I’ve always thought of Halloween as a harmless liturgical day on the secular calendar of American life. Children try out different identities with funky costumes. Doorbells light up as neighborhoods turn social. Office workers overdose on candy corn in the break room. Retailers go nuts over hefty jumps in cash flow. But when I privately toured a haunted house recently, I faced down some darker sides to Halloween. They made my stomach queasy.
“My job is to scare the hell out of anyone who walks in the door and puts down $20,” the proprietor of this “manor” told me. “I want to disturb their sleep with all the horror I can possibly think up,” he said, giddily rubbing his hands together.
This operation employs as many as 60 actors on October nights. They emerge from pitch-dark corners to feign seizures, slice open lifelike bodies, and grab at unsuspecting patrons. I’m not entirely sure what possesses people to pay for gratuitous violence, but fans pour into this place by the thousands. In one room, a dog that looks as real as any black lab I’ve ever seen gets killed each night, complete with gruesome sound effects. In another room, a robed clergyman holds a knife and mutters, “I’m going to kill you.” The room with real-looking babies had me asking for the exit door. Babies hanging by their necks. Babies housed in cages. Infant body parts strewn across the blood-splattered floor.
