Special Ingredients: Manifests of Evil in Mansfield

This idea was proposed a month in advance by Christy’s father, but before I get into the details, let me present to you the cast of characters for this vacation-themed farce. There’s also going to be a lot of observations I’ve had over the years about this family, specifically Daddy, because they're vital to the story. This is a build-up of topics I should have touched on years ago, but now its here for your Springer-style entertainment.

The lead antagonist is Daddy, a retired postal worker who is somewhat of a shut-in due to his glaucoma, rendering him the eyesight of a rhinoceros. His regular exercise routine consists of sitting on his old recliner in the bedroom and shouting a people to do things for him, so you can probably imagine what toll this took on his physique.

At some point in his life, he got it into his head that he should have a degree of power over his wife. No one else agreed to this, a defiance he responded to by adding just a little more aggression, anger, and attempts at control until it reached a point where he demanded control over the smallest, most idiotic aspects of his family’s life, and would respond with hellish fury should his orders be questioned. Even his humor was mean-spirited, especially to his wife, who serves as the target of his bubbling rage. Maybe he thinks she did something to him that emasculated him and never let the grudge go (he’s good at holding grudges, shockingly), but having known Christy’s mother’s kind nature and restraint, whatever it was must have been petty, as she’s known for being straightforward.

If I was forced to point to a single incident that would best define his appetite for any kind of power, I would have to cite the time he went on vacation with his sons, leaving Christy, her sister, and her mother at home (and to the best kind of vacation they ever experienced: the one with no Daddy) and left a list of places they could eat at and the days they were to eat at them. Ponder that one for a while and move on.

Vacations are the sole joy in Daddy’s life. Okay, “joy” might be far too simple and misleading of a term for it. Vacations were a way for him to get away from the oppressions of sitting at home all day while everyone else was at work or school, being productive members of society. I’m going to lay off of him for staying at home, because there isn’t a lot you can do career-wise when you can hardly see, and he did put in a lot of time at the post office, so his condition really isn’t something I’m going to tastelessly harp on any longer. Watch me fail at this task.

I will, however, get back to the vacations. No one else really wants to go on these vacations, because that means being stuck in the van for hours with Daddy, virtually guaranteeing being trapped when his fury randomly boils over. Nothing says “family fun” like having your eardrums try to collapse in on themselves to block out the screaming, followed by ten minutes of staring awkwardly at some focal point until the ill-ease goes away.

Vacations are just another way for Daddy to get a little more power, since he decides where to go for the most part. And if he senses he might be getting a little too demanding, he’ll pass the blame onto someone else and claim they wanted to go to a particular place. Usually his youngest daughter, who has Downs syndrome and has a lot of opinions about where she wants to go, but little control over it. Scratch that, I’ve taken her to the mall and restaurants, and she gets what she wants or there’ll be trouble.

These vacations, while sewn together by the threads of Daddy’s power hunger, provide one aspect of his character that causes me pause when I bash him. During these trips, he usually pays for food and lodging, providing hundreds of dollars of accommodations without any monetary contribution on my part. I reconcile this by chalking it up as just another way he can gain a little more power, but I think it shows a little sunlight to his personality before he carries on and causes the clouds to come in and drowned it out again.

To give you a vague understanding about how large a part family vacations play on his personality, look back at my article on my trip to Branson, Missouri. The amount of content I could insert to expand on that trip would form a book, and I have a long list of notes recording the things he said and did ready to cram into a best-seller, should I ever get around to fiction again. No joke on that.

But enough of him for now, when we have two other characters to elaborate on, outside of Christy, whom will receive no description because she doesn’t have quirks that fit into this story, outside of her sadistic tendencies to sucker me into these trips. Christy’s mother usually serves as the whipping horse of these trails of tears. She is a strong Catholic woman who shows both kindness and brutal honesty with a constantly cheery attitude that’s enough to make anyone who meets her wonder where they can obtain whatever drugs she’s on.

I have to emphasize the “Catholic” part, because her faith serves to comfort and entrap her in her marital misery. Because of that keen little clause in the Catholic handbook that says divorce is forbidden (annulment is fine and basically the same thing, except everyone involved is supposed to commit intellectual suicide and flashy thing the wedding out of their memory), she’s more or less stuck in the relationship until death do them part. In return, the church will provide her comfort for only one offering a week. Actually, now I understand that “no divorce” thing.

She’s usually put into the position of driver as she carts our melancholy band around the country at the whims of Daddy. Yet she’s a smart woman (outside of her choice in marital partners) and picks her battles, smoothing over Daddy’s rage with a few chirpy quips spackled with logic. She also acts as our mouthpiece when we want to suggest something that might piss him off so we don’t feel the brunt of his wrath. Hey, she sticks with the guy, so let her handle him. Maybe if we keep this up, she’ll wise up and cut him loose. We only look for the easy way out for her own good.

