it will freeze it solid).

For a while, they had me dressed up as the mad doctor, operating on a screaming patient. We had ordered a couple of buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I ended up using the chicken as props--I hid a thigh or a wing out of sight, then "ripped" it from my patient's stomach, took a big bite, and threw it at the marks ("Eww, gross!" one burly football player hollered--music to my ears!).

Later, I was enshrined as the guide, wearing a torn black jacket, matted black wig, and a hockey mask, and carrying a scythe in one hand and a severed human head in the other. I adopted a Freddy Krueger voice and attitude, and took turns scaring the hell out of the marks and making them laugh their heads off. And for the record, I was a damn good haunted house guide.

But the best moment came at the end of the tour. Everyone crowded into a tiny room containing only a couple of witches and a bunch of decapitated human heads. Nothing much happened, and the marks were thinking (sometimes out loud), "Well, this sure is a boring ending." And then... "BRRRAAARRRRRRRRR!" A guy stood up in the back of the room with a roaring chainsaw (chain removed, of course), and the marks nearly tore out the back door trying to get away. Oh, that was a good one...

The next year, I was living in Denton, Texas, and I wanted to be in another good spook house, so I called the local theater society when I learned they were putting one on. This one was held in the gymnasium of a health club and had a much larger budget than the others. It was pretty good--oh, really, it was very good, but it didn't have as many E Ticket moments as the one in Levelland. I was pegged as the guide for the entire run of the house, and talking in that Freddy Krueger voice for so many hours in a row ended up doing permanent damage to my vocal cords.

After that, I had to skip a year. My boss wouldn't let me off work on Halloween night.

The year after that, I was a grad student, living in Bruce Hall at the University of North Texas. Bruce had an annual haunted house down in the basement, and I was looking forward to participating, but by this time, I was worried about future damage to my voice, so I asked if they could make sure to put me someplace where I wouldn't have to speak at all. They said "You bet!" and immediately set me up shouting into an electronic squawk box. Grrrreat. That was a weird one: we had some kind of evil exterminator, a bunch of evil clowns, and another chainsaw killer--this one wearing a big fur coat.

So that's what I got. I'm available for almost any haunted houses (just not those freaky Hellhouses--that's just sick, man). Please don't make me yell too much--I can only take another few years of this torture before my voice box gives out completely...

printable version
chaos

hell house	Haunted house	Haunted Mansion	murder house
Eastern New Mexico University	Halloween	scary story	Forest of Fear
Kilroy was here	Bruce Hall	Kentucky Fried Chicken	mark
Denton, Texas	How did I get here, Sarah?	Brushy Fork	Mark of the Vampire
Midnight Syndicate	damage	cleft palate	Silent Hill
furry	Haunted	stunningly beautiful	sick

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