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The Long Halloween 2016 - Preview & Recommendations

9/18/2016

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Hello blog readers, sorry I’ve been away for so long. Between finishing the final steps of dealing with my father’s estate and the release of Almost Infamous, I haven’t had a lot of time for this blog. However, now that things are easing up some, I’m back, and dare I say I may be better than ever?
 
No, I won’t go that far, but I will do my best to continue to provide entertaining material for your reading pleasure.
 
In the spirit of that, I intend to talk to you today about my favorite time of year, which is right around the corner.
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I am, of course, talking about election season.
Well, okay, not exactly. If you’ve spent any time around this blog in the past, you know that my wife, Fiona, and I are huge Halloween people. We love horror movies, we love dressing up, and if there’s one thing we love most about the season, it’s the various Halloween entertainment options available. From haunted houses, to theme parks, to interactive theatre and everything in between, this is a pretty fantastic time of year for us, and as I did last year, I mean to share our Long Halloween 2016 adventure with you, dear readers. That’s right, you’ll be getting more reviews, amusing anecdotes, pictures and tips for how to best enjoy the haunt season. And while this is advertised as just an introduction to our festivities, I’m also going to give you a sneak peek below at some of my favorite Halloween recommendations in Southern California, where I'll also include links to them (and my own reviews of them from previous years). So sit back, relax, and let the terror flow through you…
MATT CARTER’S HALLOWEEN 2016 RECOMMENDATIONS:

Halloween Theme Parks:


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Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights – No offense to the long running Knott’s Scary Farm, but the gold standard of Halloween theme park events has to be, hands down, Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. Featuring Hollywood quality mazes of some of the greatest licensed properties ever to adapt to haunts (this year alone brings Freddy vs. Jason, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween and The Exorcist to life), this one is a can’t miss event. That being said, since it’s a can’t miss event, the lines will get absolutely insane (up to 3 hours on some of the more popular mazes), so I can’t recommend getting front of the line tickets enough.
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Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor – A former cruise liner that now doubles as a museum and hotel hardly seems an obvious choice for a Halloween overlay, but knowing the ship’s reputation for being legitimately haunted adds an extra spark. While not nearly as slick as Universal Studios, Dark Harbor with its six mazes (three on ship, three on land) and carnival like atmosphere more than makes up for it with enthusiasm. Their scareactors are more than willing to get in your face to get an extra scream out of you. And when this happens in the pitch-black hull of a ship…

Theatre, Traditional & Interactive:

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Wicked Lit – If you want a little more class and a little less in the way of scares for Halloween, Wicked Lit is my top recommendation. Taking place in an actual cemetery in Altadena, Wicked Lit consists of a theatre company acting out three creepy and twisted classics of horror. Works from the past have included adaptations of Poe, Lovecraft and Stoker, and with a solid cast from year to year, they remain a standout among Halloween performances.
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Alone: An Existential Haunting – For something a little more surreal, I would highly recommend Alone. While admittedly I’ve only ever done this event once, it left enough of an impression that I would always recommend it. As its title suggests, in Alone, well, you go through the event alone. You start out in a non-descript building, waiting your turn, and once you go in, you’re in for a strange time exploring many facets of human emotion. While wandering through last years experience, I encountered short, interactive vignettes where I experienced wonder, sadness, joy, and on occasion, a little bit of fear. I refrain from calling this a straight haunt, because it is something so much more, and so strange, that it has to be experienced to be understood. Lamentably, they’ve stated that there’s only going to be a one-night showing this year, but if you’ve got time to keep an eye out on this one, it’s worth watching out for. Though one note for safety: you will probably get messy in this one.

Fun for the Whole Family:

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Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns – If you’re not into getting scared but still want a good Halloweeny time, I cannot recommend Rise of the Jack O'Lanterns enough. Hundreds of professionally carved jack-o-lanterns may not sound terribly impressive on paper, but when you can get results like this…
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This...
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This...
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And this awesome tree full of jack o'lanterns...
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You’re in for a good time. While they used to run the whole month of October in the past, this year due to venue availability they’re only doing select dates in a few cities around the country. So if you’re interested, check out their site for availability!

For the More Extreme Crowd:

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The 17th Door – There’s a definite industry of “extreme” haunts out there (i.e. Blackout, McKamey Manor), haunts that go out of their way to push people’s buttons and in some cases, straight up torture you. Fiona and I generally don’t like to go this far, since we like to have fun with Halloween and all, but the 17th Door may prove an exception. While not completely extreme, it rides the line, but in an intense, and ultimately entertaining way. It has a dark, too real at some points storyline, with scenes that go out of their way to push buttons including suicides, footage of actual surgery, and the use of mild electric shocks and dead cockroaches. This one’s not for the faint of heart, which is why they do have a phrase you can use for mercy that’ll get you out of the haunt (though of course, there are no refunds). If you’re looking for a boundary-pushing time, the 17th Door, now in their second year, is worth considering.

The Best Haunt in Town:

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Delusion – I’ve spent a lot of words on Delusion in the past, and I’ll spend as many as I have to to make everyone aware of how amazing Delusion is. While not as traditionally scary as most, it is known to craft a nightmare or two, while providing an experience unlike any other. You see, Delusion doesn’t craft itself as a haunted house, but more as a piece of interactive theatre. Attendees are just as integral to the plot as the actors in the haunt itself, and you will be forced to make decisions that will push the plot forward. Instead of just watching horror unfold, you're a part of it. In past years, we've been forced to hide under beds, negotiate hostage exchanges, masquerade as villains, and watch as members of our group are nearly executed in demon sacrifices. Delusion is a singular and unique experience, and is one I cannot recommend highly enough. Lamentably, they sell out *very* quickly (this year's initial run ran out of tickets within a few days of announcing), however, they will often extend the run. If this is something you want to check out, keep an eye on their site and social media to see if they'll make an announcement.
And that, dear readers, is my sneak peek and recommendations for the Long Halloween, 2016. Stick around for more event reviews as they come, as for us it will begin this Friday.

Will we survive The Long Halloween? Stick around and find out. The adventure begins this weekend…

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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Holiday Horrors: From Your Secret Santa

12/20/2015

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It's that time of year again, that joyful time when the ghoulies and ghosties begin to feel just a wee bit neglected, and once again, Fiona and I have taken it upon ourselves to bring a few holiday chills to those who seek them!