She works at a charter school for at-risk children. In Daddy’s world, you need to replace “works” with “wastes her time instead of taking me places .” As far as I’m concerned, she’s the only legitimate bread winner in the house, yet Daddy insists hers is not a real job. To rip the open wound open and pour the entire can of salt in it, all of her money from her fake job falls into Daddy’s grip, but don’t fret! She gets an allowance out of the money she earns which I calculated to be ten dollars a week. I’m not kidding. I made this much mowing the lawn when I was a kid. Are you starting to see the picture more clearly?

The final fringe character in this dysfunctional drama is Katie, the youngest daughter with Downs syndrome. I’m sure an unhealthy portion of you are scrunching up just a little as you anticipate the inevitable atrocity of my ripping into a handicapped child. This action is not without warrant, but I’ll give you a minute to analyze your ironic prejudice before moving on. Here’s the topic sentence: People with Downs syndrome are people too, with all of the quirks and imperfections entitled thereto.

Katie is at once the most insane and level-headed of the bunch. On one hand, she has an unhealthy obsession with slasher movies, like Scream, Child’s Play, and Barney. You think the last one is a joke, but she’s really into Barney, though this isn’t as far off from the others as you would think. That purple terror could swallow a child whole before they could soil their pants, though they might take this course of action as they’re body is slowly broken apart by the theoretically potent stomach acid. I’m fairly positive she’s also into the Wiggles, and if these mid-aged, singing, grinning buffoons don’t scream “child molester,” I don’t know what does.

Now that I’ve finished marching in the ranks of the pseudo-intellectual cynical bigots who derive most of their joy in life by demonizing the innocence of childhood, I’ll continue.

Katie loves her scary movies, having seen Scream and Child’s Play more times than all of the cast and crew combined. That’s one handy thing about her mental retardation: she can watch her favorite movies and shows over and over again and still draw from them the kind of delight that fades shortly after the first run-through for the rest of us. Most of you may pity her for her condition (isn’t this a bit egotistical?), but all Katie needs in life is a playlist of Scream, Child’s Play, Barney, Malcolm in the Middle (I’m not sure why. Maybe she desires what she can never have, since Fox has ignorantly neglected to release the rest of the series on DVD), and ER (she likes the blood) running on a loop and she’ll be happy for the rest of her life. Meanwhile, you will be vainly pursuing fulfillment in other futile areas, such as money, fame, and religion. Who is to be pitied now?!

I have my concerns Katie takes things a little too far. Her personal sign language for slasher films is making a slicing motion at her neck, leaving the horrified observer to guess what she’s trying to say (here’s a hint: the slashing gesture followed by a V sign is Scream 2, in case it comes up in life. She’s not trying to indicate she’s killed two people and you might be next). She demands to dress as Ghostface for Halloween every year, though I wouldn’t count her as much of a threat if she ever decides to take things to the next level. Speaking from my trick-or-treating experience with her, she’ll be more concerned with taking her mask off and finding someone to lug around her knife than killing people.

Still, I’m awaiting the day she makes the transformation into Katie Voorhees, and I can only hope I haven’t tormented her enough to earn a spot on her list. I suppose I could abstain from sex to increase my odds, but this is a sacrifice I’m unwilling to make even in the light reflected off of a maniacal Down syndrome girl’s machete.

Just in case a few of you sickos didn’t get the joke and made up your own twisted versions: a standard horror movie rule states if you have sex, you get killed. Fire up a Friday the Thirteenth and get your mind out of the gutter.

Her other main interest is collecting baby dolls. While this would seemingly make her a lot more innocent (or more demented because of the stark contrast), her methods of care for these babies are psychotic at best. For one, she has amassed enough of them to receive funding from the government to start her own orphanage, which would allow her to embezzle this money and purchase more dolls, leaving the others forgotten in the bottom of a plastic bin to live out their existence as dumpster babies.

And yet she commands more every Christmas. And, like clockwork, some thoughtful parent or other clueless relative cheaps out and tosses her a couple, usually adding a satisfied chuckle as Katie unwraps her present and lets out a sound of glee as she realizes she can finally regulate those old babies from last year to the dust bin. Until next year’s replacement comes along, Katie will demand, sometimes to tears, diapers and wipes for the baby, assuring it will be well cared for until it’s abandoned.

Or not, since she has some kind of perverse bondage fetish. She frequently uses a parenting technique which I think should be more carefully considered wherein she puts Band Aids OVER their mouths in what I can only assume an effective effort to silence the cries she hears emanating from them in her head. It’s not unusual to find several babies gagged with bandages slumped in a pile, wondering what they did to deserve this miserable continuation.

If I were in charge of Katie’s annual baby supplying, I would save the package from a baby given two or three years before, spirit it from its dumpster prison, probably giving it hope for a new life before sealing it back up in its packaging, wrapping it up, and giving it to Katie for Christmas. She probably wouldn’t know the difference! And we would save money, space, and thousands of baby dolls from being subjected to this Hell. The half dozen or so sacrificial babies that would be required for this to work would have to relive their damnation every time the gift wrap was rent asunder, revealing onto them the grinning visage of Katie in what I can assume is a very 1408 moment for them, but they would get used to it eventually.

I told you I treat Katie as a person. Why else would I make fun of her? Besides, she stands as the sanest person on these doomed expeditions.

