Bittersweet Infamy - #55 - Hell House

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

Halloween special! Josie tells Taylor about the evangelical Christian haunted houses that try to scare the devil out of you. Plus: beware the winged Texan terror of the Houston Batman!

Welcome to Bitter Sweden with me. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, you tell the stories that live on in you, shocking the unbelievable and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, the stories are always sweet. Josie, thank you for agreeing to meet me in this old abandoned amusement park for this, the taping of this week's episode. Well, I was a little spooked out, but I thought, you know what, we should give it a shot. It is trick-or-treat infamy, so. For sure. Yeah, I put on a pair of boots and my big girl pants, and here we are. Those are, those are big girl pants. I was, I was thinking

those are some big girl pants. Wide leg, big time. The parachute pants. Yeah. Do you remember when you me and a friend went to Fright Nights at Playland? Yeah, I do remember it very well. What are your recollections of that evening? They predominantly revolve around the haunted house and how we waited in line in the rain to go in. Such rain, such cold hard rain. It was not a typical Vancouver Misty rain. Yeah, it was not a sprinkle. It was a pour. It was rough. It was a freezing cold pour that would gather in awnings until too much of it had built up, and then it would just splash all over the sidewalk. And yet we stayed in that line. It

wasn't a very long line, but it was made extra long because of the rain and the cold. Yes. It was an hour and a bit. That's a long line. And I can't say that anyone around us was such a scintillating company that I remember them, no disrespect. So we were kind of having to work each other for an hour. Yeah. And I remember going into the haunted house, and I don't do too well with simulated scary. I am. Or real scary. Or real. It's okay. Okay. You know what? I've never, I think in a real scary situation, I think a wave of calm might come over you. Thank you. That's what I think. And you might be placating me, but I am happy to hear it.

I heard from your voice that you didn't like that answer, so I patched it up a bit. Thank you. Moulded it a bit. Thank you for thinking of me. No, but I specifically remember in that haunted house that there was a very disaffected teenager who had a small pin light, and she was motioning for us to move into the next room. And I turned, and I was like, well, there's no room there. It's just black wall. And I kind of said something of that effect to her and still her disaffected youth just pointed the flashlight at the wall. And I realized there was like a seam in the wall. And so I like put my hand through and you were meant to walk through these like foam, black foam sides and walk through a hallway that was covered

in it. And you didn't know how short or long it was. And because it was raining outside, it was kind of like wet and damp in there from the people who had already moved through. It was like being birthed, but maybe not. It was horrifying. It was terrifying. I still remember it to this day. The thing that I would compare it to is imagine if someone had two jet black bouncy castles that they pushed together and asked you to like go through the seam in between them. And the wall would expand to fill any space you didn't take. So it was, you were kind of strafing sideways through what Josie so aptly characterized as a birth canal. That feels right. Right? Yeah. So I remember you were clinging to my arm and screaming as you do. That's nothing new. I think there was a chainsaw

at some point. All of this shit kind of blends together into sound and fury, but I too vividly remember this birthing canal that we went through. I think, and there was something. It's fucked. I wouldn't have expected it. It was very creative. It was very creative, but it was also like very not COVID safe. This was like 2014. Like you were like rubbing your drippy ass nose. The girl ahead of you who had like corn dog all over her face. She had just gone through. It was rough. It was gross. Why do you ask? Just reminiscing. I was just, I was reminiscing. I too had a lovely night. I remember the last thing we did before we went home was we got on the big swings and I was the only one in an outside seat and all the rainwater, the cold rainwater pep that had pulled

up just landed right in my lap while I screamed. That's terrifying. Really terrible time right on my dick. Like ice cold water. Oh man. Just the best. The great way to end the night. Cool shower. It was a great way to end the night. I remember there was also some fire dancers who were fire dancing to bring me to life by evanescence in the pouring rain and I was like, this is sick. That's it. God, the P&E really knows how to put on a show, eh? Don't they just? Don't they just? But how are things back in Houston? How's Mitchell? Good, good. We are brainstorming Halloween costumes. How about Batman? How's he? He's good. He has, he's recently had a haircut. This is, this is your dog to be clear for

Oh yeah. Time listeners. Yes. Not the superhero well that we know of. Exactly. But what's he doing right now? He is most likely on Mitchell's lap. Most likely. You're not sure. Well, he had a little, a little rush of energy so he was kind of barking around and chewing on things that he shouldn't. So hopefully he's a little more under control right now. But as long as somebody's got eyes on it. Yeah. I was just thinking this, this conversation that we were having at reminded me of an old faded news article that I saw taped to the wall of the, the abandoned tunnel of love over there. Oh. Yeah. It was an old clipping from the Houston Chronicle, in fact, front page. Wow. At this abandoned amusement park. Interesting. Yes. At this abandoned amusement park

that we've created in our Palace of the Mind here. Yes. It's dated 1953 and it reads unearthly Batman terrifies watchers. 2.30 a.m. on June 18th, 1953, in the Houston Heights. Josie, I've got in my notes here. Ask Josie for a little sauce here. Tell me a little bit about the Houston Heights. Give it, give, take us there. Okay. Houston is a very flat city and the Heights has a very, a very slight elevation which gives it its name. I would say it's kind of luck. It gets by into the name Heights on a technicality. Well, yeah. Yeah. If you're looking at a city like Vancouver, it's a total technicality. It's like, oh, that goes up three feet. That sidewalk has a slight

incline. That's not true. Y'all have some very high highways and interstates and so on. That's true. That's true. But in terms of like very tall round level, you know. Well, it seems like in the 50s, it was the kind of place that a young person might have a home because 23 year old Hilda Walker, she's a housewife. She owns the house. Okay. I mean, I don't know if I assume her and her husband own the house if I'm being really like prescriptive and gender essentialist. Yes. She is a housewife, but maybe her and her wife own the house. I don't know. It's a very progressive place in the 50s. Yes. She's sitting on the front porch with her neighbors, Howard Phillips and Judy Meyer. And it's a sweaty and miserable evening on East Third Street. Nobody can sleep.

So we're having a discombobulated and rueful conversation until the drowsies set in. Okay. Oh God, before air conditioning, before central air conditioning. Houston. Yeah, back then was the central air conditioning was you get Judy to come over and just flap her gums at you to get a nice breeze going. I say in my traditional Houstonian accent. Exactly. Yes. Yes. When all of a sudden says Hilda, 25 feet away, I saw a huge shadow across the lawn. I thought at first it was the magnified reflection of a big moth caught in the nearby streetlight. Then the shadow seemed to bounce upward into a pecan tree. We all looked up. That's when we saw it. The sleek black creature perched in the branches was humanoid

in that it was bipedal with two arms and two legs. But it was also pitch black and stood seven feet tall with impressive bat-like wings. Whoa. Seven feet tall. It was ensconced in a glow of light like a full body halo. For those who are familiar, it bears a resemblance to West Virginia's fabled mothman. Perhaps a cousin or the same dude he can fly, you know. Okay. All three witnesses gave accounts of this effect. That's Hilda, Howard, and Judy. Okay. Supposedly Judy Meyer, the neighbor, then screamed at the top of her lungs upon seeing this, you know, glowing seven foot batman in the pecan tree as one does. Says Hilda Walker. Immediately afterwards, we heard a loud swoosh over the housetops

across the street. It was like the white flash of a torpedo-shaped object. I've heard so much about flying saucer stories and I thought all those people telling the stories were crazy, but now I don't know what to believe. I may be nuts, but I saw it. Whatever it was, I sat there stupefied. I was amazed. Hilda, amen. Damn. The creature was dubbed the Houston Batman, and while this 1953 incident, should you choose to accept its veracity, was its only confirmed appearance, that hasn't stopped frightened locals from blaming the Batman for other unexplained local incidents, or at least suspecting it. In the late 1980s, a winged terror stalked the Johnson Space Center, killing two German shepherds, Batman. Wait, I know. I'm sorry. Wait, Batman killed

two German shepherds? Yeah. At this Johnson Space Center? Well, so this one isn't confirmed to be the Batman. This is just some other large winged terror haunting the Houston area. You can see why people are like, okay, so we already have the Batman, and then we have this other unnamed bat-like man. This is clearly the Batman. Okay, okay. But it could also be like, to put our skeptic hats on. Could it, there's animals that would do something like that, no? A vulture, yeah, like a big. That are not men. Yeah, a big vulture, a big like turkey, turkey buzzard. Perhaps. I'm not an ornithologist, nor am I a cryptozoologist. An angel? Angels are supposed to be terrifying, yeah. Yeah, like a Bible angel. Yeah, like an old testament.

