Halloween Countdown of Doom, Day 17

Totally cheating! But it was Wed nite that one of my friends finally turned 21, and we all decided to get smashed (I mean her smashed), this me missing yesterday's entry. So. Let's make up for a bit o' lost time by talking about haunted houses. Not the Winchester House type haunted houses, the Gyro kind. Yes, those wonderful walk-thru dealies in which you pay money to see how many times you piss yourself when someone jumps out at you from around the corner dressed like Pinhead.

Now, while I am a great fan of ghosts, ghoulies, and urban legends, one horror genre, rather aspect, is gore, torture, and the lovely images that go along with said aspect. Zombies scare the bejeezus out of me. Movies like Saw and Audition are the biggest turn off for me next to guys who wear too much fragrance. I just don't do the blood n' guts thing. Maybe its the part where I'm a girl, but I know some great horror fans who cream themselves when they hear Rob Zombie or Eli Roth. So I dunno. I just don't do it. Sexualized or eroticized torture or gore is just going to far for me. Gore in general kinda creeps me out. I cannot explain why a zombie, which i can easily outrun, scares me more than an unstoppable Asian spirit (tops in killing, maiming, and frightning to death).

Soooo, moseying back to the original subject: haunted houses. Usually these are fun lil romps through either movie homages (like TCM) or just blatant rip-offs of carnival scares and Ripley's Believe It or Not's Horror Setcion du jour. More than making lovely dioramas of iron maidens in use or people getting shocked to death, what gets me jumpy are those inevitable gusy in costume who relish in making you crap yourself numourously until you smell like the men's room. Numourously will become a word tonight, Urban Dictionary, if I decide. I hate those guys. Its like those stupid flashes that lure you into a false sense of security and then scare the hell out of you with zombie faces and screaming. Fuck that. if I wanted to feel like my heart's bungee jumping in my throat, I'll just go tell my parents I'm dropping out of school to pursue a career of giving gay people tips on how to be more chic geek or something. Or go back to work at Target full time.

Here's one such memory of a walk-thru haunted house. See, it was a few years back at Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo. My cousin and his (now ex-)wife know my love for Halloween (and conveniently forgetting my lack of cahones) take me down for Fright Fest, which was showcasing Planet Terror (I think, I may be glossing here), a close to 2 hour walk through, what else, a haunted house filled with every imaginable horror one has seen in movies since the dawn of mankind. And me, putting up my front, thought it was a great idea. So we do the biggest one first, the 2 hour one. Meh, 2 hours, how bad could it be?

A co-worker who once used to do haunted houses professionally (volunteer work in making and running them) said that the best marks were the ones who were hiding behind people, and those were the ones who were the best to scare. Pity I learned this a good 3-4 years AFTER this incident but I digress.

I'm there, trying not to look easy, making my way through Jason's campsite o' doom, Elm Street, and a trippy illusion tunnel that looked like it was rolling onto its side. I've seen some things that would come to haunt my dreams for year to come. Eventually, the line starts to back up, so we start getting crampsed together. I take this opportunity to hide my face in my cousin's shirt, when a guy (I must have blanked out these memories, cuz I cannot for the life of me remember what he was supposed to be dressed up as) jumps me. Big BOO right off my peripheral vision.

I sock the man in the chest. I immediately gush my aplogies, hoping he would get me tossed out cuz it was paid for by someone else. He laughs and says it's happened before (NO SHIT REALLY). Just as I turn to catch up with the line, another asshole jumps me the same fucking way. I FUCKING FALL FOR IT EVERY TIME. I of course scream (not didn't take a swing, thankfully, cuz once is an accident, twice is assult; remember that when courting a girl at a club, men), ruining my intent to make it through this with grace and dignity.

We did the other 2 haunted houses right after this. By the end, I was so desenthitized from the Pinheads, the Freddies, the Jasons, and the Leatherfaces, that by the time we got to the Circus Tent from Hell and Proper Hell, I was just gazing at the sights like a zombie (ironically), watching my cousin beep the clown's noses.

Another time, I went with my sister, whom was crying after we were chased out of the last room by a Leatherface with a real chainsaw (sans chains). FUCK THIS SHIT.

Dell' Osso Farms runs a haunted house along with their great corn mazes. They had one year a "haunted hayride" which was exactly like a haunted house, except 1) you ride in a bleacher like contraption pulled by a tractor, a moving theater if you will, and B) it had dioramas instead of rooms. In the afternoon to evening sun, it was actually pretty cool. My youngest sister rode the entire thing with her head in her lap. A large black lady (nice as all get out) would scream everytime something would happen at a scene (a redneck witha chainsaw running or a zombie that would half-heartedly chase the hayride going approximately 2 miles an hour, then apologize profusely directly afterward. I think my little sisters learned their first curse words from her. Wherever you are, Miss Black Lady, I thank you in introducing the words "HOLY SHIT" and "OMFG" to my sister long before the internet did. I salute you.

In short, I'll gladly waltz into a purportedly haunted hospital that was abandoned years ago, but would rather set my head on fire with a blow torch then put it out with a sledgehammer than go to a Gyro's run tent. Fuck that. You can't hit the patrons any more than you can kill them with a shotgun. And if you're going to a horror movie location and can't kill anything, well, then what's the point?

*Shoot first, shoot some more, shoot til everyone's dead and you run out of ammo, then try to ask the questions, Lunies*