In the five or six years since we were last here there are two new Haunted Houses in Kansas City, which boasts the Largest Haunted Houses in America. These Haunted Houses are big, as they are converted warehouses under a large concrete bridge in a kind of scary part of Kansas City. It is like Deep Ellum in Dallas, except that they only use the place at Halloween as far as I can tell. The Beast was the first of these Haunted Houses that The Wife and I went to. I am not a fan of Haunted Houses, seeing as I a 40 something photographer, writer, and artist and most of the people that go to Haunted Houses are teenagers and the like. Not to mention that there are now real dangers for us in these Haunted Houses. While we are not yet at the age when we Have A Fall and it is a life altering event, we are getting there. One of the main features of the KC Haunted Houses is total and complete darkness. So that you end up bumping into walls and stumbling up or down stairs. This can be fun. But I am not a fan of it. Nor do I like the four or five story slides that end the visit to a couple of the Kansas City Haunted Houses.
The Chamber of Edgar Allen Poe is much like the other Haunted Houses, the main difference being the theming of various room to match Poe’s horror stories. There were a couple of these large tunnels, one that spins while you walk a bridge across it, another that turns as you walk through it and you are in danger of falling over, and a third that is just tilted and padded. There are a lot of stairs. Some lite, and some totally dark. The Wife fell down a short flight of stairs, but did not hurt herself. A lack of handrails and total darkness is never a good idea, is it?
The other main feature of this Haunted House was that it was bloody hot. I was sweating like I had just ran a race by the time we finished. In all fairness it has been an extremely warm autumn around here.
The scares involved the usual practice of someone jumping out of a hiding place and yelling at you or making some loud noise. I was frightened a number of time and it was fun. The sets were pretty well done and the costumes looked good in the lack of light. But I don’t think I will be doing any more of these things.
It was twenty dollars a head for one of the four Haunted Houses, $60 dollars for a combo ticket to do them all. One was enough for me and my slightly clumsy wife.