Not one of these pussy hallmark angels that my grandma liked. We're talking, we're talking the real deal, nothing but eyeballs and fire. Exactly, thank you. In the 1990s, the staff of the Bel-Air Theater encountered a mysterious, helmeted winged man, crouched on their rooftop. Batman! It's my mother's favorite song, by the way. Have you ever heard of this other than obviously your dog being named Batman? Have you ever heard of the Houston Batman before? No, I have not. And I feel, I feel slighted that Mitchell has not told me, Mitchell being a native Houstonian. And I feel weak and inferior that you know this story and I don't. So. My jaw just dropped when you said that. I felt like you really gaslit me there very well.

I'm sorry, he might not know it because it's a relatively obscure little thing. Like even most of the articles that I found typically used pictures of Mothman, the West Virginia equivalent, which even though I think it came afterwards chronologically, is the better known thing, has statues, has images of it. Has a movie, yeah. Yes, a Richard Geer movie. You know what, I bet Batman it's the copyright thing. That's, that's the problem here. We haven't heard of it. That's what you write because like DC will come and knock, knock, knock. Exactly. Maybe. Yeah. That's why Batman, your dog hasn't had his like Hollywood career take off either. That explains so much. I was saying that there weren't many depictions of it, but

ABC 13 Eyewitness News did a little human interest segment on the Houston Batman that I watched as part of this in 2018 and they got an artist named Michael Charles, a comic artist to do a really cool draw up of what the Houston Batman might look like. It has a very like, I don't know, 90s Spider-Man kind of charm to it, his drawing. It's quite cool. Yeah. Now, mind you, like any great cryptid, no incontrovertible evidence of this creature has been captured and certainly we don't have any known examples of the species in captivity. Not that I'm pro Batman captivity, let him fly free. I say. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Both, both like let him fly free in the air like an eagle, but then also like if he wants to fly commercial, let him fly free.

TSA get off his fucking ass. Let him go. This is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. Said Houston Zoo bat expert Suzanne Jurek in 2018. If a bat were as tall as a man, his wingspan would have to be 18 feet or more from wingtip to wingtip. Disgusting. It's not something you would easily mistake. Yeah, that's disgusting. You say disgusting, I say distinctive. 18 goddamn fucking feet. That is large. Yeah, that makes getting in and out of doors hard. You'd have to drive a convertible or fly, I suppose. Yeah. Oh man. While encounters of winged humanoids have stretched back millennia, says crypto zoologist Ken Gerhard, their existence is for various reasons, a biological impossibility.

Okay. But that doesn't stop the speculation. Josie, I've heard, I've heard the Houston Batman is known to stalk your very home. My very home? Your very home. So next time he curls up in your lap and looks at your hand with his little tongue, just know that he may be waiting for the perfect moment to stand on two feet, unfurl his 18 foot wings and soar off into the night to feed. I'm gonna have to ask B-man about this. I'm gonna have to corner him. He's gonna play stupid. He's gonna play cute. That's what I'll do. Yeah, he's gonna win doing it too. I know. He's so good. B-man, what do you know of the Houston Batman? Is it you? What do you have to say for yourself? Well, I've heard just outside of this abandoned amusement park where we're hanging out. There's a

huge mega church down the street. Sick. Yeah. And I need to be saved badly. Right? Yeah. It is Halloween time. I've heard they have a pretty gnarly, terrifying, bone-chilling hell house going on. We should go check it out. Is that so? Yeah, dude. Well, you know what? I had not planned to go, but I guess I can throw this completely full delicious lemonade in the garbage and go to your church thing with you, sure. Just check it. Yeah, let's get saved. Let's go. I'm worried. Yeah, let's go. I know I've never been to anything. How do I put this? I've never been to a Christian presentation of a haunted house, which is what I assume is what we're meandering towards. Yes, yes, yes. For those who don't know, and that included me just a week or two ago,

hell houses, they're loosely based on that performative guided walkthrough of a haunted house, which Taylor and I were kind of describing as what we had just experienced in the abandoned amusement park. You wait in a very long, cold line, and then you get inside, and there's cobweb, dimly lit rooms, and there are actors in there who are doing these crazy jump scares, dudes in ski masks who come at you with a revving chainsaw or witches lunging and cackling with their brooms. Birthing canal. Yes, yes. Essential part of any haunted house. Of course, coffins that are opening to hungry vampires, the whole thing. And of course, as you say, we're being moved from room to room, or if we're not being specifically

herded by disaffected youth, then it's very clear the progression from room to room that we're doing. Right, yeah, and you want to move quickly, yeah. Or, I mean, the Disneyland ride, the haunted mansion, I think it's called. Yes, the haunted mansion. You're not walking, you're like on a track in a cart that is moving. Yes, yes. I like the haunted mansion. The haunted mansion is set. There's also the more low stakes kind of homegrown haunted house situation. You're in the neighborhood trick or treating, and then your neighbors down the street have, you know, redone their garage so that you were like going through a maze and sticking your hand in a bowl of cooked spaghetti and it's brains are like, it's witch's hair. Oh, witch's hair. Okay. Well,

peeled grapes is eyeballs, of course. So cranberry sauce is period blood. I'm sorry. Thank you. No, that's good. That's good. I'm sorry. I said the ingredient before I thought of the thing that it would be, and it was period blood. I'm sorry. It happens. It happens. Do you know what? It can happen anywhere. Any one of these streets in America, anywhere in North America, you never know. In Surrey, it was a big thing for the teens to populate the haunted house. I started volunteering there, and then I don't know what happened, but I stopped going to those meetings. Oh, no. Dude, I don't know what it was. You know how it is when you're a teenager and you're literally just like one day you're like, I guess I'm not, I went to two haunted house meetings and I'm not into it. So

I guess I'm just not going to, I'm just going to ghost, no pun intended. Maybe I did have the right stuff after all because I ghosted them out. Yeah, that was your contribution. If they weren't smart enough to pick up on the subtext, I'm a ghost. As in I'm not there. Wait, was the haunted house at school or was it like in a neighborhood center? It was at Potters. It was at a, it was at like a plant store. Cute. Oh, you Venus fly traps that are going to eat you? No, we didn't. What? I'm thinking like a haunted plant store. That'd be good. No, that's true. That's true. Nothing, but we didn't have giant Venus fly traps at the Potters fucking haunted house. We just had surly teenagers with dollar store makeup on and probably when I

was a teenager, I didn't have very good physical boundaries. Like I didn't know my own strength. So that is probably good that I wasn't in the haunt. Like you can see for a bunch of reasons that it wouldn't be great for a 17 year old Taylor Basso to like really be taking liberties in a haunted house. Probably like elbow someone in the jaw. Yeah, that's rough. Well, hell houses are built on a very similar model, but instead of the fun ghoulish scares that are meant to, you know, like the whole Halloween season kind of spike your adrenaline and provide you with an outlet for your trickery and your treat loving self. Is it a homophobic haunted house? Not exclusively. Thank God. The hell house ushers you through different scenes,

