Too scary for an adult house of horrors

Ultimately, it was my own ambition that stymied plans for the greatest house of horrors ever. Naysayers would offer that it was poor planning and time management skills but … boo to them!

For years I have bemoaned that Halloween, for me, wasn’t what it used to be.
When I was a kid I enjoyed the thrilling adrenaline rush of walking through a darkened, loud-with-screams haunted house.

Not knowing what lurked around a corner, suspecting all along that somebody might jump out with a chainsaw and chase me down a hallway left me feeling oddly alive.
I also liked the suspense of horror and ghost movies, surviving vicariously along with the stars and starlets that were too beautiful and just plucky enough to outsmart a homicidal clown.

But as the years went by, the fantasy gave way to reality. The rational part of my middle-aged brain took over where the impulsive rush-seeking part once flourished. Knowing that horror and scares are based on fiction not fact left me dull inside: the thrill was gone.

What’s a grown man who appreciates the rush of a good scare to do?

Build his own house of terror.

In my napkin sketches the tour begins in a comforting, familiar room. Family, friends or friendly strangers are seated together at a table where they enjoy each others company over a delightful meal. Without warning agents of a sort burst into the room. Are they police? Federal agents? Military? Guests can’t tell who is rushing into their home pointing guns and shouting raid, immigration and illegal.

The chaos of the moment is punctuated by the commands to “GET ON THE FLOOR!” “DON’T MOVE!” and “SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!” and it slowly dawns on participants they will be cuffed, detained and carted away. You think you hear “deportation” but aren’t sure as you are whisked quickly away into a blackened room.

Inside the room your shoes and socks are removed and you’re prompted to walk across the floor, unaware that the ground is littered with Legos and other hard plastic toys.

In another room is a classroom setting and people are seated at a desk listening to the droning of a teacher whose mission it is to suck the joy out of learning. At the moment you’re called on with a question for which you have no answer you hear gunshots and screams and what sounds like a frantic stampede.

The teacher barricades the door and you listen to more gunshots and screams and footsteps that come closer and doorknobs rattling. Eventually you are spirited out of that room and placed in another.

That was as far as I got with my plans. There were plenty of other scenarios I envisioned that would scare the life out of any reasonable adult. But, in the end, I decided those horrors are just too real to laugh at.
Boo.