Oct 17, 2008

The Haunted and the Haunter


Last night we went to "Nightmare on 13th" Salt Lake's big haunted house attraction. It was my first real "haunted house." I've been to quite a few at fairs and schools, one in the house of wax in Las Vegas. I've been part of many as well in Elementary School and College. But this was the first haunted house I've gone to where that was the main/sole event.

Despite the size, I wasn't too impressed. It just wasn't very scary. I was expecting more from "Voted America's #1 Haunted House" than that. It had vampires, angry natives, mummies, pirates, skeletons, spiders, evil clowns, ghosts, psychos attacking us with various plastic cutting implements, the evil doctor, movie freaks like Freddy Krueger, the girl from the Ring, Jason and others. But it wasn't truly "horrifying" or even "scary." I spent most of the time hoping to be scared, and thinking up ways to make an element in the house more frightening.

Which is funny, because, as many of you may know, I hate being scared. I don't see the attraction of it. Make me laugh, I'll love you forever. Scare me, and I'll be afraid of you forever. Not the same. Still, I wanted to be scared, and wish I was moreso.

Some things that kept me from being horrified were: several times, there were crew members walking through the haunted house, the scariest thing on them was their walkie-talkie headsets. Kinda ruined the fearsome ambiance. Also, the creepy ghouls and goblins and clowns at whatnot didn't ever say anything scary, besides "hello" as creepy as possible. I'd like to be threatened to be gutted like a pig or something.

Oh well. Before I went in (nervously) I told myself not to get scared, don't get scared. It worked a bit too well, I guess.

5 comments:

JanB said...

Well, at least you didn't have nightmares from the experience.

Heidi @ Honeybear Lane said...

I think haunted houses are just a ploy to get girls to cling to boys they wouldn't otherwise cling to. I know it duped me.

And more than anything, I think haunted houses are annoying...sometimes the characters think that the best way to scare you is to just follow you around and invade your personal space and not respond to pretty much anything you do to get them to back off.

But yet, I still like goin'.

Laurie said...

That is unfortunate. I remember feeling the same way the last time I went to a Haunted House in Salt Lake. It wasn't scary cause it was too crowded and every time something scary happend, we anticipated it cause we had already seen it happend to the group in front of us. But the girl from the Ring huh? They didn't have her when I went. Pretty sure that woulda scared me. Did she come out of the TV?

Unknown said...

The trick about being scared in a haunted house is to let your imagination run wild. I, for one, always start to think that a haunted house would be the perfect place for a psycho murderer to hide, appearing as an innocent masked chainsaw wielder, lulling his victims into the false sense of security of thinking that "It's just a haunted house" "They can't even really touch me" Then... he strikes. This sort of thought always gets me super freaked out... and I don't like being scared... so I try to avoid haunted houses all together.

Charlo said...

I really liked the haunted house at Magic Mountain when I was in jr. High, but I haven't gone to any since.

I tho ught about it a few times in Ut, but couldn't stand the thought of wasting money on something that failed to scare me.

Thanks for doign that for me.