Check back with us throughout the season for more bite-sized holiday horrors. Or, if you can't wait for more, check out last year's entries.

Previously on Holiday Horrors: Season's Greetings, The Man Who Loved Christmas Specials

For this week, we bring you...
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Holiday Horrors:
 
From Your Secret Santa
 
By F.J.R. Titchenell
Erica tried not to be disappointed when she opened the filing cabinet and found the second gift labeled, “To: Erica. From: Your Secret Santa.” It was obvious at a glance that this one was a book.

It wasn’t that Erica didn’t like books. Idiots didn’t like books. The problem was that people who didn’t like books also tended to assume that books were like chocolate bars, all alike and guaranteed to make her happy if they came in promisingly shiny wrappers.

Books were more like lingerie. Personal and transformative, with fickle and unpredictable ways of fitting.

No one here at work knew her well enough to buy either of those things for her. At best it would be something she’d already read, at worst, some boring or insulting knockoff of something she’d already read that the giver would expect her to give an opinion on when the thrill of keeping the name drawing secret wore off in January.

The first gift, a heavenly soft scarf with candy cane stripes, wasn’t the kind of thing Erica would ever have bought for herself, but that was exactly why she liked it so much. It was the kind of thing she would have given a passing, wanting glance as she passed it in a storefront and then told herself to stop being silly.

This one time, it was hers.

Deciding that she could always steer the conversation to how spot-on that gift had been if the giver ever asked her for a review of this one, she tore the wrapping paper back from the cover of the book and gasped.

This was perfect. Whoever had given it couldn’t possibly know how perfect it was, with the fairy on the cover, her dragonfly wings held at just the angle Erica remembered, ready to take flight.

It had been Erica’s favorite as a kid, her one loyal friend back in the bad days when everyone had avoided her, always waiting for her in the seldom-frequented middle school library, ready to whisk her away to fairyland for a stolen hour.

It was only after she’d left the school that she’d realized she didn’t know the book’s name. She could recite plenty of the passages within word for word, but that hadn’t been any help in her attempts to track down a copy of her own.

Once she’d gone so far as to go back to the school and ask to be let into the library, so she could check what combination of words she’d gotten wrong in the title. Some half-listening administrator had brushed her off with a quoted rule about who had access to the familiar old building and a small, superior smile for each admission of what this children’s book meant to her.

Erica flipped open the cover, hoping to savor a paragraph or two before anyone discovered her not working, and her excitement turned cold.

Oakville Middle School, said the label inside the flap. She turned to page twenty, where the Geranium Elf was introduced for the first time, and knew before she saw it that the little heart she’d covertly added to the margin would still be there.
This wasn’t just the same book she’d been missing for the past decade. It was the same copy.

“Don!” Erica shouted, dashing around to the boss’s office. She stopped in the doorway, book held out in front of her, deciding how to justify her panic. “I need to know who my Secret Santa is,” she said.

Don’s look of weary expectation turned to impatience. When she didn’t retract the question, he chuckled, “Did you miss the ‘secret’ part of the concept?”

“Mine is creeping me out,” said Erica. “I need to know.”

“You got something threatening?” he asked, with a small trace of concern, probably for what legal liability he might have if she said yes.

“...Not exactly,” Erica had to admit.

“Something obscene?” Don guessed.

“No.”

Don relaxed into his chair, his over-gelled hair making a scratching noise against the headrest, and Erica knew she’d never recapture his attention now.

“Monica has the names,” he said with a shrug, and Erica resisted the urge to curse. Monica had called in sick that morning. “You can see if she’s willing to let you cheat tomorrow.”

“No, I can’t,” said Erica immediately. “I’m gone tomorrow.” The guardedly confrontational look on Don’s face made her suddenly nauseated. “I am gone tomorrow,” she repeated.

“Chris is gone tomorrow,” Don corrected her. “He was the first to get his plans to me.”

That was a flat-out lie, Erica knew, but knew better than to say so.

“I have a flight tomorrow,” she protested.

“I’m sorry,” said Don with more irritation than sorrow. “I’m going to need you to stick out the week, get us through the rush.”

“I don’t even know what it would cost to change my flight!” she said, beginning to approach pleading. “And that’s if I can get another flight this late before Christmas!”

Don held her gaze. “I’m sure it would cost enough to make you glad to have a job,” he said.
 
#
 
There was nothing for it. Erica arrived at work the next morning, fuming, at around the same time she should have been lifting off toward home. She’d brought along the book to show Monica, in the hope that it would help convince her to reveal the list, but that hardly seemed important now. She had considered taking the opportunity to give another Secret Santa gift of her own before she left, but thinking about giving Secret Santa gifts had reminded her of the bad days for some reason, so she stopped.

She was vaguely aware that she’d put in more than the expected effort already, and it was better not to give unnecessary thought to things that upset her once they were done. Even the doctors had said so.

When Erica stormed into the office, Monica was already at her desk, frozen pale and holding her phone in front of her as if undecided on what she wanted to do with it.

Erica followed her gaze to a round bundle of wrapping paper hanging from a huge Mylar balloon bouquet. Something reddish-brown and noxious-smelling was dripping from it onto the carpet.

“To: Erica. From: Your Secret Santa,” said the tag.

“Don’t touch it!” said Monica when Erica reached out.

“It’s got my name on it,” Erica said dimly, though what she meant was, It can’t be what it looks like.

But it was. Erica knew the moment her fingers tore through the paper and into stiff, over-gelled hair, before the rest of the wrapping split open and Don’s head rolled under a shrieking Monica’s chair.

“Who was my Secret Santa?” Erica asked urgently.

It still couldn’t be what it looked like. It was Don’s head, yes, but the thing from the bad days couldn’t be back. Erica had gotten rid of it, with talking and pills, and with holy water and spells, and it was gone from inside her.

“I was checking,” said Monica’s quavering voice, “but I must have made a mistake when I made the list.”

She turned her monitor, the better to crush any denial.

Chris’s name next to Jennifer’s.

Monica’s next to Lance’s.

Erica’s next to her own.
For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
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Holiday Horrors: The Man Who Loved Christmas Specials

12/13/2015

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It's that time of year again, that joyful time when the ghoulies and ghosties begin to feel just a wee bit neglected, and once again, Fiona and I have taken it upon ourselves to bring a few holiday chills to those who seek them!

