Looking back chapter 5

The other day I got a sales paper in the mail that already had Halloween stuff in it. Which got me to thinking about making a trip out to Thrillvania (www.thrillvania.com). If you are ever in east Texas around Halloween, and like haunted houses, check it out. You will not be disappointed.

But this blog isn't about Thrillvania, it is about a haunted house that some friends and I went to while I lived in Tampa. You see, I have a friend named George who has this love/hate relationship with haunted houses. He loves going to them but he can't help freaking out while in them. You may hear more laughing than screaming when George is in a haunted house.

Any way, back to the story. We go to this haunted house that has the usual cast of characters: Dracula; Frankenstein; The Mummy; Wolfman; Freddy Kruger; Jason Voorhees; Leatherface; and so on. So you walk up to this haunted house and there is a guy dressed as Dracula laying in a coffin with the creepy organ music playing and a creepy guy giving a eulogy of sorts. After his little speech we are ushered past the coffin where I suspected the guy in the coffin to reach out or something. But nope, he just laid there. But what they did have was a guy dressed like Dracula hiding behind the coffin who jumped out at the crowd. You know, if they were smart, they would have sold new underwear in this place, they would have made a killing.

So the crowd scurries out of the room … except for George. George stands there like he is at attention leaning forward a bit screaming at the top of his lungs like he is trying to knock the guy over with his voice, frozen in fear.

We go through a couple more rooms and it is the usual stuff. Then we get to Frankenstein's Monster. You got the monster on this tilted table, pretty much with his feet on the floor, a Jacob's ladder is in the corner and the mad scientist in a white lab coat is running around behind this little half wall. Shortly after everyone is in the room this strobe light goes off and a smoke machine goes off and so on. Then the monster goes haywire and breaks through the half wall and the crowd runs down the hall. Except for George and I, George is crouched down hiding behind me and here comes good ole Frank. George and Frank are … well, basically dancing, around me like the keystone cops or something. Frankenstein reaches for George on one side, George ducks to the other side. Frank walks around the left side of me, George darts out to the right side of me. This kind of thing goes on for several seconds. The whole time George is screaming at the top of his lungs. I mean blood curdling, full of fear screaming. I, on the other hand, am laughing my ass off. Finally George sees his escape route, the door to the hallway, and makes a break for it. The guy playing Frankenstein shakes his head and cracks a grin. I give him a high five and go down the hall to catch the rest of the group.

I catch up to them and go through a few more rooms then we get to this bloody "crime scene" room, but there are no characters to be found. It would be at this point that everyone can hear George proclaim "Man this aint cool, this aint cool at all". Right after that you hear a chainsaw crank up and a guy dressed as Leatherface jumps out from behind a curtain and comes right at George. And George punches him. Yeah, right in the face. Fortunately the punch didn't connect very well and the guy was ok. So I rush George out of the room and give Leatherface a quick "sorry" and we catch back up to the rest of the group. I pull George aside and tell him that he has got to calm down and that they are not going to hurt him and he tells me he will try.
Then we get to the Wolfman. He is in a cage, thank god! Looks like all we have to do is walk along this path that goes on three sides of the cage. Worst thing that would happen is that he would reach out through the bars right? Wrong, as we soon found out some of the bars are made of rubber. So wolfie bends the bars like he is going to break out, this is when George decided that he was going to bend the bars back. It's just that the Wolfman's head, right shoulder and arm were already through the bars. George, true to form, is screaming at the top of his lungs and so in the Wolfman. The Wolfman is screaming "HEY, HEY, HEY! Let go of the bars kid! Let go!" Fortunately we were able to get George to let go and go through the doors which lead out of the house where the manager, owner, and some of the staff were waiting for us. Lovely. We hear "Hey you, come over here" Yeah this don't look good. George gets a little questioning, tells them that he was just scared. George gets a little lecture and we are on our way back to our car. George gets embarrassed when we tell it, but it is one hell of a story.