Been Busy

Fall is always a busy time for me with all of the additional stuff that I have to do that is outside of my normal activity, and this fall was no different. Usually, I can’t post as much or do as much drawing as I would like due to those other activities I’m required to do. This year I had an added twist: at work we did a haunted house. Or maybe it should be called a horror house because it had a zombie section, a clown section and a chain-saw section. Two of these sections were about blood and gore.

And I learned I really don’t like blood and gore. I’ve been staying away from that.

The horror house actually turned out good which surprised me. There were bloody body parts, mutilated dolls, hanging “bodies”, lots of “blood splattered” decorations – stuff I don’t like to contemplate. In addition, there were some creepy sound effects such as chilling screams that nauseated me after a while. One guy operated a realistic looking and sounding chainsaw which was kind of scary when he lunged at you. And my co-workers got up in some really good costumes and make up jobs. It was astonishing what they came up with. One lady had fake roaches in her hair and on her shirt. Ugh! Myself, I just couldn’t do the blood stuff when dressing up as a zombie – I just stuck with some grey paint and blackened eyes and lips. No gory stuff on me.

One lady, who declared she did not like Halloween, participated in the build up of the horror house but stayed out of the actual melodrama on October 31st. I would have like to have done the same.

While we were building up the horror house, I got to thinking about why is America so fascinated with the gory stuff? Is Halloween just an American thing? Or is it only in America that we have such a preoccupation with gore?

A quick – very quick – internet search indicates Britain has Halloween but not quite as intense.

So maybe the fascination with gore and horror is an American thing. I mean, we do have mass shootings that surpasses any in the world.

And then there was an article or two about the McKamey Manor. Its claim to fame is that there is a 40-page waiver that one has to sign before doing the haunted house and the owner of the tour has offered $20,000 to anyone who completes the tour.

No one has successfully completed the tour.

And there is a waiting list of 27,000 people.

What kind of person would want to go through a tour that is supposedly so dreadful that no one has completed it, despite the $20K award?

Why would anyone do this?

From my brief readings, it sounds like one has to go through mental and physical testing and there is some kind of film one has to watch. The tour is 10 hours (?) long and is geared towards your particular fears, so I guess you have to go through an interview of some sorts, spilling out all of your fears.

There is either a petition or a lawsuit going on to close down the house because it is not really a haunted house but a torture house. The descriptions that I’ve read: eating vomit, waterboarding, nails being pulled. Those are not horror – those are torture.

Has America always been this extreme?