Because of her Downs syndrome and the fact she’s well taken care of, Katie’s reality seems to exclude most of the hostilities the rest of us are subjected to. Sure, she can hear the yelling and she’s not completely clueless about the goings on. The more subtle conflicts and the psychological and philosophical brouhaha that is her family alludes her, leaving her relatively unscathed until she dons that hockey mask.

It has been said several times by Christy that if Katie didn’t have Downs syndrome, family life would have been completely unbearable. While there are a lot of issues with raising a child with Downs syndrome most probably don’t even think about, the practical upshot is Katie has a sunshiny if bratty personality that acts as a flashlight in the darkness of Daddy’s oppression. Every child in that family has some sort of mental tick which comes from living in a high-stress environment, and had Katie not had Downs syndrome, she would have only added to the drama. As she is, she’s the jester of this wayward court.

So now that you’ve met the crew, allow me to establish the setting. At some point, Christy told me Daddy decided to drag the family to Mansfield, Ohio to go to a haunted prison. In fine Daddy tradition, he put the blame for this trip squarely on Katie, because “she likes scary.”

Another fine Daddy tradition is turning a somewhat hefty roundtrip into a vacation unto itself by insisting on staying at a hotel no matter what. We’ve gone to a wedding in Columbus, which is three hours or so away, and he insisted on wasting money on staying there too. While it would have been more of a burden to drive all the way back to Oregon, it was an entirely reasonable timeframe. Mansfield is about two hours away, and while the scheduled kept us out a lot later than I expected, we could have been home by one in the morning and gotten on with our lives. Then again, Daddy was paying for everything, so what do I care?

I need to also mention the tradition of schedules. Despite the fact Daddy seems to have a plan, like the Bush administration, he never bothers to share it, and may, in fact, only have the end goal in mind and hasn’t thought of how to get there. The mission seemed simple: go to a haunted house. The execution, however, was so convoluted and filled with random events, I’m surprised we ever got around to the actual haunted house. I always think I have a basic idea of what’s going down, but Daddy usually fills that idea with some many red marks it’s pretty much a different plan entirely.

So on the big day, we were ready to clear out a nine in the morning, a merciful starting time compared with other family trips. After loading our luggage up, we were off to Mansfield!

Ha, ha! Of course we weren’t, you cad! First, we had to stop at the local Kroger’s to pick up a prescription, and by “local,” I mean in another city.” We drove all the way into West Toledo, about seventeen miles out (or one-hundred and thirty-six, using the family’s secret route that seems impractical, to say the least) to visit Kroger’s, even though there’s one a scant mile from my house. Why, you ask? Discounts.

I’m not sure about the exact polices, but it seems if you pick up prescriptions at different Kroger’s, you get some sort of discount, maybe a couple of bucks. Considering these folks are chugging around town in a full-sized van for around two hours to go to two Kroger’s (as it ended up), one would think where the cost of gas and wear-and-tear didn’t invalidate the benefits, the loss of time would. This is where Daddy logic picks up.

Daddy is the worst kind of cheapskate. He’ll enthusiastically and passionately throw himself into any kind of discount or incentive program he can get his meat hooks into. If there’s a sales presentation that offers free stuff, you better believe he’s there, and he’ll go out to eat using coupons from the stacks of Entertainment books he has stockpiled to save even more on the way home. No problem if he’s in another state, since a few books are for locations in places he plans on going on vacation to.

I have two theories about this. Time is obviously an expense. Most of us wouldn’t waste three hours doing something we don’t enjoy doing to save three dollars on something, yet this is pay dirt for Daddy. Since he doesn’t do anything but lay around the house, any diversion that can save money is worth a lot more to him than doing nothing. Unfortunately, since he has Rhino-Vision, someone needs to drive him to the place to save money, not only taking away time they could use to recuperate from their jobs or school, but adding further tension by having their time spent with Daddy while he grumbles along his merry way even though he’s getting what he wants. It’s pretty easy to see why moving day is like Christmas for the kids, and hopefully the wife someday.

I also theorize that saving money is just another way to gain power. Any little bit of money saved is testimony to the cunning savvy of Daddy, even if it turns out he wasted ten dollars in gas to get a three dollar discount. It’s sort of like buying something for fifty bucks, selling it for ten, and rejoicing the sale without acknowledging the loss.

Anyway, the prescription wasn’t ready, so it was time to go out on a random journey through Sylvania, where Daddy pointed out where he lived and boasted how far he had to walk to school (no hills to climb, though), but nobody cared. Suddenly, we found ourselves stopped at a random bakery in town.

It’s one of those odd occurrences you have to be there to begin to understand, and to even get within visual distance from understanding, you would have to be in my head. The stop seemed completely random, yet planned out with a drone-like programming that comes from this kind of environment. I wouldn’t be surprised if Christy’s mother had a small set of antennae growing under her hair that she adapted so she could pick up on Daddy’s random thoughts and save a lot of time and talking by just obeying the directive he thought of and would be troubled to share by flapping his lips.

