campus haunted house

Killing time on campus at night, waiting for the bus, I decided to go through the student haunted house, which I believe is a first for AUC. This is really the first time we’ve had anything like serious on-campus dormitories, and the students need to keep themselves entertained.

Before going in, I saw a few girls come out of there looking like they were on the verge of heart failure. And the doorman did put on a horrifying act, so I was a bit leery of going in and letting my own students terrify me.

However, they’d send you in in groups of 8-10 people, and I ended up near the back of the group, and that weakened the effect quite a bit. The basic tactic of this particular haunted house seemed to be: ghastly humanoid figures emerging from unexpected places behind curtains or near the floor. But they always timed it to scare the front of the group. So I’d hear three girls ahead of me screaming their lungs out, but all I would see were arms retreating into holes in the wall.

So, judging from the reactions ahead of me, it must have been a terrifying experience, but I didn’t have the opportunity to be scared even once… And then I realized that by coming in the wrong way, I had inadvertantly butted ahead of about 70 students standing in line, so I couldn’t really give it another chance.

Best haunted house I ever went through, by far: The Haunted Courthouse in Shueyville, Iowa, when I was 14. Terrifying, and fascinating. Later my parents moved close to that area, and the “Haunted Courthouse” is now their voting place.

It’s strange, though, the amount of spiritual awe that sets in over a group of people waiting in line to enter a haunted house. You know full well that you won’t be hurt, that everything is an act, and yet something like genuine terror is in the air.