During my high school years I worked several seasons at a local haunted house. Through the month of October I worked every weekend and then the last week of the month we were open every night. I enjoyed the job, but more than scaring people I really enjoyed all the fucking crazies interesting people that I had the opportunity to meet.
We had one guy who had lost his leg in an accident and used a prosthetic to get around. When he had his jeans on you couldn’t even tell, so good was he at walking on that prosthetic. He would even take part in a little touch football before work time. It’s embarrassing to get schooled in football by a one-legged man. When it came time to work he unstrapped his good prosthetic and exchanged it for an old, shabby one. In the haunted house he sat on a stretcher and used an axe to hack away at his “leg,” all the while screaming like a lunatic. He was a hoot.
One guy liked to hide a little tape recorder in his room and record people’s screams. He would play his favorites back for you at the end of the night and give you play-by-play commentary on the screamers.
I remember a night when I began to notice a smoky smell accompanying the “smoke” in the haunted house. Machine-made smoke should not smell like actual smoke, you understand. Machine-made smoke is noxious and chemical smelling and sticks to your contacts; actual smoke smells like, well, it smells like smoke. So I got nervous and sent word that I thought we had a problem. Turns out the guy manning the smoke machine fell asleep with his foot on the mechanism and the smoke machine caught on fire. Ironic, no?
Here’s a news piece on the Museum of Horrors that I found on YouTube. This was produced long after I had worked there. Near the 1:40 mark you’ll see a room with glowing dots. That was my room. I wore a black jumpsuit and mask outfitted with the same dots on the wall, thereby making me nearly invisible unless I moved. I was a good Dotman. The guy in the video sucks.
Anyway…the fellow that owned the Museum of Horrors, John Anderson, was a pretty weird guy. Not weird as in satanic or occultish, but weird as in he liked to bang crack-head hookers on Faulkner lane and then joke about it. With his wife in the next room. And he expected you to laugh right along with him. And he smelled a bit like rancid hamburgers.
But anyway, I got to scare the shit out of people, so I put up with him.
Turns out in addition to banging crackheads John also likes to talk shit online. Unfortunately, John Anderson insulted the wrong guy. According to this Waco Tribune-Herald article, John called some dude a “nerd” on a message board. Apparently the fellow didn’t take kindly to being called a nerd, so he drove from Virginia to Waco, Texas, and burned John Anderson’s house down.
Real life scary is always scarier than make-believe scary. I talk shit online constantly. Not a day goes by that I don’t intentionally antagonize someone online. Guess I need to put up smoke detectors.
That was truly a sucky Dotman. Does it make you feel old when you are nostalgic for the Haunted House of Yesteryear??? Maybe this year you can go around banging kids with your cane. That, and spouting off phrases like, “you kids be careful now!” and “Hey! Get off my newly mown lawn!” That’ll scare ’em for sure.
He was sucky. I was awesome.
….I’m not that curmudgeonly, am I?
1. I need proof on your supposed skills (I’m sure you have ninja skills, computer hacking skills…). Here’s what I think. i think that that video is really you.
2 Now that you have a lawn, I bet you are going to be that old gezeer (aka Bart’s grandpa) yelling about kids these days. So how do you feel being over the hill?
3 Have I antagonized you yet? I trying to think of the worst insult I can throw at you. (Might have to call your old friends M. O. Ronsky or maybe Pronaus?)