When I think of haunted houses, I immediately flash back to my very first haunted house experience. It's an awkward tale, really. The 'haunted house' was put on by our church and erected on the stage/gym of the school associated with it. In my naivety, I decided I needed to explore this whole haunted house phenomena and skipped right up into the line of doom. As I remember it, I was only there for a few sorry minutes when a vampire came out of holy friggin' nowhere and, suddenly recognizing the score, I decided I was having exactly none of it. In a split second, I turned from a sweet, costumed princess to pure wild-eyed adrenaline, and proceeded to bust straight through the cardboard walls of the haunted house just like in the cartoons and then blindly dove headfirst through the heavy curtain separating the haunted house from the gym....subsequently pummeling a man who with microphone in hand, was talking to the attentive crowd about God and what-not. (Couldn't make this up if I tried.)
Looking back, I'm not sure who was more traumatized after that experience: me, the stunned presenter, who I'm relatively sure didn't expect to be attacked at a church function by a princess-turned-wildcat in front of part of his congregation, or my poor mother who had to claim me after the whole scene.
So, flash-forward thirty years and you understand how nothing but pure, blind love and devotion could've gotten me into a haunted house of this magnitude as I found myself reluctantly agreeing to Sydney's grand plan. We stood in line for an hour and a half, and when we finally got to the doors, there was not one haunted house to live through. There were three. Three separate attractions and three separate opportunities to pee myself. I admit that I stood there sulking like a moody teenager in a cloud of four letter words for the rest of the wait.
Frighttown boasts that they've created a nightmare scene for every psyche and they aren't messin' around. I imagine we would've found the finer details impressive if we weren't too busy screaming our faces off, running through nightmare after nightmare and trying not to be left behind. (I lost count of the times Sydney whispered, Mom...let go of the stranger...., as I clutched the back of the shirt of the person in front of me.) I'll hand it to the makers of Frighttown, by the end of the first haunted house, my legs were jello, my nerves were shot, and I was pretty sure I was deaf in my left ear from Sydney's blood-curdling screams. I would've paid Sydney in that moment to let us call it a day, but she wasn't having it.I have no idea how she got me into that second line. I haven't smoked a cigarette in over 15 years, but by the end of the night, I swear to God, if someone had handed me one, it's entirely possible that I would've laid right there in the middle of the floor and silently smoked away. How it didn't end up looking like this, I will never know....
....but we made it. And, yes. I'm betting we'll go again next year.
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