I spent most of my childhood living in a house a little different than most people are used to. The house itself was not unusual, but the placement of the house was not your normal neighborhood. Our house was located next door to a very old church and the house wasn’t a spring chicken either. But, what made our neighborhood interesting was the fact that on both sides of my house was a cemetery. Yes, my neighbors were all deceased, so when it came to my house, my friends always seemed to look at it as a haunted house.
Granted, we did have our fair share of supernatural occurrences which made it even more entertaining and scared numerous friends throughout my childhood. We had doors in the house that would slam when there was no wind. We were responsible for taking care and cleaning the church and there were many times when we were alone in the basement and could hear footsteps down the aisle of the church. Our minister used to believe that a bride had been left at the aisle many years before.
The cemetery was always a great place to put a little fright into my friends. The cemetery was divided into two sections. One side of my house was the modern cemetery which was still in use, but the section between my house and the church was an old cemetery dating back to the 1700 and 1800s. Many of the tombstones were simple flat stones in the ground, but when it rained, the minerals in the ground mixed with the water and created a pool of slightly reddish water. This look of “blood” on the tombstones was usually enough to make my friends run screaming through to my house.
Through the years, we had various different haunted houses both at the church and at my house. While they were all fun in their own way, the best haunted house we had wasn’t really a haunted house at all. The house had a back entrance that went into a mudroom. From the mudroom, you could either take the stairs up to the main house, or down to the basement cellar. Because the house was old, the cellar was made of cement stairs and walls and the ceiling was very low. At the bottom of the stairs was a solid wood door that closed off the cellar.
Well, the laundry room was down there and it was also the room that my two cats, including our black cat that had showed up on the doorstep, spent most of their time. We were getting ready to have a Halloween party when my dad had the idea of creating a haunted house down in the basement. I had all my friends coming over for the Halloween party and we let them know that there was a haunted house in the basement but they had to go through it one at a time.
What my friends didn’t know was that this haunted house wasn’t really a haunted house. My first friend went in and the door was closed behind her. She went in to find my dad sitting in the dark with a candle. He explained that there was no haunted house and that the whole thing was nothing more than a screaming contest. The idea was for her to scream and act scared when she left and could not say a word about what was inside. This continued through most of my friends and the screams got louder more frightening as each friend went through. When it got down to my last three friends, they were in tears and scared to death. They were too afraid to enter the haunted house and had to go in together. Needless to say, with all the fear they had let build up while my other friends went in, they had the loudest screams.
When it comes to creating your own Halloween haunted house, this example should prove that more is not always better. Even the simplest of haunted houses can raise fear in people.