Check back with us throughout the season for more bite-sized holiday horrors. Or, if you can't wait for more, check out last year's entries.

Previously on Holiday Horrors: Season's Greetings

For this week, we bring you...
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The Man Who Loved Christmas Specials
 
By Matt Carter

The man loved Christmas, even if it didn’t particularly love him back. Even though it always came with memories of his parents’ death (a car crash while picking up a Christmas tree when he was seven, very fiery, very bloody), it was the one thing he looked forward to most every year. There was joy, there was laughter, and most importantly, there was family.
No real family, no blood family, but an even better kind, because while he may not have had family, he had his Christmas specials.

On TV, everyone was perfect. Everyone was happy. Nobody would call him creepy, or weird, or ignore him. They would let him into their homes welcomingly, and he could pretend, if just for a little while, that he was one of them. Laugh at their jokes, listen to their stories, and life would be good for a little while.

He had a full calendar of them, nearly one every night for the last half of December. He would decorate his living room to match each one, every detail, every ornament, every dish using the same recipes as the family on TV. The rest of his three-bedroom house may have lacked any color, or even furniture save for necessities in the bathroom and kitchen, but as long as he had his specials, none of that mattered.

The kitchen timer dinged. He cooed enthusiastically, pulling out his ham and slicing off a few good pieces onto his plate that already was piled high with mashed potatoes with gravy and butter, squash and green beans.
He checked the time on the microwave, even though he didn’t need to.

He had this down to the second.

Right on time.

Slowly, carefully, he brought his plate into the living room and set it on the TV tray next to his recliner. The flute of apple cider he’d set out earlier still bubbled, while the crackle of the fireplace filled the room with a nice, warm smell.

After doing a quick once-over of the room to make sure the decorations were perfect and the presents were properly placed beneath the tree he’d chosen for the night (Noble Fir, almost tall enough to touch the ceiling, star on top, hand-made popcorn strings, classical ornaments), he went into the closet behind the recliner and pulled out the sweater with the ‘TAYLOR’ tag pinned to it. It was a crazy, ugly sweater, but the fun kind of crazy and ugly, the ironic kind that everyone loved these days.

Especially the Taylors.

The Taylor Family Christmas Dinner was one of the specials he looked forward to the most. The Taylors were all-American. Father Chad and mother Diana with three grandparents between them (two hers, one his) and four kids, teenagers Nikki and Rudy (adopted), ten-year-old Hayden and four-year-old Brenda. They were perfect, and loving, always with warm smiles and great stories and even cheesy jokes from Chad that’d be perfect in any dad joke book.

Smiling giddily, the man pulled his TV tray forward, took a sip from his cider, and turned on the television.

It was everything he hoped for. Dinner had just started, and as always the man got lost in it. He could hear himself congratulating Nikki for finally making the cheerleading squad and Rudy for being in the running for a prestigious scholarship. Brenda tried telling some jokes her dad taught her, and though she rarely remembered the punchlines, everyone oohed and aahed appropriately, as you should to a girl as cute as her. Hayden, mischievous as ever, threw a green bean at Grandpa John, but with a smile, Chad was able to firmly and politely stop the boy and get him to apologize. Everyone laughed at their silly sweaters, though the man knew his was probably the best. Soon they would bust out some party games, and Chad would show off his stuff at the piano while they all warbled Christmas songs, and the night would end sublimely.

The only thing the man hadn’t accounted for was the empty chair, but it was a surprise he didn’t mind in the slightest. He knew the seat was for him, and he knew just how he’d see the family, and he knew-

The doorbell was ringing. This was a surprise. Who the heck interrupts Christmas dinner like this? No, no, it’s ok, this can still work, this can-

The man who the empty chair was for finally showed up. Almost an hour late.

Uncle Ned.

Tattooed and swaying and clearly drunk with some bleached-blonde strumpet on his arm who might’ve been the only thing holding him up straight. He wasn’t supposed to be here, he was disowned, this wasn’t a very special episode about reconciliation, this was a Christmas Special, and he would ruin everything.

It’s ok, it’s ok, they can still fix this, maybe this is one of those kinds of specials, where the holidays bring everyone together, he hasn’t ruined anything yet…

Then he ruined everything. Not when he dragged a chair across the hardwood of the dining room, scratching it up, so his strumpet could sit with him. Not when his strumpet lit up a cigarette and started using inappropriate language. Not even when he accidentally spilled a bottle of cider across the ham, or when he asked if Nikki would show off her cheerleading outfit.

No. It was when the man realized that he clearly hadn’t brought a present.

That was too much.

The man felt ill. The food tasted like ash in his mouth. The plate, the sumptuous feast he’d cooked to be like the Taylors, it might as well have been writhing with maggots.

In a disgust flavored with fury, he grabbed it and threw it into the fireplace. His breathing became ragged and his vision blurry.

No, no, you can fix it. This isn’t over. This holiday can still be saved.

Thinking fast, the man grabbed a burlap sack from his closet and shoved all the presents beneath the tree into it. Then he grabbed a couple spare crazy sweaters from the closet and tossed them in the sack. They were his size, too big for the plan, but they would do.

Then he grabbed his kit.

Mustn’t forget the kit.

Stepping outside, the man trudged down the sidewalk, snow crunching beneath his feet, the icy air chilling his scalp through his thinning hair, thinking with every step:

You can fix this. You can fix this. You can fix this.

Two houses down and across the street. The pocket knife from his kit opened the latch to the side gate easily. He checked his phone, watching the feed of the special, knowing where everyone was. Ned had left, but was still in the house, the back guest bathroom, cleaning gravy off his tank top.

Disabling the security system with the press of a button on his phone, the man silently entered the back of the house, quiet as Santa Claus himself. Pulling the cheap plastic Santa mask that fit uncomfortably against his glasses and thin moustache and the collapsible baton from his kit, the man covered his face and entered the guest bedroom, his bag of gifts trailing behind him.

Uncle Ned didn’t see him at first, too focused on cleaning his top, but when he did, he nearly screamed.

A baton strike to the back of the legs quickly silenced him.

“Be like the mouse. Don’t stir, don’t stir…” the man whispered soothingly.

Ned didn’t want to be silent. He wanted to fight. He wanted to keep ruining the evening. The man showed him the error of his ways with a strike to the ribs. Another between his shoulders, then two more to his lower back, nothing that would leave marks, nothing that would ruin the evening, but enough to take him to the floor, gasping and moaning in pain.