teblos, where characters make the wrong choice. And the hell house is there to let you see how those choices lead them away from Jesus and heaven and eventually lead them to hell. So it's like if a Christmas Carol was nothing but ghost of Christmas future. Yeah, yeah, kind of a kind of, but it's not necessarily you in that situation. You're watching it's little Susie others. It's little Susie. It's yeah, little Bobby. It's little Bobby's mom and dad, that kind of thing. Little little Bobby used a glory hole and the homo aids made him get his throat disintegrated. Yeah, yeah. So by the end of a hell house performance, which can, you know, range and how long it is, but like in my research, roughly an hour, you are meant

to decide once you get to the end of your tour, you are meant to decide if you will dedicate or even rededicate your life to Jesus as your Lord and Savior, or if you will commit your life to Satan. That's very, that's very black and white. Very black and white. Yeah. The late televangelist Jerry Falwell. He is seen as the father of the hell house. And they got started in the 1970s. And it was a way for Christian fundamentalists to respond to Halloween, Halloween being tied to pagan roots and all the traditions of Halloween, trivializing death and Christmas trees tied to pagan roots, though like the celebration of Christmas such as we know it, everything is tied to pagan roots because everything is built on

everything else. So yeah, yeah, but we're talking about a fundamentalist, a evangelical way of viewing the world where there is the good and holy American way. And then there's everything else, very black and white kind of situation. And in this crazy world we live in, in this culture where everyone is riddled with drugs, we're abortion happy, we're shuned up schools, we're drunk driving like crazy. How is the church supposed to engage the youth of this culture? According to John Huggins, a youth pastor from a Kansas congregation, he says- Did he give this quote sitting backwards on a chair with his baseball hat turned backwards? No, there was a guitar, there was a guitar in front of him. I'll take that, I'll take that. As a youth pastor, you're

always trying to find ways to reach this generation in creative and innovative ways. And what's more creative and innovative than community theater, Taylor, I pose that question. I agree, actually. I don't have a problem with that on the face of it. I think he's going to take it in a different direction than even then I might go. They might, it's just the IP, yes. So the typical hell house, and there's lots of different names for the term. A hell house is kind of maybe the most popular, but there's a company that packages a version of a hell house called a judgment house. Some of them have like, just like a theater production would have a unique name. You know, it's not like you're just going to the theater, you're going to see, you know- Bobby's Last Chance.

Right, yeah, yeah. Or, you know, you're, I don't know, a little orphan Annie, right? Whatever. Like, some of them have- If you want to know how hard knock life can get, go to one of these. A little bit, yeah, yeah. And so the term is as loose as we would say haunted house. You know, it's like, oh, there's a haunted house down the street and your neighbors are putting it on. It's kind of like, oh, the church down the street is doing a hell house. It could look like a lot of different things and it can change year to year as well. Right. You know, you know, I don't want to step on your script, but you know the first thing that this calls to mind for me. Is it that episode of King of the Hill where Luan has a hell of a- Yes, it is. It's absolutely that.

It is the episode of King of the Hill where Luan is employed at the hell house and Hank is again, there is an episode, folks, you must get so sick of it and we're sick of hearing ourselves talk, but there is an episode of King of the Hill for everything and they're all good. No, I did rewatch that episode because I was like, wait, there's got to be a King of the Hill. I know it. And in that episode, Sally Field plays the voice of like the church proselytizing anti-Halloween lady, which is great. Interesting. That's a fun role for her. I know. She sounds wonderful. Fun. And they go to a hallelujah house. Hallelujah house. That's what I, yes. Thank you. Yes. Amen. And it's not quite the same. It's like a, it's like a hell house, like a light hell house. Yeah.

Because there's only one scene. It's like these two teenagers on a bench and they're like about to kiss and then it's like, but no kids, you know what happens with premarital sex and then like the stage in her house or whatever it is turns and it's like they're two bodies at the morgue. Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense. Got him. Got him. Fuck you promise, Yudi. Yeah. And that's kind of, I mean, that, I feel like that lack of logic is slightly exaggerated, but only slightly, I'll say for some of these hell houses. Okay. So a typical script includes a demon who works as kind of like a tour guide. They can be called demon tour guide or death monitor is another term. I like death monitor. That sounds like something from one of the enemies I would watch where the

teenagers kill each other. And of course, in all the rehearsals, it gets into a shorthand DM. You're the DM. That's ironic. Yeah, because the Dungeon Master is also called the DM. Do you want to hear more about the history of certain evangelical Christians with loud voices against Dungeons and Dragons as a media? Check out episode 19, Night Trap. Night Trap. So this DM will guide a tour group of about 10 to 15 people through a series of scenes. And these scenes all take place in different rooms. Again, haunted house again. And typically a hell house has anywhere from like eight to 12 of these scenes. And they are based off quote unquote, real life situations. Okay. And we'll talk a little bit about what real life means to the people who are creating this

hell house. Now that sounds like you're questioning their credibility. I am examining their credibility and you know, you know, in the same way that we are all examining what the righteous choices are in this path that we walk via the medium of hallelujah house. Amen, brother. Amen. Amen. Let the church say amen. I want to say by the way, actually, I do want to say I don't want to make fun of Christians. I don't want to make fun of anybody's belief. Yeah, I'm not. This isn't me. This isn't me. And I like to think, Josie, it's not you, because you grew up in Christian school, right? You grew up in Catholic school. I grew up in like Episcopalian. We had a discussion about this, right? Yeah.

You're Episcopalian. It's Catholic light. That's all. We don't want to commit all the way to Catholic, right? No, there's a lot of guilt involved there. We don't want to. But my point is, I have absolutely no reason to knock anybody for their spirituality, for their means of expressing their spirituality. And I know that if you if you are legitimately a God fearing person and you fear the consequences of your children going off the path or whatever, I can absolutely understand feeling alarmed about that and wanting to do something about it. And as that young man said, why not community theater? Yeah, I think that Josie, correct me if I'm wrong, you are going to probably be putting forward some ways that this particular impulse is not

altogether productive or helpful for everybody. Yeah, yeah. But I think I think you're very right to say that it comes from a belief system and it comes from an understanding of the world through a religious viewpoint. And no one should be knocked for that. When that extends to judgment of others, that's when I kind of step in and say like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, I agree. You know, if we're affording everybody, this agency and this understanding and their, you know, access to their own viewpoint, like, let's afford that to everybody, please. And thank you. Absolutely. No, and it's one of those things too, where like, my first instinct there was like, Oh, Jesus, it's a homophobic haunted house. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon or a brain

scientist, as they say, to figure out how, you know, maybe people like that doing something like that is maybe not so great for people like me. So yeah, it's a tough one. It's also important to remember that this isn't just a case of religion. It's like American evangelical fundamentalism, such as it is popularly represented to me, somebody who lives in Canada and admittedly isn't a member of one of these communities. So take what I say with every grain of salt, but the way that it kind of gets reflected to us is as tied up in things like nationalism and culture wars and things like this, as it is to do with Jesus, the man himself as he comes through in Bible, I understand quite a chill peaceful dude who hung around with sex workers and stuff.

