Ghosts and Goblins and Go-Go Poles

I give in.  After four years of dating my girlfriend, I’ve come to accept a simple truth: Octobers belong to Diana.  Because Halloween is her favorite time of year, Diana always insists on packing our October weekends with Halloween-related activities.  We spend a lot of time watching terrible and tedious horror movies, carving pumpkins, shopping for costumes, setting up decorations, and paying people to scare us in all of the local (and not so local) haunted maze attractions.  In the vernacular of Halloween connoisseurs, those haunted maze attractions are simply known as “haunts”.

I’ve grown to tolerate haunts over the years, but I still can’t love them.  I’m still a little sour on the idea of paying money to be hassled by screaming wackos who  get in your face and threaten to touch you, but who never do.  If I wanted to spend money to experience that level of abusive frustration, I’d be much better off visiting my neighborhood S&M strip club.  At least there, they touch you a little after you pay extra.  Speaking of which, part of the reason why I’m a little uncomfortable with haunts is that they subject me to the same kind of mental and moral dilemmas that I experience in strip clubs, but in far more hostile settings.

There’s a similar element of dehumanization involved in haunts as there are in strip clubs.  In either setting, people place themselves on display for your amusement, inviting you to regard them not as people, but as scenery — as props in an elaborate stage production. A stripper on stage transforms herself into an object of sexual desire, and your enjoyment of the show depends on your ability to objectify the performer. The show seems a lot less fun when you you start looking the stripper in the eye instead of staring at her curves, and you imagine her applying your folded dollar bills towards her rent or next month’s car payment.

In an oddly analogous way, your enjoyment of a heavily staffed haunt also depends on your ability to suspend a portion of your human empathy. Within the confines of those haunted mazes, cast members become monsters, beasts, and supernatural fiends. They pop out of dark corners with intimidating growls and screams, or they stare at you blankly in the center of a room beneath a macabre layer of fake blood and graphic wounds, forcing you to find a path around them. When these cast members confront you, you have a choice between recoiling in fear and fleeing the “monsters” at your heels, or laughing with good nature and smiling at the cast members — the people who are placing you in this ridiculous and socially awkward situation. Those who cringe and flee suspend their disbelief just long enough to believe in their tormentors’ lack of humanity. On the other hand, I feel a little guilty for laughing and smiling at the cast members because it almost feels like I’m celebrating my own dignity at the expense of others who would willingly sacrifice a little bit of their own dignity to frighten me. Those are the kinds of situations where I feel like I can never win. I’ve never walked out of one of those haunts feeling anything else other than relief that the ordeal is over.

Halloween approaches fast this year.  Soon it will be the 31st, and then it will be November.  I just need to hold out a little longer, and the whole ordeal will be over.  Freaking Halloween.  What other time of year can you walk down the street armed with a chainsaw and a bloody hatchet and people will regard you with smiles of approval?  I’m just looking forward to better days, when the only people whom I will overtly objectify are strippers and exotic dancers.  Man, that’ll be sweet.