We walked in and I immediately noticed a table of cookies that were “a little burnt” and available for two-fifty a dozen. I pointed them out and Katie immediately let out a cheerful squeal, one that was crushed by Daddy yelling “We don’t need those!” We didn’t need them because they weren’t in his plan. His plan consisted of paying full price for cookies no one wanted except him.

Sensing I would end up mentally smashing my grapes between two bricks if I didn’t stand up in some way, I decided to buy a dozen with mself. Daddy noticed this and told me I didn’t have to buy them because everyone else wanted them, but I insisted I wanted to try them, which I did, because I would probably never come back to this bakery again, and I wanted the experience. But the other half of it was I wanted to defy his power just a little bit, and I did, because while he was inside one of his Kroger’s, we all partook of a “defiance cookie.” Meanwhile, the ones he chose were not good at all, a fitting symbolism if there ever was one.

After the Kroger affair, we stopped at the Monroe Diner, a small place located across the street from the nearest Best Buy to my house. I’d overlooked this diner for years because whenever I make it over on that side of town, I want to make sure I’m going to have a good dining experience, and a rundown diner isn’t exactly a lighthouse of hope, being more of a flickering match. In the end, it wasn’t good or bad, and I excused myself to go to Best Buy with the excuse I was checking on prices for digital converter boxes. In reality, I was checking out stuff for my PSP.

Finally we were on our way to Mansfield… ha, ha! You mor… actually we were on our way at this point. I noticed our route had us going all the way through Oregon, and I quickly realized there was absolutely no point in Christy and I getting up early and going to the West End other than giving Daddy a little more power to chew on.

After two hours and about six or so hours after leaving our house, we arrived in Mansfield. I was immediately struck with how nice the downtown area looked. It was the kind of place I would love to spend a solid day or two in, walking around, taking in the humble sights. I ended up doing this later that night with a feeling of ill-ease, because I half-remembered some nasty stuff going down in Mansfield. Some quick research indicates a local middle school banning sex bracelets, and because I wasn’t wearing any, I didn’t have to worry about prowling horny middle schoolers in need of a jelly bracelet-yoinking fix.

We arrived at the hotel and checked in without an unusual amount of Daddy groaning. The room was pretty nice, with a bathroom I pointed out that was nicer than ours at home (this is not a huge accomplishment), and I would have been more than happy to hang out there for the day. However, this was a Katie’s vacation, so Daddy let us know there was no time to relax! It was time for CHURCH!

It’s time for another Daddy dictation. Daddy is Catholic, or at least thinks he is. This should be obvious, since his wife wouldn’t be allowed to go to church because he wouldn’t see any other belief system than his own as a real religion.

Of course, he’s Catholic in appearance only, and represents the kind of person I loathe. He shows up at mass and goes through most of the motions to keep up appearances, both to the public and his own mind, but it’s impossible for him to believe in the faith when you consider how he conducts himself daily. He’s commits the Seven Deadlies constantly and without any remorse, yet still shows his face at the church. It’s just as well he doesn’t go through all of the motions. I imagine he would get into a shouting match with the priest should he be criticized during confession. Actually, that would be a lot of fun to listen in on.

You’d think a man like this would skip church for the sake of the more sacred vacation, but he doesn’t. It’s all about appearances, and I’ve witnessed his lack of integrity in Branson when I went on my famous trip there, and history repeated itself here.

Here’s how he works: we go through the whole exercise routine of kneeling, standing, and sitting, then we get to the important stuff: communion. This is the key ingredient to Daddy dogma, because apparently the service doesn’t count until you take a bite and swig of Jesus. At that point, its screw you guys, and he has the family file out straight from the communion line before the end of the service so he can get out of there and get on with the holy festival of vacation.

This church bit him in the rear, however. After spending far too much pursuing the phone books looking for a CATHOLIC church, we ended up at this church that was welcoming in that the parking lot was heavily gated. Even the basketball hoops inside were chained up. Talk about hospitality!

We parked, went in, endured the service, and slipped out after communion (I’m not allowed to take it as Daddy pointed out, because I’m not in the club, not that I would take it). I left a few minutes earlier and checked out the parking lot only to make a comical discovery: the entire lot, including the drives, was completely filled with parked cars. This church had so few parking spots people turned every inch of the lot into a place to rest their cars, and we were pretty far into it. I mapped out a way to squeeze out of there, but two cars block our way, and we were stuck in our parking space until service ended and half the congregation was gone.

When Daddy discovered this, he was not pleased. He shouted at his wife to cut in front of anyone who dared get in his way and actually insisted on pulling in front of someone who was using a cane. His plans were ruined, and the heads of those who took Catholicism seriously would roll if anyone dared obstruct his path.

Now it was time to eat. We spent ten grueling minutes that felt like centuries at the hotel thumbing through the phonebook, calling places, trying to find someplace everyone (Daddy) would agree on. This runs against my system, wherein I look around as I come in town and make a mental note of the places available. Failing this, I head in one direction and hope for the best. It’s not exactly organized, but it’s a hell of a lot less stressful, even if I'm too absorbed in my search and end up driving off a bridge.