The man spoke, sternly but politely, “This is a special night. A beautiful night. And you and your lady-friend are ruining it. I’d tell you to leave, but that would ruin it even more, so I am going to give you a chance to fix things.”

He pulled out the bag so Ned could see, “In this bag are two sweaters. I apologize for the ill fit, but you gave me little time to improvise. You and your lady-friend will wear them like everyone else. You will go back to dinner. You will make amends and apologize for your rudeness. You will make this evening special and wholesome as it is supposed to be. You will then give out the gifts in this bag to everyone in the family. They are nice gifts, things they want, things you can’t afford, so it will do much to mend this evening. You will be a hero, and this will be a magical celebration of Christmas. Do everything I’ve said, and you can leave this dinner in peace when the night is over. Don’t, and I will find you no matter how far you may travel and I will start cutting pieces off of you and feeding them to your lady-friend until no one would ever want you at a Christmas dinner again. Do you understand?”

Fearfully, Ned nodded, rooting through the bag and pulling out a sweater.

“Good boy. Now remember, smile, and be jolly. It’s Christmas time!” the man said, quickly exiting the bathroom. He could hear Ned weeping, which he took for a good sign, because that meant Ned would play ball.

On his way out, the man quickly checked the batteries in the cameras he’d planted in the guest bedroom and back hall. The back hall ones would need a refill soon, but should last the night, long enough for him to come back and put in more before Christmas morning.

The thought of them opening the presents he’d given Ned brought a tear to the man’s eye. They were supposed to be from him (though they all said From Santa Claus on the labels), dropped off on Christmas Eve. They would confuse the family, but they would be a Christmas miracle all the same. Now they would be from Ned, but with luck they would be enough to buy his way back into their hearts.

Quickly, the man ran back to his living room. Out of breath and wheezing, he turned the TV back on in time to see Ned, now clad in a sweater (and handing one to his strumpet), reenter the dining room. He apologized for his behavior, and started handing out gifts to everyone. Chad hugged him, and the kids cheered appreciatively at their new toys and electronics. Everyone started eating again, and soon there were games and songs and everyone, even Ned and his strumpet, were all smiles.

The man breathed a sigh of relief, heating up some leftovers and enjoying their taste again. The night was saved, and the Christmas special ended as they all should, with everyone hugging and expressing their love for one another, making the man cry.

He only turned off the TV when they all went to bed for the night, and with that, he started putting everything away in the boxes marked TAYLOR.

It would have been a bittersweet experience, if it weren’t for the boxes marked MARTINEZ the man knew would come out tomorrow.

They really knew how to put on a special.




For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
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Holiday Horrors: Season's Greetings

12/6/2015

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It's that time of year again, that joyful time when the ghoulies and ghosties begin to feel just a wee bit neglected, and once again, Fiona and I have taken it upon ourselves to bring a few holiday chills to those who seek them!

Check back with us throughout the season for more bite-sized holiday horrors. Or, if you can't wait for more, check out last year's entries.

For this week, we bring you...
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Holiday Horrors: Season's Greetings

By F.J.R. Titchenell
The card and gift shop overflowed with holiday spirit, hung all over with green tinsel and red velvet bows, with battery powered dancing snowmen and reindeer up front to welcome customers, demo versions of the ones in the boxes artfully arranged under the two sparkling synthetic Christmas trees, framed with tufts of kaleidoscopic paper, as though they had just been gleefully unwrapped.

Beyond were the aisles of cards for all different occasions, relationships and tones, though presently more than half were a medley of seasonal color.

Delia had spent the last month and a half hoping to be struck by some perfect inspiration for what to get her dad and sisters for this first Christmas when she would finally be able to buy presents with her own money.

This inspiration had, with a week left to go, so far failed to materialize. Nothing she’d found had said “dad” to her, or “Leslie,” or “Bree,” but she thought it would be difficult to leave this store without something that at least said, “Merry Christmas.”

The only employee present was a woman a little older than Delia, who stood leaning against the checkout counter, glaring listlessly at the floor. She didn’t look up when Delia entered. Delia likewise ignored her and wandered down one of the warm, inviting aisles that made it hard to imagine that either glaring or listlessness could be possible within them.

She pulled out the first card that caught her eye, a glitter-encrusted one in the shape of an ornament that seemed likely for Leslie.

“You decorate my life,” said the inside.

Not quite.

The next one contained a generic “Happy Holidays.”

A dirty version of the lyrics of Jingle Bells in the following one made her giggle, but it couldn’t be read aloud over a family breakfast.

When she moved to put it back, it hit against something that must have fallen into the card rack from the shelf above.

She pulled the cards forward to look at the little wind-up elf figure. It was also dusted with glitter, though of a finer texture and in less intentional-looking patches than the cards. With a mechanical jerk, a last bit of wind-up energy let loose by the disturbance, it raised one plastic arm and puffed out a cloud of the glitter over the card Delia had been trying to replace.

Delia moved the elf to the top of the display and tried to shake off the card. The glitter spreading across the surface changed the colors, until hidden letters became discernible, between the re-written lines of Jingle Bells.

“I want you to think I’m cool.”

The elf moved with another clockwork noise, and Delia looked up at it. It moved again, half a jolting step, and the noise it made sounded curiously like a word.

“Run.”

When Delia made no move, the elf raised its arms in the closest thing to a gesture of exasperation that its stiff little joints could manage, and shot a cloud of its glitter into her face.

Through her coughing, blinking, rubbing efforts to clear her eyes and throat, the groaning steps of the elf along the top of the rack toward the door unmistakably sounded out,
“The sparkle may save you.”

When Delia’s eyes grudgingly opened, everything was iridescent and tinged with peach and purple. She steadied herself against the rack, knocking a few cards to the floor. Similar hidden text on them was clearer now than the unhidden as she gathered them up.

“I don’t know you well enough to know how not to offend you,” said one.

“I’m hoping you’ll ask me for spiritual advice,” said another.

“I hope everyone likes cats,” said the next.

Another said simply, “This card is shiny.”

In spite of the burning in her eyes, Delia smiled at the thought of how much Leslie would like the hidden text version of that one, and then watched, transfixed, as more words formed. The more she thought about her sister, the clearer they became.

