Haunted Houses

                The sign painted over the threshold read, “To Hell”, in bright and bold red lettering. Charlie looked to his right and up at the bent and deteriorated street sign which read, “Good Intentions”. A flickering street lamp buzzed on and off overhead.  Charlie shrugged and kept walking forward. This Haunted House wasn’t exciting. There were a few deranged clowns and the usual slasher movie characters lunging at people occasionally, but they weren’t enthusiastic. There wasn’t anything that had Charlie startled or even remotely scared. Normally there’d be one or two things that would make Charlie chuckle in embarrassed fright but this local Haunted House clearly was on a shoestring budget. He continued to move through the black lit Chamber of Horrors with the small crowd of other haunted house goers he had been corralled with at the entrance.

                Charlie used to hate being shoved into a group of strangers to tour a haunted house. It always seemed to happen to him. He’d go with an odd numbered group of friends and the haunted house “bouncer” would split them up into even numbered groups. Charlie always wound up being cut from his group of friends and was forced to go through the scares and chills with strangers. It happened every time. Although it was always happening now since he went to the haunted houses alone. His old friends, they just didn’t do it anymore.  So, he was accustomed to being with strangers now. In fact, he now enjoyed the reactions of the strangers around him. It was fun to see people scared. If the Haunted House were scary that is.

                The herd of Haunted house devotees Charlie was casually following was filled with mostly twenty-somethings, who were indignant at the representation of the living impaired. They scoffed at the alleged terror they had paid fourteen dollars to see. Charlie remembered when he was young and how terrified he was at Haunted Houses. He remembered the sick thrills and his heart leaping into his throat as he was jostled about and stumbled through pitch-black maze-like corridors of carpeted horror. He hated it, yet always yearned for more. He liked the adrenaline rush of fear he felt stumbling around in the dark and being at the mercy of creative scare masters.

                There were always one or two haunted house rooms that were legendary. The sort that had you screaming and crying and begging to just get the hell out of there. Your nightmares were being brought to life and there was nothing you could do. You were trapped with all the other screaming people, ramping up each other’s curious fear. Now it seemed like this was a quick march through a poorly thought out cavalcade. It was still fun for Charlie though. He still liked to see how dedicated some people were to making a haunted house exciting and frightfully enjoyable.

                The young people Charlie was with were a different type. It seemed like nothing scared them at all. The creepy music and smoke machines were really a nuisance for the young people now. Charlie was disappointed that every scary attraction was met with sarcasm and snark from the small group of bearded and tattooed young people he was with. The were unflappable. Charlie wasn’t scared since he’d been going to haunted Houses since the early 1980’s. There really wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before so his fear was tempered with age and time. The young people though, they just were too bitter to be scared. 

Charlie felt that this was a great loss. He thought about all the money and effort local companies, churches, schools and other organizations put into these haunted houses, only to be met with disgusted sneers from today’s youth. He felt like the age of awesome haunted houses was nearing an end. Charlie envisioned a time that the young people were too outraged by real life to care about the fantasy horrors of the local Parish’s haunted houses. It made him morose.

A giant-sized Chucky doll burst from a small box in the corner while a strobe light flashed aggressively. Charlie heard one of the young women in the group ask, “What was that? Was that some sort of movie character or something?” To which Charlie heard the reply, “I dunno, never seen that character before, just some dumb doll thing I guess. Let’s get artisan tacos after this.”

Charlie thought that this might be his last haunted house. Reality had finally become scarier than the fictional world of Halloween horror and that was more than Charlie could handle.