Halloween Haunts: The Haunted House That Nearly Killed Me by David Lucarelli

I’m a haunted house connoisseur. Over the years since I was a kid, I’ve gleefully gone to all the  various haunted houses that appear every Halloween. There have been a few close calls. I remember once catching a full length mirror that threatened to fall over on the people coming through the maze directly behind me. The incident caused the Ghoul in front of me to break character and mutter under his breath to me, “Thanks.”

But of all the haunted houses I’ve ever been to, only one actually threatened my life.  I was on the 8th grade field trip from Pittsburgh to Canada for German class. Yes, I know nobody in Canada actually speaks German, but it was the closest we could get to another country where a foreign language might actually be spoken. The first day was Niagra Falls, and the second day was Canada’s Wonderland, but in between we stayed at a unique hotel that also boasted having its own theme park attached. Amidst the water slides, bumper cars and Ferris wheel there was a haunted house.

But this was no standard theme park dark ride haunted house with its black light paint and clacking wooden doors. This was something different. The gag was the entire interior was dark. Every wall and surface was painted black and there were no regular lights. This made it pitch black. So dark  you can’t see you own hand in front of your face. You entered, and had to wait for a series of red lights to come on one at a time. You followed the red lights from room to room. The red light was controlled on the fly by an operator observing you. If you acted like, or genuinely weren’t scared, they boasted they could keep you in this haunted house for hours until you cracked.

Meanwhile, there were actors in the haunted house who could and would grab you in the dark. They grabbed you by the ankles, they poked you with their fingers, and they squirted you with water, all the while being completely invisible to you. Because the red lights themselves could be quite faint, there was a lot of our group running into each other, missing doorways and accidentally walking into walls as we tried to follow the direction of the lights.

My friends and I were in the house awkwardly following red lights for some time when a new red light came on. We started walking toward it when I heard the screams of some of my friends, and an instant later I felt the sudden brief but decidedly curious sensation of there being nothing solid under my feet. I had just enough time to think, is this a trap door or a slide or–when my body felt the incredibly painful sensation of falling down a long flight of stairs and landing on my friends. Suddenly the lights went on and a concerned worker guided us to the nearest emergency exit. Apparently they had mis-timed the lights.

As we rounded the corner of the house limping with each step, still in shock at our actual near death experience, the barker outside the entrance caught notice of us and said, “What’s the matter? Was it too scary for you?”

I’m sure the words we responded with put a chill down his spine.

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: David is offering one paperback copy of his graphic novel The Children’s Vampire Hunting Brigade, Volume 1. Enter for the prize by posting in the comments section. Winners will be chosen at random and notified by e-mail. You may enter once for each giveaway, and all entrants may be considered for other giveaways if they don’t win on the day they post. You may also enter by e-mailing membership@horror.org and putting HH CONTEST ENTRY in the header.

David Lucarelli is the author of The Children’s Vampire Hunting Brigade graphic novels. Volume 1 is available on Amazon here. Volume 2: Age of the Wicked is now available from Creator’s Edge Press.