Apparently, we (Daddy) decided on Denny’s because you just can’t get that anywhere else. I’m not going to bash him too much for picking a chain, because even though I tout my cultural superiority by claiming I look to try new restaurants, I just end up going with something safe in the end.

After a frightening meal ended with the kind of unpleasant stuffed feeling only Denny’s can provide, we were finally off the place we set out for ten hours ago. It was at this point I was hit with a realization that brought dread into the very pit of my soul: I had left my jacket back home. I noticed it before, but the gravity of it hit me when I noticed the temperature was nearing freezing, and it would only get worse.

Although I was concerned that I would collapse from hypothermia, I figured I wouldn’t be put out for to long. My entire impression of this haunted attraction, and any haunted house, was that it would be a casual, family-fun affair with cheap Halloween store decorations and people standing around trying to look spooky. Most importantly, I figured we would be into a reasonably heated attraction and out back to the warmth of the van in no time.

This is the kind of mistaken impression you’ll get when you’ve never been to an actual haunted house before. After a brief period of being lost, but not really, though Daddy made it seem like his wife should be executed for not making the right turn even though no one knew where we were going, we came upon the Mansfield Reformatory, the abandoned prison that would host that evening’s scares. And it was not a casual affair, but a carefully-planned devastation of the marriage of my expectations.

This event was a BIG deal, drawing I can guess two-thousand people that night alone, and considering Halloween was more than two weeks away, there was a lot of money to be gained from the fifteen-dollar-per-head admission. Imagining this attraction makes more money in two nights than I do all year makes me think I’m in the wrong profession.

Then again, the event itself was no slouch. Driving through the massive yard and seeing the eerily lit prison made me quickly realize this was no traveling road show. I kicked myself for not bringing a camera to take a picture of the prison itself, and I would have kicked myself hard enough to get my foot stuck if cameras were allowed inside, which they weren’t, so all the better for my lower digestive tract.

It’s just as well, since photos couldn’t do the experience justice. You can check out what the prison looks like on the official website (http://www.mrps.org), but sadly there aren’t any decent pictures of the haunted prison, though the website itself is pretty horrifying because of the design, so at least you’ll get some scares. On the plus side, if you want to attend a bridal show in place that once housed society’s vilest, they have you covered.

Not to leave our wallets bleed slowly from the admission price, the folks who put on this show offered a variety of greasy carnival food and overpriced souvenirs. I was actually considering buying one of the hoodies to stave off death, but at eighteen bucks for a cheap hoodie with plain text printed on it, I’ll take my chances with the Grim Reaper. If it had a zombie on it or something, I would consider it, but I refuse to be a walking billboard without a reanimated corpse plastered on my chest.

They also provided portable toilets for our relieving pleasure. Normally I would take my chances with holding it rather than risk slipping inside one of these things and having something knock them on their side, covering me with a horror the prison could never hope to muster. When you combine near-freezing temperature and a couple of glasses of Coke, however, and desperate times call for desperate measures. And it was about as gross as you would imagine, plus you need to exclude the presence of any type of hand sanitizer. Thank goodness for the carnie food vendors and there fear of lawsuits!

I’m not joking about the two-thousand attendee estimate, by the way, though there were probably more than that. And half of them were in front of us. I’m not joking about that either.

Picture temperatures that are at a level that makes you rather stay inside, then subtract the typical coat you would normally wear if you decided to venture out. Now imagine standing outside, moving one foot an hour in a line the size of a small city, and you can understand why it was not a pleasant experience for anyone, especially me. We waited in line for over two hours, weaving around the gigantic yard, wondering if this entire thing was even worth the trouble.

At some point in our delusional state, I theorized that at the end the line, they shove you through a door and you end up at the end of the attraction instantly, only to discover your car has been broken into by the staff while you were waiting in line. At least this would be pretty scary.

As the minutes turned to hours almost to days, we tried our best to entertain ourselves, though I was privileged enough to have extra fun by trying to keep warm. Our lone strategy was forming a circle within the line (excluding Daddy, who got us into this mess) and losing our minds with random chatter. Christy, her mom, and I held up fairly well, but the other two were not pleased.

After about an hour of standing out in the cold, Katie slowly became belligerent and didn’t want to do it anymore. What it was we were doing standing around during a chilled night, she probably hadn’t the foggiest. All she was probably thinking was she was freezing her butt off for no reason at all, and I have to say she was the wisest of us all.

Meanwhile, Daddy stood around with an expression of complete disgust on his face (it’s not that different from his usual expression, save for his eyes being opened a little more to show us he’s actively pissed off rather than his usual passive rage state). How dare they make HIM wait in line to get into the haunted prison! They shouldn’t make us wait! This is a crime against GOD HIMSELF!

Having waiting in the line myself, I would have to agree it was too much. The best thing I can think they should have done is sell tickets for assigned times, allowing people to buy their tickets and be on their way to the warmth of their cars or a meal, or to let them enjoy (or “enjoy”) the carnie food. Actually, unless you went with one other person to hold your place in line, it would be pretty stupid to step out to get a hot cocoa and find yourself damned to an additional five hour wait.

