It begins by having to drive myself there without a GPS. I’m already screaming and crying and I haven’t even arrived, yet!
I finally pull up, tired and afraid because I don’t know how to get back home. I then have to pay to gain admission to be frightened.
The house is pretty generic save for the yard littered with political signs. On my way in a man introduces himself as my neighbor and tells me a story about how he accidentally ran over his own dog. Shudder.
In the entryway, it is quite warm in the house and I have my coat on. I’d like to take it off but I’m not sure where to leave it. There’s no hooks or coat hangers anywhere. So, I keep it on.
The arrows on the floor lead me to the kitchen. There’s a nice old lady there who’s told me she’s making me a delicious meal, but it’s pork chops, so I have to explain to her that I don’t eat pork. The horror.
A sign near the kitchen door says I should use the bathroom now since I won’t get the chance to later. I find my way to the bathroom. There’s a horrible stench so that I can worry that the next person that uses the bathroom thinks I made it. There’s no toilet paper and then the toilet overflows when I flush it. It’s like they know my every fear and thought.
I’m guided to a bedroom. I have to take a nap while a baby naps. I’m given a monitor and told that I have to get up and help the baby if it cries. Considering I can barely sleep soundly anyway, I reach a half-sleep state and then am inundated with phantom baby cries. Every time I check the video monitor the baby is sleeping soundly. The stuff of nightmares.
I’m instructed to go to the den. There, I find nice comfortable sofas, and on them is the previous nice old lady and a teenage boy. We all have to watch HBO dramas and Basic Instinct together. NOOOOOOOOO!
After hours of this torture. I’m told I can leave, but only if I make up a fun rap about myself and get up in front of all the haunted house employees and enthusiastically recite it. After I do that, and give everyone a nice long hug, I can make my way to my car, which has a flat tire.
I somehow get my tire changed and get in my car. I sense a presence with me and turn around ARGGGGHHHHHHHAAAAAHHH! In the backseat is a blender that I have to pack and ship to someone as a favor.
I leave permanently scarred but very impressed with the specificity and thought that was put into it.
What would be in your ultimate haunted house experience?
Generally speaking any haunted house is my own personal hell as I’m a giant scaredy-pants. The worst I’ve ever been scared was in a room that was black lit and dark except for the colorful black-lit dots all over the room. It was almost happy, and relieving in the middle of the regular spooky rooms in a haunted house, until I realized that there were people dressed all in black between those colorful dots, who were getting closer to me, but I couldn’t tell how close or from which direction because THE DOTS.
So dots. dots are my personal haunted house.
Dear God, no. See, I don’t actually go into real haunted houses. Except the Haunted Mansion at Disney, but those are happy ghosts.
I do like the idea of all the people in black scurrying back into place for the next group of people to into the room.
OMG. OMFG. I had childhood fever dreams of dots racing toward me, and as a result I can’t look at Benday dots (or any type of comic book style pop art work) without having a straight up panic attack. Your description of that haunted house made me literally throw up in my mouth a little. Not even kidding funny ha ha joke about making me sick. I’m feeling nauseated. But on the flip side, it’s nice to know someone else besides me has a weird fear of dots. So there is that.
Ohmygawd, the baby montitor thing. I remember that. And imagine it is coming my way again soon.
Also, I went on a first date with a sweet boy when I was 17 . . . to Basic Instinct. It was muy uncomfortable.
Wow. A first date to Basic Instinct.
Right now you’re having phantom baby contractions, right?
I’m always waking up to phantom baby noises. The dog also sleeps at my feet, and whenever I bump him in the middle of the night, I’m convinced the baby has crawled to the bottom of the bed and is about to fall off—which is really weird because other than the first week we brought her home, the only time she has slept with us is when she had an ear infection.
Ha! The worst is that the phantom baby noises are at their “loudest” when I’m about to drift off to sleep so it sets me all the way back to square one.
Ultimate haunted house? I think it would be one that had several young men living in it, all of whom would immediately ask “what’s for dinner?” as soon as I walked in the door.
Phantom baby noises wouldn’t bother me. I like babies, even ghostie ones.
Yeah, “what’s for dinner” is down the road a little, but that will be on my list too when it starts.