I keep my back to the wall at all times and scan back and forth while simultaneously playing Candy Crush as a distraction tactic. I contemplate leaving the queue for the majority of my time in it, which is only exacerbated by the loud techno music punctuated with human (?) screams and costumed ghouls wandering through the crowd, slapping paddles against walls and breathing heavily into the hair of strangers. Waiting in line, the anticipation is eating away at my resolve to even enter. Upon arrival, my husband, Jonas, jokes about the place being haunted by the ghost of “as seen on TV” products past, and I quietly begin to freak. The haunted house itself is in a nondescript beige blob of a building that was probably once held a Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Located in Tustin, California, a relatively sleepy town not far from Disneyland, The 17th Door is situated in one of those outdoor malls common in suburbia - a Best Buy, an Old Navy, a Christian bookstore, etc. If there’s anything scarier than that, I don’t want to know.Ī haunted house with a legal waiver. This is the kind of haunted house where things get, to quote one of their signs, “real”-you can “experience claustrophobia, foul scents, strobe lighting, fog, dizziness, extreme temperatures and loud noises,” and worst of all, the actors can touch you. The 17th Door requires all participants to sign a document that absolves them of any and all responsibility should you slip on a pool of blood or become so scared that you vomit up a vital organ (not possible I looked it up). And what better place to do some immersion therapy than the 17th Door, an infamous Orange County Halloween installation that’s so damn scary it requires a waiver to enter. The news was probably even more terrifying than It’s sewer clown, to be honest: visions of home invasions, carjackings, kidnappings and random shootings got lodged in my brain, rendering horror films and other seasonal “fun” moot for me.īut fear must be faced. As a child, I thought it was the ultimate in badass to watch TV by myself as a grownup, and specifically as a grownup who is contemplating having children of my own and therefore reading an unhealthy amount of parenting blogs, I realize this is yet another way in which my trusted elders failed me. The second screw-up was letting me have a television in my bedroom, which I used to watch the local news right before bed every night. The first thing they did wrong was allowing me to read Stephen King’s It when I was seven years old. And as is the case with most everything wrong in a person’s life, it’s my parents fault. Let’s start this off with some radical honesty: I hate being scared. (Photo: Courtesy The 17th Door Haunted House Experience) Inside The 17th Door Haunted House Experience in Tustin, California.
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