I just had a surreal experience. My aesthetic tastes border on masochisim at times (one of my favorite websites is called www.WrestleCrap.com) but I hit new lows tonight.

A couple miles from my work there was a church holding a "HELL HOUSE" (Christian propaganda coming from certain christian sects who see halloween as evil). I thought the experience may be informative.

Our tour started out with a "Drunk Driving" accident where our "Demon Guide" pointed out that he was so evil he convinced the driver that he "Could handle it" and his wife that he'd "Been worse before." But now he killed two children and would have to live with it for the rest of his life. This of course begs the question that since one child was in the car, and the narration implied that the other was an innocent bystander, when exactly did this drinking take place. I mean if the father is out for social drinking it's usually long after any young children are outside playing and if the mother couldn't spot that the husband was that bad that must've meant that the time they were drinking was appropriate drinking time.

But you shouldn't expect logic from a Hell House.

The next scene was the funeral of a gaybisexualpornaddictaidsvictim. In this case the demon had apparantly planted the idea that it was ok to live however you wanted. I've heard at some hell houses you actually get to see the sinful homosexual "Die of AIDS" (ie: Hell houses are apparantly at least 10 years behind on medical breakthroughs) but they seemed to be phoning this one in so I think that's all of a write up that it's worth.

The Third scene was the "EVIL WITCHCRAFT OF A TAROT CARD READER!" At this point in the tour I had to fight the urge to do a full on James Randi tirade screaming at the top of my lungs "IT'S A CON! IT'S CALLED COLD READING! ANYONE CAN DO IT! THERE ARE NO DEMONS INVOLVED BECAUSE NONE ARE NECESSARY! JAMES RANDI OFFERS A MILLION DOLLARS TO ANYONE WHO CAN PROVE THAT IT'S REAL IN A LAB AND NO ONE HAS BEEN ABLE TO DO IT!" but I restrained myself.

At this point however I feel the need to point out that their references to "witchcraft in the media" were hopelessly misguided and/or outdated. They listed Pokemon which is technically a science fiction show. There seems to be some less than legit science explanation of all the Pokemon's powers. The only thing it seems to share in common with anything where the complaint would be more legitimate is the mathematics behind the damage systems in the gameplay. Pokemon has however not been the main driving force in children's entertainment in a few years however. This is of course overshadowed by the reference to Dungeons and Dragons which hasn't been legitimately popular since the 80's (a more updated reference would be "World of Warcraft"). Granted this is more legitimate along their base lines since it applies the concepts of "spell casting" and "monsters."

Back on point the next few scenes covered Drug Addiction and Domestic Violence in a rather standard fashion. The sole exception being it is implied that an overdose on one person's part is intentional for "the ultimate high." I will admit here that the acting on the part of the abusive couple was rather good and the information on drugs was far more accurate and up to date than "witchcraft in the media."

Here is also a good time to mention that the "Demon Guide" for the tour was extremely well cast. He was a teenager (the whole production was managed by the church's youth ministry) who did a great job with application of genuinely spooky looking make-up, his voice carried well and was so authorative you were genuinely intimidated out of heckling him, and he had a really creepy laugh. What can I say I admire a good job no matter what it is or who does it.

But here's where it gets a little stupid. The next scene featured a "20 year old girl from college who was a great student and super nice" who happened to like listening to Eminem. He mom tells her to turn it off, then relents and says "down" instead. At this point the girl is inspired to turn the music back up AND SHOOTS AND KILLS HER MOTHER THE NEXT TIME SHE COMPLAINS! I seriously don't know what to think about this. This has so many flaws it's mind blowing, First off if arguements like this were becoming this common, why wouldn't the girl just move out into her own appartment/dorm room. Secondly, it seems really out of character that she has a GUN! Sitting by her stereo no less. Her mom never asked her what it was for, and unfortunately she wasn't attending Virginia Tech where she could put her sharp shooting and rage to good use.

SPEAKING OF SCHOOL SHOOTINGS! That's what the next exhibit was. It basically consists of a popular girl teasing an outcast by flirting with him and then rejecting him...Which since no person can ever handle that happening to them even once in their life (which if this were true I'd be one of the biggest mass murderers ever) the kid blows away the girl and the BOYS who put her up to it. The biggest flaw I see here is that even if boys would try to pull off something like this (which they wouldn't, they'd probably just beat the kid up regularly) girls are smart enough to remind boys how stupid they can be, and turn stupid stunts like this down. Granted if the scenario was 3 girls instead of 2 boys one girl I MIGHT believe it. But even that's unlikely.

I lost track of where the next scene actually happened but it was pretty stupid as well. A young girl getting an abortion. Here's a quick list of the flaws.

1) The girl is awake through the whole process and begging the doctors to stop, though seemingly in no physical pain.

2) The doctor is giving a blow by blow description to the girl, and has seemingly botched the procedure since the different sections of the fetus are coming out separately and in seemingly random order.

3) A stylistic point. But the Demon guide mentions that the girl was convinced that she was too young. Therefore starvation, abuse or other things which could happen because the girl was ill prepared are preferable to bypassing the process.

4) A MAJOR stylistic point. The Demon guide mentions that the aborted fetus would've been "the next great preacher." I probably didn't mention this, but the purpose of an attraction like this is to convert the non-faithful. This statement is counting on the people having accepted your own values before the process is completed. It's hubris and just bad logic.

The last few scenes are a gang and a suicide. The gang scene was flawed because no actual gang member would admit to the Dr. Phil stuff these guys were saying, as well as the fact that a small child was offered the chance to kill a rival gang member and the adults involved took the whole thing way to seriously. From everything I've heard this is something you only do as a joke... I mean the people still actually die but they just find it funny seeing a little kid kill someone. Suicide wasn't much to mention, no worse than any emo song.

This lead to HELL. Hell which was popluated only by small children. Granted I can suspend disbeilef enough to understand that the hell rigs were pretty small and it just wasn't economical to build it adult size, but I'm just wondering what all these kids did to deserve going to hell. This isn't a religion that puts too much stock in infant rituls so I'm thinking there's this weird epidemic of matricide or child on child rape happening that I'm just not aware of. At this point we're ushered out by an angel.

This angel collected the innocent souls in the first scene, and due to casting constraints also played the girl who killed her mom. NOW THAT'S A GREAT MESSAGE TO SEND TO PEOPLE! Have sex(gay straight solo or anything in between) , have an abortion, go to a psychic YOU'RE GOING TO HELL! Kill your mother and then repent, you go to heaven. Good to know everyone has their priorities straight.

---Landon