(SPOILER ALERT)

Nothing like working on a Daisy baby hat while waiting in line for a haunted house. But, it kept me from really scaring people, so Bones was content to chat me up while I knitted away.


The first house
I don’t have kids and I try not to judge parents. I don’t always do a great job of it, but I try. However, if you are in line in front of me with your significant other and your 5ish year old kid for the House of Torment, you’re not the brightest crayon in the box. We ended up in a group with this family and the poor kid did not last 10 feet. He was screaming bloody murder and his parents were trying to talk him out of it. Finally, one of the monsters came up, flipped on a flashlight and offered to walk them out. They came to their senses and left.

A word of advice: Don’t wear long jeans to a haunted house. It was rainy outside, so my jeans cuffs were already damp when we entered. Soon, it was clear that people had been scared enough to wet themselves. Definitely the little boy and at least several others. I chose to think that my jeans were still just damp with clean rain water and tried to inhale as little as possible. Lucky for me, I have a pretty poor sense of smell to begin with, so I could only tell in a couple of spots. Bones said it was pretty bad.

Right after Bones said, “oh, you’re not going to like THIS”, there was a section where you have to push in between what seems like two huge balloons to get through. My first thought was, “this is the kind of thing where someone accidently suffocates”. Thankfully, I quickly realized that the area between my knees and feet was open, so if I really needed air, I could just drop down on the pee-soaked floor and take a deep breath. wait. maybe I’d rather suffocate?


The second house
Would you believe the parents with the child took him into the second house? I hope their bed is big enough for three.

Some teenagers cut in line before the first house, but we ended up in front of them – when they asked us to go ahead of them. This worked out well for them since the guy and two girls seemed to scare easily. I did not. I was, after all, hiding behind Bones (and holding her hand). She seemed happy to go first and get the daylights scared out of her while we brought up the rear.


The third house
Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a reason they work you up to this one. If it had been first, I might not have gone through the other two. Between the very real diesel smell, and the actual air moving around the chain saws (Bones claims there were no chains) and carcasses laying on the floor for us to trip over in the dark, it was pretty freakin’ scarey.

I was not, however, as scared as one of the girls in our little group. I was wearing my knitting bag across my body and she had her hand wrapped in it like it was a handle. She also had her hand wrapped in the back of my shirt. Now, as I mentioned, it was humid out and the houses are not air conditioned. By the time I got to the third house, I was pretty sweaty. I wouldn’t have wrapped my own hand in the back of my shirt, but she seemed fine to do it repeatedly. The first time, she apologized and after that, she just gave up. If I hadn’t been so terribly amused, it would have been awkward. I finally couldn’t help it and laughed out loud. Bones looked back at me to see if I was so scared I’d gone off the deep end, but I just grinned.

Just as we were getting to the end of this house, there was a traffic jam. Which means that monsters that we’d passed came back to torment us and they’re scarier when you feel trapped. It turns out that if you get between me and a corner that I want to be in, I’ll move like lightning and it will be MY corner. The scared girl ended up trapped between me and two monsters. She closed her eyes, had her head down and was whimpering so Bones resorted to patting her shoulder and telling her it was going to be ok. At no point did I consider letting her have my corner.

Overall, it some of the best people watching of my life, the monsters were really professional, I had a ton of fun with Bones and I look forward to next year.