Ten-year-old me was a pansy.
I’m going to call it as I see it.
My aunt always took me and my twin sister on little excursions and during one October weekend, she decided we were old enough to try our hand at one of the scariest haunted houses in the nation — the Eastern State Penitentiary. Every October, they turn the abandoned prison that housed Al Capone and a few other known gangsters back in the day into an extreme haunted house. It already has a bunch of history behind it, so why not lock people up in cells and that stuff?
As we got near the front of the line after at least a two-hour wait, I began to chicken out in a big way. I’m pretty sure I started crying, so my aunt tried to console me and took me out of line while her friend waited with my sister. They were still keen on going through with it, but there was no way I could do it and keep my sanity. Well, eventually my sister decided it wasn’t for her either and we gave up on the idea.
Fast forward 20 years or so to this past Friday night.
I had seen ads for one of the scariest haunted houses in the nation called “House of Shock,” which is located about 20 minutes from where I live in New Orleans. I asked folks from my kickball team if they wanted to join and one other person said ‘Sure.’
So off we went.
Long story short, it was a good time. While I had to duck through some of the rooms and it ruined some of the jump scares, they caught me slipping a few times which is all I could really ask for as an adult in those places. My only complaint was that they let too many people go through the “House of Shock” at once. It would have been a lot better if they spaced out the groups more so the volunteers could get back into position and you could be scared more than knowing what was about to come.
Did I atone for chickening out 20 years ago at the Eastern State Penitentiary? Not a chance in Hell. One of these years I’m going to fly back home and make the drive up to Philadelphia and conquer that haunted house. But if I blog about that experience and say I peed myself, please don’t make fun of me. We’re all allowed one as adults.