“I love you.”

Whatever the elf had blasted her with was making it possible to see, at a glance, what the cards were saying, and therefore the perfect card for anyone.

Delia flicked excitedly through the racks, searching for the next card that would reveal exactly what she meant to say when she held it and thought of either of the others.

“I’m masking my contempt for you,” she quickly put aside.

“I don’t remember your face.”

“You’re just another bank client.”

“I hate you.”

“I hate this.”

“My soul is dry.”

“I’ve been fed on by a thousand sheets of cheap cardstock and I can’t do it anymore.”

“Let me die.”

Delia looked warily up at where the elf had run off from, frozen in place. “The sparkle may save you,” it had said.

A few of the dancing snowmen, still in their boxes, were scattered in the aisle behind her. They had definitely not been there before. The purple-peach tinge of her vision made them look unsettlingly unlike snowmen.

With a few off-tempo notes of Carol of the Bells, the nearest snowman did not dance, but picked up the card she had set aside at the front of the rack, the one with “I love you” in fading letters on the front. It looked up at Delia, and its sewn-on coal mouth widened its smile.

She took a panicked step backward, away from that smile, tripping over the boxed reindeer that had taken its place behind her.

Before she could get her weight onto her hands to sit up, the deer clamped its mechanical jaws onto her sweater sleeve and the thin skin of her wrist and forced her hand flat against the rack of cards. The fear brought on more thoughts of her family, and the words spread out over the fronts of the cards across the rack, radiating out from her hand.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Possibly the elf’s glitter had gotten into her ears, because dimly Delia could understand the lyrics hidden in the tinkling notes of the dancing snowmen’s version of the carol, playing endlessly for the passing foot traffic outside.

“Love for sale here, love for sale here.”

Delia looked across the store at the lone clerk who still had not moved from her post, at the lifeless, joyless expression on her face, and understood that it would, in a matter of seconds, match her own.


For more horrors from F.J.R. Titchenell and Matt Carter, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or check out our other works!

FJR: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
Matt: Facebook, Twitter, Books.
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The Long Halloween Diaries - Alone: Index of Absorption

11/1/2015

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

(Secondly, apologies in advance for the lateness of these last two blogs, due to some odd problems with Weebly I was unable to post for a while, but since it looks like these are mostly fixed, here we go!)

It's been days since I attended the Alone: Index of Absorption event, and I'll be honest: I have almost no idea how I'm going to write about this. Alone is the most different, bizarre, and utterly wonderful thing that I have attended this Long Halloween season, and yet it is impossible to rank it or compare it next to the other events we've attended in that it is so utterly unlike them. It's barely scary, but incredibly intense and powerful in a way that will linger in you for days, so I am stumped about what I'm going to say. I'll try my best, though, without giving too many spoilers away, but be warned, there's every chance I'll sound like a complete lunatic by the end of this article.

I've been vaguely aware of Alone for the past few years we've been doing The Long Halloween, but it was never seriously on my radar. Fi and I haven't really been into events that run on the more extreme side of things until relatively recently, and from the sound of it on paper, it could have easily been one of those. Going through a nearly pitch black building, alone, being tormented and accosted by the people within. It sounded like it was jumping on the bandwagon from the completely insane-sounding Blackout experience (one of the few haunts I'll outright refuse to do because of the stuff I've heard they pull), and I just wrote it off on general principle. However, over time as our skin thickened, and we read more reviews about alone, I became more intrigued. Everything I'd heard about it was that it was less a haunt, more a surreal, dreamlike experience you're meant to wander through alone.

So I was curious, but still uncertain.

Then we got a little taste of Alone at this year's ScareLA (a convention for haunters) in August. Alone has been holding a number of smaller events throughout 2015 leading up to their big house in October, and with basically a free demo version to try on for size, we figured, what the hell, let's see what it's like.

Remember those words surreal and dreamlike? Yeah, those summed up our demo quite well, actually. We were brought into a dark room lit only by a swirling laser light with about 20 other people and made to lie down on the floor, while most of us were covered in a sheet and listened to a trio of people talk about madness and colors in increasingly intense voices. One at a time we were brought into the Alone part of the experience, where we crawled, got rolled up in a blanket and flung around a room, drawn on and dressed in weird colorful things before being brought back to the room to lie down. I've never been on drugs and never intend to be, but I have it on good authority that the experience is pretty similar. Not being too terribly freaked out by this, we vowed to do the event come October.

Flash forward a couple months, and Fi and I were driving to Downtown LA, finding an old film production house with a front door reading ALONE, INC. We were eager and nervous, especially after receiving an e-mail that stated we'd likely find ourselves being touched, grabbed, embraced, forced to crawl, endure pitch blackness, have our faces painted and likely get very messy.

Long Halloween Tip # 18: Listen to the warnings given in any Halloween event, and dress appropriately. There's no event I'd recommend this for more than Alone.

Still, we checked in to the sparsely populated lobby, slightly unnerved by the shadows we'd see crossing along the backlit, wall-sized sheet behind the front desk. We waited our turn, slowly watching as guest after guest before us was brought into a dark back room when their name was called. Fiona was called in before me, and so I sat alone, chatting briefly with one of the guys who would go in after me, asking me if I had any idea what we were about to get into. I told him what little I knew, but since it wasn't that much, the nerves were kicking in pretty heavily.

And then I was called into the darkness. I was told to walk along a dark corridor and choose between two doors. Not seeing any particular benefit to one or another, I chose the one on the left, and was pulled into a dark room by a woman who started writing on my arm with a marker about how I was not a triangle, while speaking in an eerie, intense tone about light and color, before she sent me into the darkness.

And from there... well, I can't rightly say everything that happened, and if I were to go into all the detail I felt at the time I'd probably sound crazy, but what I'll say is that it was a truly intense, profound emotional experience. It was scary, at times, but not too scary. More than anything, it was surreal and beautiful. I'd walk into a room and be told to sit on a swing, while an actor pushed me around for a while, laughing. Another time I'd be put in a pitch black room and thrown around for a while by a wild-eyed man, visible only in brief flashes of light. I'd crawl along a long tunnel with only a laser light at the end, swirling around me, only to exit into a room with a person in a unicorn costume and be coaxed into dancing with them.

I'd be taken into a room full of vinyl records and be told to smash some against the wall before being told to clean them up, or go into a room with a man whose face is covered in wet clay and be told to write on the wall with some of the clay from his briefcase.