Right. Yeah. And so I think a lot of that has to do with other more entrenched culturally conservative things that are bound up in religion, but are also bound up in like, capitalism and gun stuff and like, all kinds of shit, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. Yeah. No, I think that's an important note, though, to say at the top, like, yes, this is a religious activity, but it's also a religious activity in response to a secular culture. Like, there's actually no denying that a hell house is like, taking moves from the haunted house and trying to address a culture that doesn't believe in Christ in the way that the church wants them to in the way that the church thinks will bring them salvation. So that's something to remember to Christianity. That's a

big old tent. Oh, it is a huge tent. Yeah. And most religions are. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So in the hell house, the death monitor or DM, as we will call them sick tour guide, it moves you through each of the spaces, which could be, again, like I said, eight to 12 different scenes. Big house. And they are like breaking the fourth wall, this character, they're talking directly to you, like, please watch out for the doorway or the steps here. But they're also talking with the characters. And then they're also like, they have lines from the script that are directed towards the audience too. They're sort of our conduit between worlds. Exactly. Yeah, they're kind of the Virgil of the underworld. Typically, all the just kind of like a haunted house, more

or less, these hell houses are designed, their target audience is teenagers. So a lot of the scenes, the quote unquote real life situations depict teens in some form of crisis, a crisis that's centered on a social issue. Right. Hey, bro, do you want to smoke this doobie with me? Exactly. Drugs is a big one. Come on, Kathy, everyone's gonna think you're a freeze if you don't put out now. Yeah. So like pre premarital sex, drunk driving, abortion, school shootings, the occult. Wow. Don't read Harry Potter, because that'll lead you to a life of sin kind of thing. Scary Potter. It's a slippery slope, my dude. Once you've been through a few scenes where, you know, these things are portrayed and like if you read Harry Potter, you're going to hell,

you know, all those things. If you read Harry Potter, you'll put that you're a hufflepuff in your dating profile. Yeah. And then once you've been through those scenes, then you typically will visit hell, where all the people from those past scenes who made horrible decisions will be damned there. And, you know, really, really gets you pissless. Wow. And then you are ushered to heaven. Okay. And you get to see how wonderful heaven is. It's the air conditioning is on in that room. You know, it's like, it's really quite lovely. We've got some small snacks if you'd like to enjoy. Well, that actually might be in the next room. So after you've seen hell in heaven, then you are given the opportunity to make a choice. You can walk through the exit,

leave there by accepting Satan, or you can select the white streamer door framed by the glistening bubbles of the softly worrying bubble machine. And there you can chat with a counselor who is most likely a member of that church who will pray with you and ask you to dedicate your life to Jesus and be saved. And then you get a nice little bag of goldfish and a seltzer water. And you give your name and your telephone number and address and you become part of the church. If you have to manipulate me into joining your church, I don't think it's worth joining. I agree. Why are you so insecure, bro? According to the New Destiny Christian Center in Arvada, Colorado,

hellhouses average a 33% conversion and rededication rate, meaning people will say, I believe in Jesus Christ, He is my Savior and Lord, or they will say it again, they will rededicate themselves. No shit, I would do it too. It's awkward to leave. It's awkward to go through the exit door after these people just put on this whole show for you. Yeah. Then I would go through the fucking door and there would be like a counselor, I'd be like, Oh God, I thought there was going to be like an anhymo bar here. Yeah. I mean, there is a good job. You made the right choice. Now go on with the rest of your fucking evening. Go back home and read the Bible. Oh, yeah. As you could probably tell,

a hellhouse is a huge operation. It is like interactive live theater with simultaneous productions in these highly stylized and decorated spaces. Heaven is absolutely gorgeous, like running little streams and soft cushy clouds everywhere. Hell is absolutely terrifying. I saw one depiction where they have like dropped the floor and had put plexiglass over it. So there was a smoke machine underneath the floor and there were people under there and you could see them try and push up against the plexiglass. Very, very scary stuff. That is sick. I would do it so that the glass, I want another barrier of glass and I want the heaven people to be on top of the hell people. Okay. Yes. And maybe like a thin layer of unbaptized

babies in the middle. That's the dream setup. That's, yeah. That's the sketch. Yeah. You came in hot with that one. What the fuck, man? Taylor, these are amateur church productions. There's not a lot of money flowing. There are certainly a lot of volunteers. On average, it's about 125 people to put together a hellhouse of this size, more or less. I will say, I think it's like the part of me that loves communities coming together to put on a show for a cause loves it. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a waiting for Guthman kind of vibe. Yeah. What you just described to me with the people like pushing up to the glasses like that sounds like something cool that a church achieved. And you know, in some ways that is one of the

goals is to kind of bring the church together, bring people together, bring older adults who can help, but also young teenagers from the youth programs, like having them work together. Typically, hellhouses will charge a small fee to get in. So it's also works as a fundraiser opportunity for the church. More than anything, the main goal is to proselytize. It's to get converts to the church from those of us who are the spiritually unresolved, which is a term that I read and liked. I like that. That's actually that's that's a chill way to put it. I don't feel judged by that. I'm not a sinner yet. I haven't been determined to be one yet. So everybody's been a sinner, but every sinner has a past. Every saint has a past,

every sinner has a future is what they say. Oh, that's nice. That's cute. I think so. I believe the main goal is to grow the congregation and yes, literal conversion rate in this case. Yes, yes, they're it's it seems it does seem like they are taking they are taking names, but they're tallying up how many people are converting, how many people are going to the last room and eating the goldfish, you know, I don't know if I believe in this quantitative approach to salvation, but I you know what, I get it. There's got to be somebody doing numbers, you know, it does the counting of souls feels very much like the devil's work that I will say that, but oh, that is an apt observation. Thank you. Thank you. We were commenting

a little earlier about how it's mainly teenagers who are depicted in these scenes. There are some adults who kind of play the parents, but the primary actors are teens. And so of course, teens are acting these parts, amateur high schoolers, not a lot of experience. And so the Hell House kind of takes on this this feeling of like a school play where it's like everybody's trying out for Tevea and Fiddler on the Roof. Who's going to get Tevea this year? Like who gave the best audition? And I bet your Episcopalian school had a kick ass production of Fiddler on the Roof. It was fantastic. You are correct. Culturally authentic. Totally. I played momma number four. Wow, they did what did momma number three ever get sick and you could kind of

work your way up the chain. No, I never did. It never happened. That sucks. But I do remember I had a I had like a little daughter who was in the grade below me. And for the next three years that we were in school together, she'd always be like, Hey, momma four. That's what it did. It brings communities together. It's nice to be in a play because you get another name to call somebody. It's fun. Yeah, exactly. Totally. And so these Hell Houses kind of take on they take on that vibe. If I was a teenager, I would love to be in something like that, which is of course, you can instantly see how fraught that is. I'm gay and I didn't pick it, but I want to be in the damn show and confusing, confusing messages, etc. So there's that aspect.

But I would love to be in something like that. And if I weren't in it and I knew people who were in it, I would come to support them. I would come to see my friend back. Totally. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A slightly disturbing aspect of it is like, instead of saying like, I want to play, you know, Miss Hannigan and Annie, it's like, Oh, I want to be this year. I'm really shooting to be the drug dealer who shoots the little girl or like, I want to be the abortion team gets pregnant and then slits her wrists. Like there's all this like me too. It's very give me a juicy role. I want to be I want to be the kid who gets turned on to heroin through Dungeons and Dragons. That's what I want. Exactly. I want to be under that plexiglass. I want to get choked out by the

smoke machine. Exactly. Yeah. I heard it was sick. I heard everyone was hotboxing the fucking hell last year. I went in. But of course, these are like big emotional scenes that are not done by, you know, trained actors. So they're not up to the material is what you're telling me. It can happen. It can happen. A lot of overacting can happen. A lot of like, you know, if not now when, if you're not going to put your entire dick out during the fucking hell house, then when it's so true. It's so true. Though some of the youth pastors and ministers who are helping the adults who are running these things are sensitive to the emotional toll that this kind of acting can take on high school students. Yeah. According to Matt Brom Gartner, who is a youth minister

at Bethel Church in Temple, Texas, he says, breaks are frequent and everyone has a lot of nights off. They have to be able to detach. We don't want it to bleed over black swan like. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like, totally. I saw dude Natalie listen, black swan. It's that's a top five favorite film for me. That's a very good movie. It's a good one. Do I want someone to go so method for hell house that they like actually end up losing their mind and selling their soul to the devil? Right. No, no, it's you got to balance. You got to you got to get a night off every once in a while. So yeah, again, these are huge operations and it can be really daunting for a church to take it on. It's a lot, especially if they don't have experience with any type of theater too.

