Saturday I went to Six Flags with some church friends. During October the amusement park is all Halloween themed. There were Halloween decorations all over the park around the rides. It was fun to ride the roller coasters and much nicer to be there when it was not 90 degrees out. When it got dark the monsters started coming out and we went through 5 of the haunted houses that were set up around the park. Given my previous haunted house experience I was a little nervous.
The last time I was in a haunted house was my freshman year of college. I had just passed my brown belt test, which involved a lot of people attacking you from the sides and behind and you having to beat them up. As you may imagine, the trip to the haunted house only a few months later where people are constantly jumping out at you did not go very well. For them. I was fine. Just saying. I am happy to report that on this most recent haunted house adventure no 6 flags employees were harmed in the course of the evening.
Two of the haunted houses were well done, three were just odd. The first one we did was a zombie themed one. The zombies looked quite hungry and did a good job of jumping out of piles of tires and stuff. But given that the situation summary said that the zombie outbreak started here in June 2016, it seems like it is really pretty well contained. I think it might not actually be very contagious possibly a prion based pathogen or maybe just a weird environmental factor. Probably the best part was that the whole thing was narrated by GladOS from Portal. "Where are you going? The zombies will eat you" "That is not the way out.""For your health and safety do not touch, talk to, breath on, or look at another human thing." The next one we went to was supposed to be Day of the Dead ghosts. It was all neon and black lights, two things I don't normally associate with ghosts. We had special "ghost viewing glasses" (3D glasses) to wear in the haunted house. Interestingly, the glasses gave all of neon paint enhanced depth: the reds really popped out toward you and the blues seemed really far away. Since the objects that were painted were already 3D, like a dresser or a little statue, it was sort of surreal. The monsters were all puppets operated by people dressed all in black. It worked well to give the ghosts otherworldly swoopy ability. But since they were neon tiedye the whole thing really balanced out to about the level of a glowstick themed stake dance. You're simultaneously fascinated and confused. Another one we went on was probably witch themed. It was hard to tell. I think we may have been caught in the crossfire of a feud between a coven of witches and a band of druids. Or maybe both groups thought we were witches. I'm not totally clear on the premise.
Another thing that was generally confusing was the way that people reacted to haunted houses. I spent most of my time trying to figure out how different effects were achieved, and plotting if there were better places to hide, and pondering what the consequences would be of just joining the haunted house cast. The best I could tell most of the girls I was with spent the whole time screaming and backing away from anyone who came their direction. Most of the guys alternated between hiding behind the girls and sneaking up on people in the group and tapping them to scare them. I have misgivings about any of our prospects of surviving a scary movie. None of these approaches seem like a very effective way of dealing with monsters.
Despite going to 5 different haunted houses. This was the scariest thing I saw the whole day.
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