Sometimes I'd go into a room and just have a person stare at me, intensely, or sadly, or maybe while smiling warmly.

One time there was a room where a sad, crying woman stood in the center, pulling me into a hug, and though I knew she was acting I couldn't help but tell her everything was going to be okay.

Then I'd go crawling through a tunnel made of blankets and wind up having a pillow fight with a man and playing patty cake, while we're laughing the whole time.

So much more happened, so much that I'll never forget and much more that seems so much a blur I can't be sure if it was real or I dreamed it. It was a bizarre, truly amazing experience to have gone through, reaching into me and touching my emotions in ways they're rarely touched, because I'm a pretty reserved person in general. I keep everything close to my chest, and I don't really open up to strangers, but the way they subtly break down emotional barriers and force you to connect to strangers, even if just by looking them in the eyes, it makes for a truly and unique experience.
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There's flour in my hair, clay under my fingernails, writing on my hands, sore knees and paint on my face, and I couldn't care less. This was an amazing experience.
Though not a traditional haunt by any means and basically impossible to compare to the rest of what we did this year, I'm pretty sure this was one of the top events. It's been more than a week now, and I still can't stop thinking about the Alone experience.

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries - Queen Mary's Dark Harbor

10/22/2015

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

It's been a crazy, crazy month, and it's not over yet! Though things are winding down, we've still a few stops ahead that promise to be some of the most intense and unique of The Long Halloween. But first, for stop # 10, we have a classic that's been a part of The Long Halloween since the beginning.
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When you think of The Queen Mary, you probably think of it as a tourist destination and hotel in California. You may also know it as one of the most famous supposedly actually haunted places in America. But what you probably wouldn't first think of is it transforming for the month of October basically into a brand new theme park in Southern California, populated by monsters who would enjoy nothing more than scaring the ever-loving daylights out of you. In the three years prior to this Long Halloween that Fi and I have attended Dark Harbor, it has consistently been one of the scariest of the season. Perhaps more than any other theme park haunt in Southern California, the actors working this event are truly enthusiastic and love scaring you. Instead of just waiting in little alcoves to pop out, they prowl hallways. When they see you, they will charge. They will team up in their attacks, and they will corner you, and scream all you like, but they won't let up until they are bored with you.

Top it off with a fun, albeit fairly adult, environment (despite the number of children you're bound to see here, this is a very intense, very adult event), and this is a serious contender with Universal Studios for best multi-haunt Halloween experience in Southern California.

So, with our front of the line tickets in hand, and my best friend from middle and high school, Ashley, along for the ride with us, Fi and I rode for Dark Harbor looking forward to the good times we knew would be there.
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Yeah, I need to work on my selfie face.
THE DARK HARBOR EXPERIENCE
We got to The Queen Mary about an hour early, and my fear that we were too early was quickly dashed when I saw how completely insane the line already was, even with our front of the line pass line. Score one for showing up early! Still, in due time we made our way through security and made our way to the front gates proper.

Long Halloween Tip # 15: Queen Mary's Dark Harbor has some of the strictest security of any Halloween event I've ever attended, including pat-downs. Save yourself some hassle and avoid having anything confiscated by leaving anything, no matter how innocuous, that might be considered a weapon at home, as well as anything that could be construed as a gang color. Or selfie sticks. They were really hating on selfie sticks this year.

After a brief opening ceremony where the Queen Mary's ghostly Captain heckled the crowd and threatened to unleash the monsters on us, the front gates were opened and, well, we ran a gauntlet of monsters. After a little bit of zig-zagging and tight quarters in the town-like setup leading to the Queen Mary, things will widen up into a carnival-like atmosphere. There are dozens of food vendors, odds and ends bars, a performance stage, an upcharge paintball experience (which we did not have the time for by the end of the night), and an honest to god carnival swing set that they've rented from Neverland Ranch, for an extra creepy vibe. Monsters roam the darkness, and sliders will charge you at knee level, the scraping, screeching of their metal knee pads always getting good, reliable scares. Constantly looming over us is The Queen Mary herself, looking extra-ghostly by night (assuming you ignore the hotel guests on the top decks looking down at us and laughing), and making you wonder what terrors are held within.

But this is a Halloween event, and like any good Halloween event, there are mazes to be had! This year had six mazes (three on land, three within the bowels of the ship itself), as well as an upcharge Freak Show attraction that we knew we had to attend.
THE MAZES
Deadrise
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Though the shipboard mazes on The Queen Mary herself are the real draw here, the ones on land are nothing to sneeze at, especially our first maze of the night, Deadrise, which was arguably the scariest of the night. Themed to a crashed troop carrying ship from World War II (a real incident that happened on The Queen Mary) that is forever cursed to carry the ghost sailors to torment the living, this was a damned impressive maze for something mostly built out of a number of disused cargo containers. Though the setpieces were not particularly distinct, the enthusiasm of the ghostly crew more than made up for it. They stalked us from our hiding places, following us when they got behind, darting from around every corner and box, charging us whenever we'd see one in front of us. Maybe we got lucky by doing this so early in the night, but this ghostly crew was utterly relentless, getting all three of us to be screaming, quivering wrecks by the end of it. And just when you think you've escaped, yeah, there's one more monster hiding above you, looking to grab for your hair. He's probably got the best job in the park.

The Freak Show
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At an additional $5 per person, the Freak Show is an upcharge event that Dark Harbor has been running for the past two years. In years past it's been a collection of cargo containers filled with little, random scares and a semi-maze made from said cargo containers that allowed us to see the titular freaks. It's always been a fun little diversion, even if its freaks are really just manufactured makeup effects.

This year, however, I think they came up with an attraction that was the best of both worlds, with part maze, part fun attractions, and yes, this year even a real bona fide freak show of sorts.