So to fill in that gap to provide that heavenly guidance, there is Pastor Kenan Roberts, who has authored the Hell House Outreach How To Kit. Good. For the cheap price of $299. Jesus. You can buy this kit. What is what did this kit better be made out of sterling silver? Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that it provides a do it yourself manual for amateur producers, which includes a script, a DVD of the performance, a sound effects CD, prop and setting breakdowns for every scene and a list of necessary personnel and their responsibilities, including childcare, security and public relations. Okay. It's kind of the full, the full breakdown here. They give you PR services for this or they give you like templates to make

your own PR. They give you templates. Yeah. I don't think that this is worth what he's charging for it. I think it actually is a very good kit. Yeah, could be. But there's no, you have to produce everything in there. Like there's no props or costumes. That's inevitable. And I think that that's part of the fun actually is depending on how neat this is. But you get the kids to make a cardboard car or whatever and that's something they can work like that's fun. Yeah, that's always to me part of the fun of like staging ad hoc community shit is the production thing of like, oh, gee, we need a 12 foot dress. Let's figure it out. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that kind of problem solving there. But how much money does the average small community church have? Maybe more than I think

there's money in that. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is volunteer, but you got to buy the kit is what I'm saying. Oh, yeah, you got to buy the kit. Yeah, I watched a documentary, a 2001 documentary by a filmmaker named George Ratliff called Hell House. And he follows a Hell House in Cedar Hill, Texas. It's Trinity Church. And it's a really good documentary because there's no narration. Like there's kind of what we were talking about before, there's ample opportunity to make fun or to like, if you don't believe in this to kind of see it as all wackadoo. And the documentary doesn't have narration. So it's letting everybody in the congregation letting everybody who's putting up the Hell House speak for themselves. And it seemed to me from that

documentary that like, all of the construction was volunteer and like, all the all the materials for the construction were volunteered as well. They were in kind donations. And it seems like it is such a big production that like, it takes the whole congregation to kind of pull on all the strings that they have. So that makes sense. Yeah. And again, I like I love the idea of it, not the not to be clear, let me let me clarify what I mean by the idea of it. Because we've got a few ideas fighting for aerospace here. I would say I love the idea of again, a community activating in this way toward a common goal, especially if the common goal is is artistic, because that's my soft spot, right? I love that. I just, I yeah, I wish it weren't so fear based, maybe. And when I

say fear based, I mean, like, not spooky Halloween fear based, I mean, like, attempting to strong arm and frighten people into making important life decisions based on your own idea of doomsday kind of thing. Yeah. Okay, so I tried to get my hands on one of these scripts, but as you could probably guess, you have to pay for them and they're not very cheap. So I hear so I was kind of digging around. And there was an article that I read kind of an academic theater article. And this writer, Hank Willen Brink, and I'll mention this also in the in the credits, but he has a an article in theater journal called the act of being saved Hell House and the salvific performative. In this article, he has access to part of Pastor Kenan Roberts, how to kit script. And the part that he

has is the abortion scene. I know that we've we've talked about abortions before. No, can't more, more more more abortions for my heat and soul. Okay, okay, I just wanted to check in. That's fine. As long as you say more than I'll keep going. So in Pastor Robert's script, this, this room, this episode begins with the tour group entering the room as the abortion is being performed. So we don't really get any of the run-up. Jesus Christ. I get a teenage girl, lives in the stirrups. She's facing away from the audience, but still. And then the DM greets the group and says, you're about to witness the product of young love, compliments of the backseat of daddy's brand new beamer. That's a rich family. It's a yeah, yeah. That baby will be fine. It'd

be fine. Yeah, a beamer. Never mind. It won't be because this is an abortion. I forgot. Yeah. While our DM is sarcastically saying this, the young teenage girl, her name is Christie in the script, we can hear her crying. So it's clear that she is feeling pain, that she is she's suffering physical pain and probably emotional pain. Yeah, yeah, probably because everyone's fucking watching. The doctor and the assistant are calming her by assuring her that it is only a medical procedure and reminding her that the abortion was her choice with, you know, emphasis on the word choice there. Her capital C choice. For your capital pro C choice. Yes. Yes. The stage directions read, the nurse places the first piece of bloody baby in the glass bowl. So. Sick. I'm packing a bowl.

Yes. Just put it in that little glass bowl. Yeah. The kit recommends using real pieces of meat to replicate the bloody baby. I suppose you know what, my reaction is aw fuck, but I suppose we are doing haunted house. It is haunted house. Like we're trying to scare people. Yeah. Yeah. If you're coming from there, then okay. The peeled grapes ain't gonna do it here. Now the DM, the death monitor is taunting her with possible futures that her baby would have had if it were to live. It's kind of prickish. It's very prickish. And then the DM will turn to the audience and say, as a scripted line, it's just too bad that I didn't get you, but I will. So intimating that like you could have, you could have not been here because of an abortion, you know, and that a demon

is responsible, would be, have been responsible. Death loves abortions. Yes. Yes. Death is into abortions because it's more dead and he doesn't have to wait. Right. You know, 68 years for you to pack it in emphysema, he can get you now. Exactly. At that point, the doctor pulls out a small handheld vacuum cleaner and fuck off, shoves it between Chrissy's legs as she arrives in pain. Chrissy being played by some 15 year old. Yes. Yes. Yes. Ooh, I don't know about that. Which we know is not how abortions are performed. Not with a dust buster. I've been misinformed. It's pretty horrific, but you're right. The point is horror. The point is this like overwhelming sense of fear and adrenaline at this thing that is seen as amoral. Right. If your religion is

fear based, what better time than Halloween to take advantage of that? Exactly. Yes. That's so clever. I have to tip the cap. You know, there's a lot of connections to kind of like the culture of the moment here. You know, we have the pro choice thing. This version of Robert's script also can include if you so choose to, you know, bring it in the moment that the doctor performs the abortion. So the bloody baby in the bowl kind of thing. The DM will say, and the killing, killing babies is a wonderful choice. It's so convenient. And then the DM will hold up an abortion poster. And then the DM continues saying, after all, a mother does have the right to murder her own child. So that's cool. Okay. There's a lot of like political boom there. Well, I didn't

think there wouldn't be to be fair. Yeah, it's to be expected. We're talking about like if your relationship is based on fear, then what a better time to use than Halloween. I think there's also this feeling that runs through, you know, because these are like, these are God fear and folk. These are people who wake up at 5am to go to church on like a fucking Wednesday. You know what I mean? Like they're very devoted to the church. You just don't imagine them wanting to even entertain this. But the idea behind a Hell House is that if that horror on stage, if that representation is frightening to you, imagine how pain and suffering will feel if it happens to you. It's like there's something more at stake here. It's not just here to scare you. It's here to scare you

straight. You know what I mean? Yeah. And also, if you genuinely believe in like the version of Hell where it's a smoke machine in hands and hands and hands underneath the little square frosted glass cubes from the dentist's office, if you actually believe that Hell is like endless flaying, endless torture, endless suffering, devils taking flaming hot diaries into your mouth and just the worst shit imaginable. Of course, you don't want that for your children. No, no. I'm pretty sure there's a diary apart. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, dude, that's good. I think I read that somewhere. It wasn't the Bible, but it was somewhere. So that is part of the Robert's script. There are of course other scripts and churches can create their own scripts as well. In the documentary Hell House, we follow

a church in Cedar Hill who creates their own scripts all the time. They're kind of like recycling maybe some old scenes and they're bringing up new ones. Oh, I would be all over that. It looks very fun. In fact, it's so funny because that sense of like the teenagers being like, oh, I want to be the guy who shoots the class. Like, I want to be, you know, like, she's like, oh, God. All right. School shootings. That's that's ripped from the headlines. That one got Trinity Church on the map because it was right after Columbine and they did a scene of a school shooting. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Don't wait for him to go cold. You get right in there. That's the Christian thing to do.