The ironic thing about this appointment system is people might not want to obligate themselves to waiting for their time to come. I guess standing in line for a few days doesn’t count as a time waster.

Halfway through the line, we were next to the actual prison, where we could hear the screams of the tortured inside. As we rounded the curve in the line (that took us a half hour), we were next to an unusually-placed stone archway. I noticed some damage on it and decide to touch it, only to discover it wasn’t really stone or cement, but something that felt like foam. It was fake, and I still can’t figure out what purpose the archway served, because we weren’t allowed to go through it, and it wasn’t near anything.

I actually risked my life and stepped out of line to tap the prison itself to make sure it was real. I’m not making that up.

As I started to grow a healthy beard, we were finally at the steps of the prison, located, I should add, about ten feet from where the back of the line was at its early fourth. When you’re behind that point, you don’t think the wait is going to be so bad because you can’t see the other thousand people in the courtyard ahead. Talk about horror.

We entered the slightly-warmer foyer and was greeted by the ticket taker, I sight I’m sure is the most horrible thing imaginable if you waited in the line and realized you don’t buy the tickets here. On display was a ghost camera aimed at an unspecified part of the prison. I expected a flutter of something running past the camera or a zombie to pop out at the screen, but I watched it for a minute and nothing happened. It was probably just a video playing on a loop anyway.

As we climbed the stairs leading to the attraction, my level of tension started to spike up. I’ll get this out of the way: I was scared. I tend to involve myself in the fiction a little too much, passing the point where I know nothing outside of a freak accident is going to hurt me. Instead, I let the atmosphere get to me, hanging back and letting Christy be attacked by monsters while I run away.

It didn’t help that we were shuffled along in groups. They broke the line up into batches of people to keep the tension up and the scares fresh, and it was pretty effective. While I wanted to stop and analyze all of the possible ambush points in my environment, the constant need to move forward forced me on without being able to examine my situation. This didn’t stop me from calling out to Christy all of the potential ambushes I could with a vain hope my cockiness would make me seem less frightened.

At least I wasn’t the only one. I can point and laugh at the one who forced us to come to this place, the one responsible for this entire trip. It turns out this person was the most scared, reaching a point where they were about to run flailing into the dark abyss. I’m talking, of course, about Katie.

I didn’t really give it much thought, but if you ponder it, bringing a child who doesn’t have a solid grasp on the reasons for what’s happening in the world around her (less so than the rest of us) into a place where there’s nothing but darkness, loud noises, and monsters that jump out at you is not a good idea. Several times, Katie froze up and refused to go any further, again proving her the smartest of the group. We had to actually pull her along as she fought off crying. This display added to my tension, because not only was I creeped out, but Katie was horrified because she didn’t understand what was happening to her, and I was worried about her having a breakdown. It probably would have been a good idea to include some kind of exit for those who can’t handle the attraction. I probably would have followed her out.

My knee-jerk cynical reaction to the quality of the attraction was not positive, but after thinking about it for a while, the production values were really good. Sure, some of the contraptions looked a little thrown together. On display were air compressors for loud noises and sudden rushes of air that the staff didn’t even attempt to hide, and several animatronics revealed metal arms which I thought could have been painted black or covered in cloth or something. Yet considering the effectiveness of these tricks and the cost of the animatronics, I’m willing to give them a break.

Another cheap trick, in more ways than one, was the typical people-hiding-behind-corners-and-jumping-out-at-you gag that C and I did in high school on his front lawn, except we didn’t charge anyone for the pleasure, though we should have considering the quality.

While I was quick to write off most of this as one big cop-out, I’ll admit it was effective. More than a few times, I instinctively reached out and pushed back the monsters who were jumping out at me, touching myself some random man-boob. Thankfully, there were very few female actresses, and none of them attacked anyone. Not that I mind girl monster boob, but Christy was standing right next to me, and I would have experienced the terror of an enraged fiancée and an engagement ring shoved up my nose.

I also have to give some of the actors a hand enhancing the experience. There was a section of creepy, murderous clowns. They didn’t jump out at us, but rather menacingly strolled past, staring at us, and occasionally darting quickly from around the corners in an effort to disturb more than scare

A simple yet effective technique was the cell block filled with stationary figures. Thanks to the dark, you couldn’t tell which was a real actor and which was a mannequin. Needless to say, they got me here.

The best ambush was one made right out in the open. We were walking down a cell block towards a turn that was extra dark and outfitted with shag mesh camouflage. I just stepped into this area when an actor completely covered in the material like some sort of seaweed creature screamed and lunged. I was so surprised and impressed I verbally congratulated him on the scare in another vain effort to look like I wasn’t about to wet myself.

The second greatest actor hid himself in a dark room that was surrounded by a hall with an observation room sealed with a steel mesh. No one could see in there at all, and we didn’t think to notice it until the actor lunged at us, screaming and using a device I couldn’t make out to send sparks off of the mesh. The effect was amazing and earned extra credit for the attraction.

