LY #42 Haunted Memory

Ever since sticking my hand into a jar of "brains" (cold spaghetti) when I was in fourth grade, I haven't enjoyed haunted houses.  I don't relish being scared and disgusted.  Nevertheless, I was once a participant in one.  Every year when I scuffle my way through crisp yellow leaves, I remember.

Drake Park 10/25/2013

It was fall of 1983, a time of broken struggle for me (a backstory that won't be making it into this blog).  Frazier Hall, a supposedly haunted facility at Idaho State, was turned into an unreal haunted house staffed by graduate students.  I was one of a few zombies who walked heavily down back stairs and into the "Little Theatre" in the round.   (This was several years after George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead (1978) and well before the current craze.)    We walked through bushels of leaves carried in from the lawns outside the week before.  Our shuffling footfalls and dead eyes were supposed to scare the visitors being lead through the building by other graduate students.  But really, we mostly got them to flee into the corridor where the most truly terrifying character was:  R.P. and his chainsaw.

R.P. was this very large speech and theatre student who was very gruff and given to dumb jokes like, "Does your face hurt?  It's killin' me!"  He also used the expression, "Well, f*** me in the neck!"  This could be an expression of surprise or alarm.  It could also be an insult if the "me" became "you."  The expression could be rendered nonverbally by taking a flat hand, palm down, and whacking oneself on the side of the neck with the tips of one's fingers while frowning.

So, R.P. would be at the other end of the darkened corridor, clothed in old railroad coveralls and a mask.  Then, when a group of people burst out of the little theatre, fleeing the zombies, he would slowly start toward them, getting their attention.  They'd wonder if he was another zombie.  Then, when he was halfway there, he'd pull the starter on the chainsaw in his hands -- yes, a real chainsaw.  The visitors would scream and shoot down the stairs and out of the haunted house.

The only haunted house I've visited since 1983 is in Disneyland, and that one is far more delightful than frightening.