But there's also other Hell Houses where as depicted in the Simpsons episode, Ned Flanders, Heck House. Don't know this one. It's just it's from a treehouse of horror. So it's like a mini episode, mini segment within an episode. But Bart and Lisa Nelson and Millhouse are a minister society on Halloween. And so Flanders starts a Heck House and it portrays the seven deadly sins. Some Hell Houses go through the seven deadly sins. And that's what leads you to how Good gimmick. Yeah. If it was good enough for David Fincher. It's true. It's good enough for your local community mega church. So some Hell Houses use kind of the collection of unlinked scenes. You know, you're going to the abortion and then you go to a drunk driving scene and then you go to

a rave, you know. Yeah. But then some churches will follow a single story. And I found from a Texas monthly article, the Bethel Church in Temple, Texas, their Hell House follows the story of one family. And so I'll kind of give you a sense of what this story looks like from this article. As the audience walks through the rooms, they meet two daughters abused by an alcoholic father and an irresponsible mother. Yeah. One of the daughters escapes the domestic strife by talking with a stranger online. Eventually they meet and he murders her, the stranger. Oh God. The other daughter gets pregnant by her jock boyfriend, and then has an abortion. So abortion repeating, obviously, has an abortion with her mother's encouragement. The two of them get in a car

wreck. The mother dies and the daughter shoots herself with a gun left in the glove box. When left all by his lonesome, the father realizes the family came undone when he began drinking. So he hangs himself. A sin. You're left to assume they all wind up in hell, which is depicted in the final room with like pulsing strobe lights, cages filled with chained up sinners, incessant screening, you know, regular old stuff of hell. A Berlin nightclub. A Berlin nightclub, if you will. Sure. Yeah, exactly. There's just, it's dark. There's loud shitty music. There's people chained up and pissing on each other. There's a lot of screaming and you want to go home. It's a Berlin nightclub. Exactly. I think this also gives you a sense of that causality that not quite making

sense. It's kind of like, well, gosh, these daughters, one, she needed to get away from an abusive family situation. And so she met a stranger online. That's not a bad thing. But then she gets murdered for that. And yeah, the daughter has to shoot her. The dad, it's just like, what? What? Why is the daughter meeting someone online a sin? Did she was she going with less than her eyes? Is that what was up? I, perhaps, yeah, I think, you know, a lot of these scripts came from the early 2000s. And I think kids on the internet was very terrifying for adults. I mean, you can harken back to our trick-or-treat infamy from last year. And there's a few instances of how scary kids in the internet can be. So very true. I don't know. Only visit your church's

website, kids. That's the only website that's chill. The landing page for your church. You can also play 2048 if you want a little, but then go right back to the church website. You have to check in on the church website about every 10 minutes. You have to go back, hit refresh. Satan is waiting for you to stop. So he can take it down so he can DDoS your church's website. And that way you won't know that there's a hell house happening. Don't do that, kids. It's fine. You're fine. No. Just keep watching your talk. It's fine. Please don't. So one of the, you know, we're talking about how these scenes don't white make sense, at least in my understanding of the world. The young boy who is molested by a

family member who then develops a chemical dependency, like he is sent to hell because he drugs. It's like, but wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What about, what about like, this doesn't make sense. Like this person needs help. They don't need to be sent to hell. They need the church. They need the church. They need Jesus. Yes. Yes. That's the thing is I was having the same thing I was running into where I was like, they don't really propose you an alternative solution, do they? And then I was like, of course, dumbass, the alternative solution comes at the end and it involves a bubble machine. And it's only one alternative solution. Yeah. That's all you get. It's, if you take Jesus into your heart, it will be fine that your uncle molested you. Like,

my God. Right. Yeah. That's not a, that's not a very compassionate thought. No. I get being like, yo, when I have had difficulties turning to my relationship with Jesus has been really important to me and really beneficial to me. And maybe it's something you don't want to check out. But this, like you're saying this poor, this poor dude who did nothing wrong, died and went to hell. Yeah. There's nothing in the Bible about drugs, by the way. That's Reagan shit. Yeah. That's the Reagan Bible. Exactly. That's that. And again, that's sort of what it comes back to is like, it's tied up in a more complicated type of American cultural conservatism that extends so far beyond shit that's actually written in the Bible.

One of the strange things about a Hellhouse too is that it is meant to depict the vices of our society. And yet it is put together, it is written, it is produced, it is acted by typically people who do not have a lot of exposure to those worlds. So there's some really fantastic scenes in the Hellhouse documentary where there's a guy who's in charge of the rave room. Terrible gig. Well, he loves it. He's, he like really wants to be the DJ and he like, he decorates the room with glow in the dark spray paint and he like puts his website is up on the wall and he met his girlfriend doing the race from last year. Bonus. What a gig. I take it back. It's clearly the hottest spot on the tour. It truly is. Actually, it was cute in the documentary. They interviewed some people,

some guests who went through and they're like, I like the rave scene. You got to dance. Like that's sick. No, he made Batman forever. Yes. Yes. He goes on to do the set design. It's true. That's hilarious. Good for him. So they might have to have a problem though because everyone's favorite room can't be hell. They might need to have a talk with him about cutting less hot beads. Yeah. It's true. It's true. Put on some dirges and some people being flayed to death, man. People are enjoying hell too much. A little too much. Tone it the other way, please. There's a really good scene too where two people are working on the script, two people from the church, and they can't remember the name of the role playing card game Magic the Gathering. Yeah. They keep going

back being like, it's just called Magic. It's like, no, no, it's called Magic, the Gathering. It's called the Gathering. No, it's called Magic the Gathering. But wait, is it Magic? Or is it like a who's on first? That's hilarious. Dude, honestly, the more you describe this, the more sick it sounds and more fun I would have doing it. Yeah. So there's a lot of maybe fun things, but of course, there's some criticism that comes along. Oh, is that so? Yes. Yes. People don't like that. I mean, they are extremely graphic. And they're extremely homophobic and anti-HBTQ to the nth degree. Like, we're talking about like, homosexuality is a choice and AIDS is a divine punishment for making the wrong choice. Bored of that one. Change the record. It's sick

of that fucking song. Yeah. A report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force can be quoted as saying hellhouses are fueling the harassment and violence many gay and lesbian teens experience on a daily basis. Religious leaders who youth trust should be held accountable for the moral and ethical questions these programs raise. Hellhouses are literally demonizing LGBTQ. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. I think that for as much as we're cutting up and having fun here, the thing I think that is most dangerous to an oppressed group is being dehumanized because if people think that you're less than human, they'll do anything to you. And we're seeing it a lot right now with a lot of the hate rhetoric that's being put out specifically against

trans people by kind of far right wing news outlets. And it's such fear based messaging and such demonization and dehumanization. And it's such lies because even if you don't know, you don't know or you don't think you know somebody who's trans or non binary or whatever it is in your day to day life, they're just people. They're just they're people. And that's been on my mind a lot lately specifically around trans people because I feel badly for a lot of my trans friends because of just I think the rise in nastiness toward that community. Totally. And I think it's kind of it has some some points of comparison to what you're talking about here with with Hellhouses, right? No, totally. The Hellhouses are coming at it with this idea that like,

this is the harsh reality out there, y'all, like parents, you might be scared, kids, you might be scared, but this is what's really going on out there. But the reality that the portraying is like, wait, you don't live in that reality. You don't know a trans person. You've never played magic, the gathering. Like there's just like, what, like how do you how do you know that those things are bad? If you don't come at them with some type of understanding, you know, because a lot of this a lot of this is from like the early 2000s, I'd say this is like when Hellhouses are like, boom, popping up. So like Jesus camp kind of era. Yes, kind of the Bush W era, like mission accomplished, you know, taxes are flowing, bushes are growing. Yeah. But it feels like we have a

certain distance from that. The residual effect of that era, though, is this era where we were even more divided? Well, we're not solving that this Halloween. No. So when we're talking about kind of that fear based approach, that really stuck with me because as you mentioned, when I was a kid, I went to church and I went even to like a religious based high school, it was pretty loosely religiously based. But my understanding of spirituality was that it's not tied to negative emotions. Fear and I don't know any type of self doubt or hate that wasn't that's not in God's plan. That's on God's plan that might have been addressed in terms of in a more therapeutic way of, you know, well, think about like how Jesus did it, blah, blah, blah, you know, but it was never those