One thing that let me down was the lack of ambushes out of the prison cells. The cells were more disturbing than most of the attractions, and the idea of some hideous mutations randomly emerging from the shadows sends shivers down my spine even as I sit here in a comfortable office. Even some crying, screaming, or banging on the doors more often would have done the trick. Though at the time, I didn’t want more tricks and would have preferred puppies and gumdrops to pour out of these cells, so maybe it was for the best.

There were some nice uses of animatronics on hand, mostly involving things popping out of hidey-holes, and one neat flying monster gliding silently down a cell block, which would probably be really scary if you didn’t see it coming. While you could see the proverbial wires on a lot of these devices (literally for the flying monster), the fact they had them attests to the financial backing this attraction had. This stuff ain’t cheap. Still, there wasn’t anything I could point out specifically, save for one display that wasn’t even technically scary.

I’ll interject into that thought and point out that audio could have been used a little more. Anyone who’s played a Silent Hill game knows audio is more frightening than visuals, and while the screaming of the actors and banging of doors was certainly effective, I thought more subtle sounds that didn’t necessarily lead up to anything, or at least nothing related to the original sound, should have been implemented more. A few metallic scrapes and some crying from a phantom source could have gone a long way.

So it’s odd that one of the scariest animatronics was a crazy and/or possessed girl just standing there out in the open. She would put her hands over her eyes as best the mechanics would allow, and she would scream. Not just a high pitched shout, but a shrill, demonic, constantly-repeating wail that would be impossible to describe exactly or for a person to reproduce. It kept going even as I scurried away, a distressing cry that ratcheted up my fear level far more than it should have. Of course, it was well done.

There were a couple of stationary mannequins and displays set out to enhance the mood. Some were fairly morbid, like the table with dismembered body parts strewn about. Others, like a giant creepy clown standing ominously in the middle of the clown hall, were merely distractions or mood setters and didn’t have any payoff themselves. There were a couple, like a very detailed Pinhead mannequin, which were out of place and pointless. Overall, these things couldn’t compete with the other elements on hand unless they were being used to distract visitors from the real scares.

There were a couple of obstacles for us to overcome. Most of the prison, while not exactly free from potential injuries, had a clear path that could easily be followed even when there wasn’t any light (Christy’s mother kept complaining it was dangerous because of the darkness, but there wasn’t anything to trip on that you couldn’t see). At one point, they made us squeeze through a passageway narrowed by two rounded rubber walls we had to push aside, which was about as scary as one of those inflatable obstacle courses. We also had to navigate a maze, which could have been scary, but I don’t remember encountering anything in there.

The best obstacle was also fairly simple. There was a narrow hall where we were forced to push past hanging body bags, which felt unsettling, as if there were parts in there that should have been inside someone’s body. Oddly, the first “body bag” was clearly a beaten-up punching bag, and I could see this with the limited light provided by the entrance. I can understand saving a buck by using one of these and inadvertently creating a different texture to run into, but why they didn’t stick this one somewhere in the middle of the hall where I couldn’t see it is a mystery I will ponder for the rest of my days.

The entire thing ended in the basement, a location wrought with possibilities for true terror. What we got instead was a few interesting looking but benign, still giant spiders and a mannequin entrapped in a cocoon. Cool looking, but not scary at all. It was fairly obvious they ran out of good ideas (considering the take they no doubt received that night, I doubt it was financial) and phoned the last part in.

Further proof that they had given up laid in the fact the handy, clear-cut path we were led on suddenly offered a choice. I went straight and discovered a completely dark room, making me question if this was where I was supposed to be going or not. I walked back with the rest of the group and turned into another door that lead to the exit, which by now was a waterfall at the edge of the desert for me. While the spider room dropped my fear level a few dozen points, I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible at that point. I’m pretty sure that door was supposed to be marked off and no one was supposed to go through it. Or maybe they killed you once you stepped inside and would use your body as an attraction next year. I should have pushed Katie in there and watched what happened.

In any case, I blue pilled it to the exit, where I was sent off by a grocery store-quality motion sensing knick-knack that completed the entire experience quite horribly. We hustled back to our unbroken-into van (someone must have been fired for this) and sped off into the night. Actually, we crept along with traffic, but given the resounding and somewhat unfair negative reviews from the family, they would have tore through the parking lot, taking a few teenagers with them if they had to.

We get to the end of my journey I’d like to end on an uncharacteristically positive note and describe my favorite moment of the entire experience. We were walking towards a turn into a cell block when I heard the sound of a chainsaw. At first, I figured it was just an effect, figuring they would never use a real chainsaw, even with the chain taken off. The smell of the fumes, however, proved me wrong.

The actor with the saw was hidden in a cell just around the corner, letting his chainsaw roar for a while before letting it idle out. I knew an ambush was eminent, but I wasn’t that nervous because I knew he was there. Any additional nervousness was immediately erased when the Great Moment occurred.

The actor tried to start the chainsaw back up, but it wouldn’t cooperate, as evidenced by the frantic sounds of pulling within the cell. After a continuing his efforts for a few moments, he shouted out “Dammit!” in such a way that I was convinced he really wanted to kill us and was annoyed because his weapon wasn’t working. It’s a moment you had to be there to fully appreciate, but the accident that spawned this hilarious moment is the best accident of all, narrowly edging out yours truly.