They start out by introducing you to Sparky, a charred skeleton who talks to and heckles you, and if you're good enough to banter, well, you can have a pretty fun time with him, though be warned, as there's a good chance he'll convince you to bang your head against the wall of a cargo container.
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Which Ashley found out the hard way.
After taking a narrow path through the show, we're let out in a sort of courtyard that's been made in the cargo containers, full of little mini attractions (including walks through cargo containers full of both dark and light ghosts), fortune tellers, a bar isolated from the major bar lines, and yes, a stage with a real freak show. While we entertained ourselves with our fortunes and the attractions, and Fi and Ashley got their drinks, we had a good time waiting for one of the scheduled freak shows to start. In the meantime, though, we had a rare opportunity we normally haven't had at Halloween events: interacting with the monsters. As we were some of the first few people in a barren freak show, we got the full attention of a few wandering characters, trading bawdy jokes with the bearded lady (not a real bearded lady, but she was a ton of fun), comparing other haunts with the bad-joke-telling-and-completely-awesome Ringmaster, and joking playfully with the near-mute but hyperactive and utterly fun shrunken head man we called MeeMee, as it was all he said.
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He was so much fun.
Kicking back and killing time with the monsters, in character, was so much fun, because they never once broke character and all throughout were blast to talk to.
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Even posing for an Oscars-esque selfie with us, and the top half of my head.
Long Halloween Tip # 17: If the opportunity to interact with the characters comes up, take it! You'll have more fun for it.

The freak shows themselves were more people with unique physical talents than actual physical deformities, and though they were fairly gross, or painful-looking, if you've got the stomach for them, they were truly impressive, and combine with an all around fun atmosphere to make the Freak Show my must-see event of Dark Harbor.
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I could show you pictures of a man feeding a balloon through his nose and out his mouth, or I could show you a picture of Fi holding the balloon animal made out of it after the fact. I choose the latter.
Lullaby
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After taking our break at the freak show, we decided to take in our first shipboard maze of the night with Lullaby, starring Scary Mary, the ghost of a little girl who supposedly drowned in one of The Queen Mary's pools (again, based on a real incident). And, well, if we thought that Deadrise would be the scariest we'd see in the night we were dead wrong, as Lullaby kept the screams coming as we went through the demented world of this creepy little dead girl. The bowels of this ship get dark, and when I say dark, I don't mean heavy shadow, I mean so dark you can barely see your hand in front of your face. They take advantage of this on the Queen Mary, so don't be surprised if you find a little girl sidling up to your side and screaming at you. The real highlight of this maze was, of course, coming across Scary Mary at one of the actual shipboard swimming pools where some kids are said to have drowned many years ago.

Voodoo Village
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Back on land we have the sprawling Voodoo Village maze and, well, for a maze I enjoyed as much as I did, I feel terrible in saying that I can't really remember a lot of specific details from it. It was a lot of fun, and the actors are enthusiastic as ever, but, well, with Voodoo being a fairly common theme in mazes these days, it just didn't leave a real impression, which is a real shame because we did all have a lot of fun and still get fairly freaked out at this one. Especially by the guys in gillie suits hiding in the bayou portions jumping out at Fi. This happened at least two times, she never saw it coming, and, well, it got some good screams. Not that I wasn't joining her on those.

Circus
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Now this is a crazy, crazy maze. Taking place in the old airplane hangar that used to house The Spruce Goose, this maze may have had nothing to do with The Queen Mary, but it embraced its theme and went nuts with it in the best of ways. Set in the ever classic circus gone mad and populated by a bevy of evil clowns, this one was a highlight of the night for the sheer oddity of a lot of what we had to endure. Real mirror mazes, sliding and shifting metal floors, an actual giant-sized ball pit to walk through, and even one of those famous spinning hallways, perpetually rotating around you and making nearly everyone fall over from dizziness. This maze also probably got my biggest scare from the night when, distracted by a small ball pit in the middle of a room I was sure had an evil clown hiding in it, the painting behind me opened up into a clown who wanted to test how well my startle reflex was working.

It was working quite well, thank you very much.

Soulmate
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A few hours into Dark Harbor, we were starting to get tired and were more than a little ready to get to the last two shipboard mazes. Though our front of the line passes helped us cut through waits in excess of an hour at each of these, the lines themselves get pretty substantial pretty fast. While this is normally not much of a problem in a maze, the tight quarters and steel box construction of the ship, combined with a near conga-line of a crowd snaking through the maze, made these last two mazes pretty much ovens. As well, the heavy amount of people made the scares fewer and more infrequent, possibly from heat-exhausted actors, but more likely because it was really difficult to scare a bunch of people in a row who can see the scares coming.

Still, the mazes have their fun. Soulmate, the story of Graceful Gail, a beautiful ghost woman setting out to make the perfect man from parts of many others, had its good moments, especially the rows of flayed bodies and skins hanging from the walls, as well as the jump scare hiding in their ballroom, but as one of the more sparsely populated mazes actorwise, this was easily the least scary of the night.

B340
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Our final maze was B340, a trip into the mind of Samuel the Savage, a man who went mad and killed himself on the ship after attacking many other people (probably not based on a true story). While there were a few surreal effects in play in this maze, trying to put us in the mindset that we were going through the mind of a maniac, the energy was low, the crowd was heavy, and not all the setpieces work as well as I think they meant them to. While a trip across a catwalk above the empty and pitch black engine room is pretty cool, I was expecting something impressive below us, instead of a tiny-looking man rattling a cage. This maze, above all others, I think showed the limitations of setting a Halloween event up in a national landmark, as there is only so much you can do for decoration.
Minor late night complaints aside, we had an utter blast at Dark Harbor. We screamed so much we were hoarse for days, there was great food, drink and company, and the Freak Show was perhaps itself a highlight of our Long Halloween. As our Long Halloween slowly starts to wind to a close, we find ourselves hoping that our last few experiences, untested as they are, can match up to the fun we've had so far!

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries - Wicked Lit

10/18/2015

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

For those seeking a bit of culture in a Halloween season otherwise heavily occupied by dripping blood and severed body parts, Wicked Lit is one of the best options you can find. Performed at an actual mausoleum and cemetery in Altadena, it is a series of three classic stories with a horror or supernatural leaning. With quality, full sets of actors and surprisingly good production values in spite of the fact that they're actually working within an active cemetery and can't really change much, Wicked Lit has been a favorite of ours since we were introduced to it last year.

With an intriguing lineup of shorts in front of us, Fiona and I set off on a cool, misty night (that happened to be our 4th wedding anniversary, woo!) toward the Mountain View Mausoleum to find out what the fine people of Wicked Lit had for us.