feelings. Let's use those to get you closer to God. So there's a scholar, Jill Stevenson, who she's actually a professor of theater arts, but she has a paper that I'll quote from where she says specifically about Hellhouses. For many evangelicals, emotion, even extreme emotion is not an overwhelming force that impedes a relationship with God, but one that can instead offer direct access to and even a clear understanding of God. Oh, okay. Yes, that's that's consistent with some of the stuff I've seen about evangelical Christianity. Right. Yeah. And I think that was very helpful for me because I to me it seems so antithetical. So see the youth group 15 year olds Chrissy with her feet in the stirrups,

writhing in abortion pain or whatever, you know, like, what does that have to do all with my spirituality or Halloween or Halloween for that matter. And I think I think that understanding of maybe an evangelical worldview that I do not have direct access to, I have cultural access to because I grew up in the early 2000s, and I live in Texas. And, you know, I kind of I know, I know the shape and size of it, but I think maybe understanding if fear is integral to the way that you commune with God, then a Hellhouse that has these very graphic, horrific, not very logical narratives might make sense, you know. Yeah, I also think that fear is a really hard thing. I don't know, I think it would be hard for me personally to have a faith in my

life that was built around fear. Yeah. A lot of people would hear me say that and be like, that's heresy, bitch, God is to be feared. Right. Yeah. Yeah, God is terrifying, vengeful God. Yeah. Mm hmm. I think there's, there's no way getting around the fact, though, that like, some of this stuff depicted in Hellhouses is traumatic. There, you know, it's like there's a woman in the Hellhouse documentary who is interviewed after she goes through the Hellhouse, and she, she says something about like the abortion scene in that Hellhouse, it reminded her of the two miscarriages that she had before she had her child. And it's like, no shit. Woman, you don't need to be, that is such, I'm so sorry. Like, I am so sorry. And to have that tied to any

type of sense of morality is like, what the fuck is going on? I also found an account of a woman who only gives her her first name Dana, age 35, who's remembering when she was young and going to a Hellhouse when she was part of an evangelical congregation. And she walks into this Hellhouse, the first, the very first room, and everything goes black, and they hear a gunshot go off. And she's like 15, something like that. It's extremely terrifying, just that alone. But then the production essentially breaks the fourth wall. She could hear the cast and crew in the background talking over each other, and like running through the space, people with headsets, and like, what's this? What's that? What's that? And they say like, you guys got to get out of here,

somebody has a gun, get out of here, get out of here. And the whole room, the whole group just turns into a panic rushed, trying to get out of the space. That's so dangerous. This is not that long after Columbine. It's extremely terrifying. She herself cannot move. She is scared shitless. She should be running away for her life, but she's just extremely scared. Petrified. And then everything goes quiet in the room. And a voice comes on like the speaker and says something to the effect of like, what if this was reality? Where would you be going tonight? Heaven or hell? Got him. Got him. Yeah, got him again. Again, continuing to get him again. And so I'll quote from Dana right now. She says, at the time, I wasn't angry or anything. All I felt was relief

that I wasn't going to die. I was so active in youth group, and I even went to a Christian high school. This was my world. But now it's like, how shitty to do that to people. You couldn't do that now because of how prevalent gun violence is. It would be so dangerous, but it was so dangerous then too. It's really rough. Yeah. Yeah, so we have discussed earlier in episodes on this program that sometimes when people get really alarmed in a disaster situation and funnel toward exits, they can die. So that feels really important to point out. It's so scary. Ethically. Ethically. If we put all the ethics to the side, like these kids are traumatized, people could have died. It's just fucked up on a human moral level as a piece of showmanship. Very well done. Clearly,

very haunting. Some may say a haunted house. Scary. So there's that. Well, of course, yeah. My quibbles are moral and taste based, but not artistic. Totally. I agree. I agree. And so does the director of the 2006 Hell House production that appeared at St. Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York. Alex Timbers, along with our homeboy, Pastor Kenan Roberts, who put together the $299 kit. The very same. They put on a production of a Hell House. It's essentially- Oh, wow. So this is like Andrea Bechelli with Celine Dion then. Yeah. Yes. Yes. This is a superstar event. Okay. But it is still secular. It's taking place in Brooklyn. It is not a group church that is putting it on. The actors are not young teenagers who fully believe what they're doing, right?

Really? Yeah. And in fact, the Pastor Roberts had a lot of qualms artistically, aesthetically. Okay. On the night of the dress rehearsal, it's been noted that he was giving a lot of comments to people. And I quote, it needs more intensity. The demons are not scary enough. There are too few people in the rave scene. Why isn't there more prosthetic makeup? Fuck yeah. Yeah. No, he has a lot to say. An interesting element of a secular Hell House is that most often people who are doing a Hell House truly and deeply and like to the bottom of their very being believe that eternal damnation is at stake. Oh, they're acting also for the biggest audience there is. God. Yeah. It's true. They're leaving it out there for God. You can't get that from a secular actor no matter

how hard we try. Even if they're a method actor, it's not going to happen. Not the same. But I think it just proves that theater can be really powerful. Community theater can be extremely powerful, my dude. Here's that. Yeah. It's kind of what we're doing here. That's true. We're cool. We're hip. Yeah. Absolutely. Taylor, do you do you want to go on your own personal Hell House? Nothing would bring me I don't want to say more joy because that doesn't feel like the right approach. Okay. Yes, the answer. The answer is, of course, yes, just let me take a minute to get into the mindset. Okay, okay. Yeah, do do what you have to do to prepare peas and carrots, peas and carrots, peas and carrots, perhaps. Yes, yes. Imagine yourself on a long hay ride to an outbuilding

of a mega church and okay. Wait, wait, wait. We enter a long hallway. Oh, no more horses. No more horses. Go on. And at the end of this hallway is a robed figure wearing a plastic outgassing mask from your local Toonie bin. Thank you. The mask depicts a demon. This is your death monitor or DM. And he turns to you and he says, welcome to your own personal Hell House, Taylor. I'll be your guide tonight. Mind the stairs. Yes, I will. Thank you. I'm clumsy. You walk into the next room where you see a a bus shelter and your DM instructs you that here you will wait for the next bus. You're on your way somewhere and this this is your bus stop. Okay.

And in the room, it's unbearably cold, freezing. And somehow they have the budget to bring in some rain. It is unbelievable. The reality here. They're waterboarding me. Okay, that's a choice. You are waiting and waiting and waiting. The shelter, the roof has even been knocked off. So you have no no real shelter to take under. You're just getting rained on. My hair is getting wet. It's horrible. You you must have been just waiting in this Hell House room for like 20 minutes, maybe born. You can't tell because your phone is dead. Oh, yeah. Dude, you know what? It do be like that. I like my phone's always dead. Continue. You ask if you can smoke and they say, no, you can't smoke in here and it's even worse. Hey, man, can I fire up a dart if you're going to

keep me in this room? Just smoke a wet cigarette inside a church. That sounds like a poem right there. You may have just. Beauty. Finally, a cardboard cut out of a taxi enters the room. The bus will never come. Thank you. And this will be how you get to your destination. You get into the car and so does your DM. He takes the seat next to you. It's a nice touch that the bus isn't resolved. That feels very accurate. Right. Your driver's name, your taxi driver's name is Terry. Okay. And he's evangelical and drunk. So he's trying to get you to come to church. Remember, this is your own personal Hell House. So it's geared towards. Yeah, this sounds pretty shitty. I'm talking a lot.

This sounds pretty boring. He tries to get you to come to church with him. All the while, he's veering over lane markers and he's snatching side view mirrors from nearby parked cars. You can smell the whiskey on his breath from the back seat. Hate it. Even your DM, who is right there next to you, kind of leans over and says, I don't know about this. Only that this is just the fucking worst. I'm so sorry. This isn't part of the show. So finally, Terry, he gets lost a few times. He takes the wrong way if you hear in there. They gave too much time to Terry. Finally, you're dropped off at this huge McMansion house.

