The Devil Inside
My new renter this week is Texas RV Travel Blog. I accepted the bid because Cyber Celt is a faithful weekly visitor of AOGB and a rather persistent (and patient) who has been faithfully to bidding to spend a week here, all expenses paid. I've never been to Texas, but if I ever do go, at least I know to hit up for the hot spots. Please don't make Cyber Celt's bid be a waste. Take a second to click on the link!
Last weekend, in an effort to ring in the Halloween season, my boyfriend, his family and I went to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.
I've done my share of haunted houses and hayrides in my life, but you reach a certain age and suddenly there's something so not spooky about a smoke machine and a karaoke compilation of simulated ghosts and goblins. Even Vincent Price's "rap" in Thriller doesn't hold the same err, thrills it once did.
The last spooky activity we did was Fright Fest at Six Flags a few years back. This is still significantly scary in the eyes of say, a ten year old. I can still remember the year I went through the haunted house at Six Flags as a child. I suppose I should use the term "went through" lightly, however, given the circumstances. I had to be about six or so. Within seconds some creature said to me, "I'm going to hang you up by your pigtails." I was closer to the entrance than the exit at that time. I don't think I need to tell you which door I ran to. Of course the real scary event that night was that my dad couldn't find me in the dark and ended up going through the whole thing alone, unwittingly. And what's even scarier? The whole place burned down a year or two later when someone dropped a cigarette and started a fire, part of the local Six Flag's string of bad luck.
Now that's the type of thing that really freaks me out.
Come to think of it, when I was a kid, all things seemed scarier, like the dark for instance. To think there was a time I used to make one of my parents wait at the edge of the stairs while I ran up to get something in my room seems like eons ago. Still, if you dig deep enough, you can relight the spooked out side of you, if you're open and willing to it, that is.
So while cheesy haunted houses don't hold the same appeal they once did, the real deal certainly gives me a fair share of the heebee jeebies. This is why the Eastern State Penitentiary was so spooky in theory, because it was a real, live prison that is rumored to still be haunted today.
Now it doesn't matter what you believe really, there's something that should be said for returning to the scene of a crime, literally. The haunted tour itself was pretty typical fare. I wasn't scared, but I was impressed with how much went into it. The line wrapped around the block and the trip took a good 40 minutes or so to go through. If nothing else, they put a lot into it. The scariest part was near the beginning when one guy kept following closely behind me saying, "Hey, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you something," while blowing on my hair. He might have just been a run of the mill perv. After all, it was Philadelphia so anything is possible. It also could have been the son of the guy who wanted to hang me by my pigtails all those years ago. What can I say? Some families take follow-through on such things very seriously.
After the tour is over, you are emptied into a courtyard where a zombie-fied DJ spins Halloween-like tunes Don't Fear The Reaper and Superstitious. Suddenly, you're zapped back into reality when you see all the merchandise that is available for purchase. If you enter another room you can read up on the history of the prison and the rather inhumane things they did to the prisoners who stayed there, the most famous of which being Al Capone.
That's when part of me was spooked on a whole other level. I imagined it being roughly one hundred years ago when the flesh and blood prisoners were doing time. If only they had known that their crime would one day be a tourist attraction. There are a slew of things available for purchase, like t-shirts and mugs featuring Al Capone's face. Monster Mash like spooks are one thing, but building on real, life-changing crimes is another level of scary altogether.
Call me crazy, but there's something unsettling to me about making crime a commodity. Alive or not, it just seems wrong that we immortalize the actions of these men posthumously. I guess what they said all along was wrong. Crime really does "pay".
Talk about having sympathy for the devil.
Last weekend, in an effort to ring in the Halloween season, my boyfriend, his family and I went to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.
I've done my share of haunted houses and hayrides in my life, but you reach a certain age and suddenly there's something so not spooky about a smoke machine and a karaoke compilation of simulated ghosts and goblins. Even Vincent Price's "rap" in Thriller doesn't hold the same err, thrills it once did.
The last spooky activity we did was Fright Fest at Six Flags a few years back. This is still significantly scary in the eyes of say, a ten year old. I can still remember the year I went through the haunted house at Six Flags as a child. I suppose I should use the term "went through" lightly, however, given the circumstances. I had to be about six or so. Within seconds some creature said to me, "I'm going to hang you up by your pigtails." I was closer to the entrance than the exit at that time. I don't think I need to tell you which door I ran to. Of course the real scary event that night was that my dad couldn't find me in the dark and ended up going through the whole thing alone, unwittingly. And what's even scarier? The whole place burned down a year or two later when someone dropped a cigarette and started a fire, part of the local Six Flag's string of bad luck.
Now that's the type of thing that really freaks me out.
Come to think of it, when I was a kid, all things seemed scarier, like the dark for instance. To think there was a time I used to make one of my parents wait at the edge of the stairs while I ran up to get something in my room seems like eons ago. Still, if you dig deep enough, you can relight the spooked out side of you, if you're open and willing to it, that is.
So while cheesy haunted houses don't hold the same appeal they once did, the real deal certainly gives me a fair share of the heebee jeebies. This is why the Eastern State Penitentiary was so spooky in theory, because it was a real, live prison that is rumored to still be haunted today.
Now it doesn't matter what you believe really, there's something that should be said for returning to the scene of a crime, literally. The haunted tour itself was pretty typical fare. I wasn't scared, but I was impressed with how much went into it. The line wrapped around the block and the trip took a good 40 minutes or so to go through. If nothing else, they put a lot into it. The scariest part was near the beginning when one guy kept following closely behind me saying, "Hey, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you something," while blowing on my hair. He might have just been a run of the mill perv. After all, it was Philadelphia so anything is possible. It also could have been the son of the guy who wanted to hang me by my pigtails all those years ago. What can I say? Some families take follow-through on such things very seriously.
After the tour is over, you are emptied into a courtyard where a zombie-fied DJ spins Halloween-like tunes Don't Fear The Reaper and Superstitious. Suddenly, you're zapped back into reality when you see all the merchandise that is available for purchase. If you enter another room you can read up on the history of the prison and the rather inhumane things they did to the prisoners who stayed there, the most famous of which being Al Capone.
That's when part of me was spooked on a whole other level. I imagined it being roughly one hundred years ago when the flesh and blood prisoners were doing time. If only they had known that their crime would one day be a tourist attraction. There are a slew of things available for purchase, like t-shirts and mugs featuring Al Capone's face. Monster Mash like spooks are one thing, but building on real, life-changing crimes is another level of scary altogether.
Call me crazy, but there's something unsettling to me about making crime a commodity. Alive or not, it just seems wrong that we immortalize the actions of these men posthumously. I guess what they said all along was wrong. Crime really does "pay".
Talk about having sympathy for the devil.
<< Home