He did eventually come flying out with chainless saw fired up, though I was far ahead of him by the time he came out to terrify those behind me. I doubt I could have taken him seriously at that point anyway.

As indicated, nobody in our ragtag party was that impressed with the attraction. Everyone had an opinion about the line, obviously, though I can’t really fault our haunted hosts for using a standard wait-in-line approach over more complex means, nor can I condemn them for being successful in drawing a crowd, which is mostly a positive thing for the experience (especially if you’ve come to experience waiting in line in near-freezing conditions). Christy’s mom, of course, didn’t care for the lack of lighting and felt there should have been some exits midway. I seconded this because I was concerned for Katie’s well-being. What? You don’t believe me?! I WAS CONCERNED FOR KATIE’S WELL-BEING AND IN NO WAY DID I WANT DESPERATELY TO ESCAPE THAT PLACE BECAUSE I WAS CLOSE TO BEING ABLE TO FOLLOW A TRAIL OF POST-digestion BREADCRUMBS IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT.

Of course, Daddy had a few words. The line was a personal affront to him, we know, but the greater concern was the person he blamed for this trip clearly didn’t enjoy the experience one bit. This posed a bit of an internal dilemma for Daddy. If he admitted the attraction featuring large chunks of darkness, startling sounds, and things jumping out at a Downs syndrome girl with the environmental understanding of a three-year-old maybe wasn’t the best idea for family fun, he would have to admit he had a lapse of judgment, didn’t research the attraction enough, or thought maybe Katie could handle it and things just didn’t turn out. In Daddy’s world, any of these possibilities meant he was WRONG, a cardinal sin in his personal religion.

So instead of placing blame on his own inadequate decision, he pointed the finger at the situation. Katie wasn’t scared because the haunted prison was scary, she was scared because she was cold and tired from waiting in line for so long. Had she come straight from her solid meal at Denny’s, she would have hoisted those monsters over her head and tossed them back into their portal to Hell without raising an eyebrow. I’m not making this up, and this is a theory he angrily defends to this day.

As asinine as this explanation is already, Daddy fell into the same intellectual trap most people suffering from his mental condition do: contradiction. Before we were even out of the parking lot, he continued complaining about the long line and claimed he didn’t even stop and look at anything (well, as best he could would Rhino-Vision) because he was too tired and his legs hurt, so he just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.

So wait, fatigue causes you to be both more attentive to your environment and more distracted from it at the same time? Under this second theory, Katie would have slapped any monsters away for bothering her in her efforts to find a chair to sit down on and rest for a little while. His “reasoning” doesn’t make any sense, as much as I try to wrap my brain around… ooo, I think I just popped a vessel in there from all that stretching.

We beelined for the hotel, where everyone promptly passed out, save for me, who took this opportunity to wander around Mansfield and have a long phone conversation with a friend. As I wandered the dark, unfamiliar streets without paying any close attention to where I was going, I stumbled on a sight that will be burned into my memory for eternity: a car painted with anime-style artwork. It wasn’t especially great, but it was something cool to happen by a sight like that completely by chance. I curse myself for not having a camera for that, too.

We rolled out the next morning and headed home, but not before stopping Port Clinton to go to a specific restaurant in town that I’m not sure how Daddy picked out ahead of time. The place was sort of a local version of Long John Silvers and was pretty good. After Christy and I were done with our meal, I took another leap of initiative and announced we were going to check out the shoreline, since we’re suburban folk who don’t get let out of our cages of white fences enough.

This turned out to be a bittersweet moment. It was low-tide on the shore at the time, Lake Erie pulling its water of questionable toxicity back just enough to reveal a vast shoreline filled with pools of water dotting the coast, forming a beautiful maze that demanded I rush out and explore it. And that I did, because I had never seen a shoreline like that before, and I wasn’t going to let the near-freezing water stop me from enjoying it. My only regret is it wasn’t twice as warm, then I would have spent a good long while messing around in the landscape. Meanwhile, Christy would be further inland, shaking her head and wondering what she had gotten herself into.

We boarded the van and took off for Oregon. As I looked out the window at the gorgeous coast and thought it might be a nice idea to take a trip out her during the summer, Christy’s mother made note of the vast number of Canadian geese (which are the purest evil distilled in fowl form, but that’s another article). Daddy, being the level-headed diplomat that he is, took this opportunity to attack his betrothed again and far-too-angrily remarked “How do you know they’re Canadian geese?! Do they have the Canadian flag marked on them?!” Ah, nothing like finishing the trip off with more psychologist fodder.

In the end, I’m glad I went on the trip. The haunted house was neat, but I don’t think I’ll bother coming back, since its not worth the travel or the cash, though having seen Port Clinton, I would consider that more actively. Even though it probably shortened my lifespan by a week, my experience with my future in-laws opened up a whole new way of looking at their inner workings. By this, I mean I’ve gained new perspective on why Daddy is a big jerk. These kinds of things are important to understand when you’re laying on the therapist’s couch.

And with that, I’m done making fun of the guy who will be paying for my wedding.