If there's anyone that's been reading, I apologize for neglecting Halloween for the last few days. Life got in the way. My sister is very sick right now and in the same breath has decided at this time in her life to ostracize me because I'm not a Christian. This has happened before, but this time I will not stand for it. I am proud of my beliefs, I am what you might call a Buddiccan or, Buddhist with a little Wiccan. We were raised in a haunted house of Catholicism where ghosts and demons of our mother would constantly tell us how we were going to hell. I will not take this from my sister, at the same time, I still love her and accept her even though she doesn't accept me. This is not the time to fight, so it's been taking a lot of my energy to process and smooth this over.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. Haunted housing has been a tradition of mine since I was 18 or so, and had moved out of all the haunted houses of childhood. During the month of October, my friends and I tried to go to as many haunted houses as we could. Maybe so we could laugh at the fears and demons that plagued us in the real haunted houses of our pasts. That's what you do when you have a fear, you face it head on so that you aren't afraid anymore. Of course, we were smart back then, but not that smart; this was a purely subconscious attempt at catharsis.
The best haunted houses were those that were full of mystery and darkness. Buildings with mazes, twists and turns, that led you to a wrong door or a dead end. The fear of not knowing where you were going and then the shock of some spooky thing popping out or lurking around you was the best kind of scare. One particular haunted house like this, still exists in Chicago. The place included a fun-house effect in one of the areas, where you end up walking through one of those revolving tunnels over a bridge in complete darkness with fluorescent paint in spirals around the tunnel like in Vertigo or the part of Willie Wonka when they were on the boat. There was a room that was painted white with black spots where spooky clowns camouflaged in the same design would slowly emerge from the walls. The scariest moment only happened once, a guy in zombie getup jumped down from the ceiling while we were walking down a dark corridor. I still don't quite know how he was up there, he was attached to the wall like Spiderman.
Making haunted houses is also awesome. When I used to nanny for two little boys in Chicago, we decorated their guest room with all sorts of scary. Plastic spiders, webs, kleenex ghosts, skeletons, etc. Then we invited their little friends over (the oldest was 5) and scared them. Well, Andrew thought he scared them but, his timing of "BOO!" was after he already stood up from behind the bed and smiled. Haha, so cute.
LA has shitty haunted houses. Erin and I found a halfway decent one in Old Pasadena, but not one I'd have to go to next year. It was pretty contrived, but better than most. I'm not one for bloody gore either, which is what a lot of the haunted houses here prescribe to. A haunted house with chainsaws, Freddy, Jason, and mad scientists do not scare me...they just disturb me. I want to be surprised and startled, or I want to laugh at how fake the scenes or costumes look. Anyway, that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
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