Sunday, October 3, 2010

Jason's Woods

No... this is not a woodland picture today, hee hee. Doug and I have a seasonal hobby every October that involves visiting some of the haunted house exhibits in south central Pennsylvania. Of course, "haunted house" is a relative term, since these exhibits aren't where anyone died grisly deaths. They're cheesy, carnival-like places where the staff dresses up like zombies and ghouls, and there the customers stagger around darkened mazes and barns converted into realms of the macabre. It's pretty cool stuff.

So, Jason's Woods had a whole bunch of neat stuff. There was "Barn of Terror", "Lost in the Woods", "Creepy Asylum", and a hay ride that trundled through a series of gruesome tableaux.Tragically, there was a strict ban on photography. Suffice it to say, it was a lot of fun.

As a secular holiday, I think Halloween is a pretty healthy holiday. It allows people to examine their own dark sides as well as provide an outlet for the normal human fascination with death and the macabre. I actually enjoy Halloween much more than Christmas (which has become a secular holiday for all intents and purposes). Just about everyone gets stressed out about Christmas, but everyone enjoys Halloween. :)

4 comments:

  1. We have only the recent years start to celebrate Halloween like You do over there. But, it is still not a big matter, new traditions takes time to evolve.

    Generally, Christmas to me is just a commercial thing. But in my family we use this season for togetherness. We don't buy gifts to other than kids.

    Enjoyed Your post and learned

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  2. Not something I would do! It would definitely scare me and I don't like being scared. It doesn't matter that I know it is all fake. The last time I went on a ghost train they had men dressed as ghosts who touched people and everything was also won a loudspeaker system outside. I was not expecting to be touched and I lashed out physically and also screamed 'fuck off'. I have not been to anything like it since!

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  3. Anna: I'm a Wiccan, so I don't celebrate the religious aspect of Christmas. And the commercial aspect of Christmas has become something of an obscenity to me. I'm glad that Halloween is making strides in Sweden. It really is a neat holiday :)

    Knitman: Fortunately, the actors don't touch/grab people anymore. Thanks to some really bad wars our country has fought, there are a LOT of people with PTSD nowadays. So the exhibits aren't grabby. I think you would have had fun.

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  4. I very much agree
    Hallowe'en is still my favorite holiday. Every year I write about Hallowe'en and by now I've run out of more things to praise about it.

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