The Daily 26 Episode 1: Why Haunted Houses Are (Sometimes) Scary

This past weekend, my good lady friend and I joined another couple in a small outdoor attraction known as "The Forest of Fear." First, I'd like to explore what demon force must possess people to have the absurd desire to go to a place, pay real, actual legal tender, and proceed to walk into a mysterious and sketchy building to get a healthy dose of fear from other humans dressed as terrifying monsters. The very idea is counterproductive. Do we not avoid fear at all costs in daily life? I'd say so. So what status or title among the months does the month of October hold to allow for money to be made on the fight or flight response? I suppose the same title as any other holiday-bearing month does.

What I'm actually trying to propose is that while haunted houses are marginally terrifying, they get old real quick. After the first few jumps and scares, one can easily decipher the trend and in my opinion, there is a formula that almost every haunted attraction follows. And that formula is:

Anticipation + Atmosphere + (Characters + Yelling) = Terror

1. Anticipation
A healthy build-up to a haunted attraction gives the consumer exactly what the attraction wants them to get...an expectation. This starts early in the initial stages of planning. The website of a haunted attraction must have a black background with a moderately scary image. The website, coupled with bone-chilling experiences of friends, is enough to prepare a fear-goer for the final step of anticipation...scaryyyyy.

2. Atmosphere
The entrance to a haunted attraction is key. For example, at the specific attraction I went to, there was about a half-mile of trail through a dark forest lit only by murder lights that would only be seen in a movie around a death warehouse. At the end was a slideshow of pictures with various Halloween themed songs playing. This gave me a sense that maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I was horribly wrong. There were buildings...BUILDINGS that we had to enter and walk through, all of which were the worst. People were easily able to hide.

3. Characters
Clowns, doctors, zombies, etc. These are the life blood (no pun intended) of haunted attractions. They basically break interpersonal norms in an attempt to catch you off guard like eye contact, following closely, and throwing heads with rope attached. You know, normal interpersonal skills that everyone should have. But the trump card for every haunted attraction is...children. Go to any Haunted House and expect a room of dolls and children asking you to play. They have "what we call the Chucky advantage in nimbleness and sheer terror inspiration." -John Hodgman on his hit podcast, "Judge John Hodgman."

4. Yelling
It's pretty self-explanatory.

Throw it all together and you've got line of people waiting to give you $15 for twenty minutes of torture! The greatest business model ever.

So, how might one pass unscathed by the woes of the fear? Simple, make fun of it. That's right. Every haunted house has an element of reality. Those people are actors who probably have a day job and probably hate it. They joke around with one another when you're not around. Just the other day, I stopped to tie my show and not ten seconds after we left the small shack we could hear the supposedly dead girl laughing with her captor. One of my favorite lines there was "You're doing a good thing for charity." And they are, but it made them human. Make sarcastic remarks, call them out. "I bet that dead body's gonna jump out at- AHHHH!....called it." And most of all...

Remember,
No matter how far you go, there's still 26 (terrifying) letters ahead of you.

Pilot

Here I am with twenty-six letters in front of me, each begging to be pushed. 5 (sometimes 6) of them yawn as they are pushed at least every second, while 21 (sometimes 20) yearn for a chance to be pressed. Why, in the last sentence, four have not even been used. I'm sorry 'j,' 'k,' 'q,' and 'z.' You don't deserve such discrimination. I mean, you, Z, are on the very bottom left of the keyboard. (There you go, K.) And Q, how do you manage with A always talking smack about how mush she makes it onto a page. SOMETIMES AS A WHOLE FREAKIN' WORD! Then there's J and K, modestly waiting for a spectacular, juicy word like 'crack,' or 'jaded.'

But I am their master. I control them and put them in various combinations to convey meaning.

Honestly, I'm stalling. I'm not sure what I want to put in this blog. Sometimes I imagine I'm in a movie. The camera would hold a shot of me typing on my computer, cut to the blinking line on the screen, then to my hesitating hands on the keyboard and finally cut back to my face, lit by the cruel indifference of the monitor. Then, another shot of the key board as I...go. My voice reads what I write to the audience as inspiration strikes and it seems as though my ideas can't be stopped. Then, after a few minutes, I sigh, look at my work. Drag my mouse over to "Publish" and click. Then I close my computer and go back to whatever chore I was working on.

I mean Julie did it in that one movie. Why can't I? Oh yeah, I don't have an idea for this blog. So what makes me keep writing? If I'm honest, it's the soft "tap-tap-tap" of the keys as I finish a sentence, the heavy, yet thin sound of the spacebar and finality of the period/greater than symbol key. My fondness for this is similar to that of one who might enjoy the whir of a typewriter.

I want to write comedy. I think comedy is fun and I think I'm good at it. I guess I just enjoy entertaining people and writing seems like the quickest (I got your back, Q) and easiest way of accomplishing such a task. But what to write about? I think to my heroes of comedic writing, begging for an answer. And I think I got it. See you later!

Remember,
No matter how far you go, there's always 26 letters ahead of you.