Okay. You go inside and you see all your closest friends who you have invited to a royal rumble watch party. Oh, Christ, what's going to happen? This makes me so mad. Not all of them know about wrestling. They're not all wrestling fans, but you have decided that this will be their education. Oh, no. This will be the moment where they will learn about your passion. Their enjoyment of the thing you love most is riding on this evening. You're thrilled. You're nervous. How did you replicate the voice inside my head so accurately? Is what I want to know. The fucking weird voice that's like, look at her face. She's not having fun. You did this. I know you, Taylor. I know you. Yes. I have a few questions, actually.

Great budget on this thing, one. I pulled out all the stops for you. And they're doing this for just everybody, apparently. They've got the royal rumble scenario set up. Yeah, special. Yeah, that's one observation too. Who's canonically, who's McMansion am I in? What is this? Where am I? You learn this as you enter the living room, and there is a TV screen larger than the biggest wall in your apartment. It's ginormous. And you realize also in attendance is every Real Housewife from your favorite season. Okay, sure, sure. So my favorite, what's my favorite season? Real Housewives of New York season three. So we're talking Jill Zarin, Bethany's there, Alex McCord,

Countess Luann, of course. Even Countess Luann is there, especially Countess herself. Yes, yes. Yes. Ramona, Sonia, the crew, the most stacked, Cat Kelly, Bensimone, my god, Killer's Row, proceed. So you're in a Real Housewives of McMansion. That's what's happening. Watching the royal rumble with all my buddies. Yes. It's been a long, and it's been a long, wet night. Yes. Yeah. But wait, no. How could this be, Taylor? None of the Real Housewives are drinking. It's weird. They're dieting for the upcoming reunion episode, and they all want to lose weight, so they aren't eating a thing. And so strangely, they're not drinking at all. They're sober fucking sallies. It's horrific. So they're just being,

like, boring? Yes. That's tough. The royal rumble starts, and your anxiety is through the roof. Will this disparate group of friends understand this passion of yours? Will they eat a little block? Just look at their bones the whole night and hate you forever. Oh my god, you're such a dick. No, it's worse. The first match of the royal rumble ends, and the housewives are all in agreement. Wrestling is fake, Taylor. They link the conversations about the whole thing is made up and stupid, and everyone starts agreeing and turning on you. Why would you do this to us, Taylor? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. What is that? Wait, what does this have to do with God? This is your own personal hell house.

Yes, no, I get that. I trust me. I get it. You made that very clear. Okay. You know what? All of a sudden, you're ushered to a new room. You think a bit of yourself, don't you? And the DM leads you. Your head is down. You're just like, oh god. Leads you into the next room, and there's the devil himself. Sporting Lulu lemons and a North Face jacket smoking from a chunky vape. His voice scratches at you. All of your decisions so far have led you here to my home. Hell, you're dancing with me now. That's a direct quote from a script, by the way. Just saying. Sandstorm by Darude is playing loudly ad nauseam. Love it. The darkened room, strobes with fiery hellish whips of flame. The room is filled with middle

school boys twisting glow sticks and doing so badly. And when they drop the glow stick, they just snap their fingers in that annoying way where it's like... What? I feel like you kind of made this into your hell a little. You know, there's a little bit of, a little bit of me and everything I write. That's fair enough. And trying to get some respite from this hellish space. Perhaps it's my help. Perhaps it's yours. You enter a lecture hall where a monotone man is at the lectern, giving an in-depth lecture on the exact qualifications of what makes art good and what makes art bad. My monster. The PowerPoint slides are filled with texty paragraphs with

words so small you can't even read them. The only graphics are screenshots of intricate spreadsheets and the one video that he has won't play properly. And he spends ages trying to get it to work. Does that kind of fulfill more of Taylor's health? I don't think that's, I think you've put together a very convincing presentation unlike this person. Taylor, you are, you might not know it, but you're scared stiff. Tears are just rolling down your cheeks. No, I know it. Absolutely. Having been waterboarded and tortured. I know you hate tortures, though. My favorite thing, you've hired my closest friends and the real housewives of New York season three to get one over on me. Oh yeah. That scans. If there was a paycheck in

it, I'm sure. Finally, your DM leads you to a quiet, low-ceilinged room. White lights are twinkling through the sheer linens draped from the ceiling. There's middle-aged women with wings strapped to their back, looking beautifically on. There's a kindly, white-haired man sitting at a judge's bench and he hits his gavel, then reads from his book, Taylor Basso. Please step forward. All right. What's it gonna be? Taylor Basso. Your name is not in the book of life. Please step back. Okay. The kindly woman with wings pulls at your sleeve. Taylor, sweetie, you have the choice. Will you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? If you do, you can have a packet of goldfish and a seltzer in the next room. Oh, thank God. Thank God, please. With a prayer

counselor, you don't accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. That means you accept Satan and you can leave through the parking lot. The DM looks at you and he tilts his head demonically. He says, the choice is yours, Taylor. So what'll it be? You know what? I'm gonna go yes. When the real housewives and my personal friends were starting shit with me during the Royal Rumble, where else could I look but up to the sky and be like, help me, please? Yes. Well, you get your seltzer and it's a lime flavor. So thank God. Yeah. Thank God. Then you have to sit in a sweaty prayer circle for about 40 more minutes. I have downwards. You write down your name, your telephone number and your address,

and you devote your life to Christ, then and there. How'd that go for me? The future will tell. The future will tell. Sick. Yeah. That was really something. We're going to hell for this one, surely. Oh yeah, big time. Did you ever consider in the writing of that what your own personal hell is? I was trying to channel you as focusing on you. Oh, thank you. So consider it. I think maybe the middle school boys dancing is definitely a layer of hell, you know? You know, I'm not gonna lie. They got it pretty right with like the teenager getting a weird abortion. That's pretty fucked up. I wouldn't enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Not coming from a fear-based view of the world. That felt a lot for me. I didn't commit that to your hellscape. Thank you. I feel

like that should just be a de facto part of everyone's personal hell. They just chuck that one in on the end. Yeah, that seems fair. Yeah. That's your last big story for the season done, Josie. It's true. How you feel? A little sweaty. Hell is hot. They do say that. But it's the humidity more than anything down there. Yeah, I've heard it's a moist heat down there. Yeah. The next episode, in addition to being an episode of Trick or Treat Infamy, is going to be our season finale. Season finale, and we have a guest joining us. We're gonna be joined by writer, host of things, Poet Gerard Collada. He's gonna be doing our finale for us. He's gonna be pretty sick. Spooky. Playing a little trick on you, but hopefully it'll be a treat.

Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also follow us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. If you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review, or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. The sources for this infamous word, Houston Batman, remains mystery decades after recorded encounter, published Sunday, June 17, 2018 by ABC 13 Eyewitness News, and I also watched the accompanying YouTube video. I also read an excerpt from The Monster Files, written by Nick Redford. The sources that I used for this episode were an article from The Guardian, written by Tom Dart,

published October 31, 2015, called Welcome to a Texas Hell House, where wayward Christians are scared straight. I looked at an article on playbill.com, written by Kenneth Jones, published October 1, 2006, called Mind the Flames, Cautionary Theater Event, Hell House, Gets Brooklyn Run. I read the article Not Your Typical Hell House, written by Maurice Chama, published October 30, 2013, in the Texas Monthly. I read an article from thecut.com by Melissa Dahl, published October 31, 2018, entitled Four X Evangelical Women on Their Memories of Hell Houses. I looked at the website judgmenthouse.org. I read the article The Act of Being Saved, Hell House and the Salvovic Performative, published in Theater Journal, 2014, written by Hank

Willenbrink. I watched the documentary Hell House by George Ratliff, that came out in 2001. I watched a Simpsons episode, Treehouse of Horror, season 19, episode 5, and the segment was called Heck House. And lastly, I watched season 2, episode 4 of King of the Hill, the episode entitled Hello Wean. The interstitial music you heard earlier is by Mitchell Collins, and the song you are listening to now is Tea Street, by Brian Steele. Trick or treat!