The System  - Upon checking in, we were brought to a meeting area where intermissions were held. There were drinks, snacks and restrooms available (which, all told, was nice as the event wore on), and a frame story of sorts to keep things going during the down moments. Truth be told, I didn't entirely pay a lot of attention to the frame story of a couple of bumbling, 19th century reporters investigating an evil mental institute. It was funny at points, and the actors committed to it fully, but with most of this time spent waiting for our next show, it was easy to miss much of this show, especially as it went through every intermission.

Still, when showtime rolled around, the assembled audience was split into three groups to check out the three different shows, where things really got fun.

The Ebony Frame - The first show we got to see, a tale of obsession and deals with the devil, was a great way to begin the night. It's arguably the silliest of the three stories, though it does go to some fairly sad places as it goes on, but it makes up for this with its very dedicated cast and some truly trippy effects that you wouldn't expect to be pulled off in a large mausoleum. Using some old bits of stage trickery, they make a woman disappear from a painting and appear further down an adjacent hallway, and even appeared to burn down the mausoleum at one point (they didn't, but it was still good fun). Though the strangest of the three stories, it was a good way to get things moving.

The Grove of Rashomon - An adaptation of various forms of the Rashomon story (which is fitting in a very meta way), this was the highlight of the night for me. Watching the story unfold multiple times, from multiple, unreliable narrators, it went from fascinating to sad, to really really sad in a hurry. Taking place on the actual cemetery grounds, enshrouded by the cool mist of the night, this one had a particularly eerie feel. The actors in this one were also particularly top notch, throwing their everything into making this a truly heartwrenching performance.

And special kudos to the hanging scene, adding the biggest scare of the night. That came completely out of nowhere.

The Fall of the House of Usher - The short with the biggest name recognition came last for us in the night, and I'll admit to feeling pretty bad about this, because while it was no doubt a very entertaining adaptation, by this point in the day I was exhausted after a long day's work and was beginning to fade. According to Fi, it is a fairly liberal adaptation of the Poe short, with more elements added to it to add to cohesion and make it a workable stage play. Like the rest of the shorts, the actors were dedicated and suitably haunted, especially important for a Poe short, and as the most special effects heavy of the three shorts, Usher works particularly well, especially when the titular house begins to fall around us.
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A suitable shirt choice for this particular event, no?
Apologies for the short review on this one, but I have never been much of a theatrical critic. This was a fun evening, and an interesting, classy diversion in our Long Halloween. If you like the theatre and a bit of the macabre, this is one to check out, though be aware, this one sells out in a hurry!

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries - Countdown Live Escape Games & Fear... The Darkness

10/15/2015

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

Generally speaking, as most haunt events take place at night, we can only really do one Halloween oriented event a day. However, with a little searching and a little creativity in determining just what exactly you can constitute a "Halloween" event, we've been able to find some options that fit this definition wonderfully this Long Halloween season. And so, in a first for The Long Halloween Diaries, we'll be covering two events.

First up...
My wife and I were first introduced to the concept of escape rooms in last year's Long Halloween, though I know they're a much older concept than that. For those reading who are unaware of escape rooms, they are essentially small rooms that you are locked in with groups of people of varying sizes. You are given a number of puzzles to solve, often unlocking and leading to more puzzles, requiring teamwork and creative thinking and a little physicality, all for the purpose of ultimately unlocking the main door and escaping the room within a set time limit. Prior to this day's event, Fi and I had taken part in 3 different escape rooms, and successfully escaped from one. In these experiences we have learned that both escape rooms and the puzzles within can vary wildly in quality, from cheap-looking setups set up in random office complexes, to high-quality events with Hollywood quality sets and infuriating yet well-thought-out puzzles.

When planning this weekend I'd started looking around for ideas on potential escape rooms, and came across Countdown Live Escape Games, a company that expanded to Los Angeles relatively recently from Las Vegas. They had two available rooms, The Spaceship and The Psycho, and, well, with a room called The Psycho, I kinda knew we had to jump on this, especially after seeing that their reviews online were quite decent.

Not knowing entirely what we were getting into, but excited for an opportunity to jump into another escape room, Fi and I set off for Downtown LA with our reservations in hand.

Flash forward a bit, and I'll acknowledge that we did not escape. We got close. Within a matter of seconds close, actually, but we did not escape The Psycho's lair in time.

But did that matter? Not one bit! The quality and execution of this escape room were top notch, all around. After our briefing at the front desk, we were led into the dimly-lit living room of a serial killer, where we were soon locked in, alone. A TV on a table nearby crackled to life, and we got to see the killer giving a cryptic mission statement into the camera, offering us 45 minutes to solve the various puzzles hidden around his lair that would allow us to escape, lest we die a horrible, horrible death. And after that, it was the two of us against the room. We put together puzzle pieces, solved codes, and even had a fun time using a webcam backwards to read something hidden inside of a cabinet. The small room we were in soon opened into two adjoining, hidden rooms. The puzzles were difficult, but not impossible, and in the end we only had to ask for clues on one particular puzzle we were stuck on. If we'd had ten more seconds, we would have made it out, but alas, it was not to be, and we naturally died horrible, horrible deaths, literally because I accidentally inverted two wooden blocks.

Yeah, I'm still kicking myself over this one.
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You can't see my feet in this picture, but there is kicking of me involved.
Nevertheless, we had a blast. The quality of the rooms and puzzles were exquisite, and the people working the place were nice and professional. If you're looking for an escape room in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, I must highly recommend Countdown Live Escape Games.

Though as always, lessons were learned, and lessons you will hear on the fun nature of escape rooms:
Escape Room Tips From Someone with a 25% Success Rate of Escape:
Escape Room Tip # 1: Be warned that a lot of escape room companies will allow you to buy a number of time slots, but if you haven't filled out their maximum number of slots for that time with people, you might get paired up with strangers. This is not a guarantee, but always a possibility. If you want to be completely on your own, I'll recommend either buying out the entire game (an expensive proposition), going at a time inconvenient to most people (early in the morning on a weekend worked great for us), or having enough friends who want to join you, and doing it all with them. That is the traditional explanation, right?

Escape Room Tip # 2: Communication. If you're going in with a group of people you know, be sure you have an open line of communication with everyone so nothing gets lost or misunderstood.

Escape Room Tip # 3: Be mindful of your time. 45 minutes, or whatever time limit they give you, may sound like a lot at the beginning, but you shouldn't use it to dawdle. It goes faster than you think.

Escape Room Tip # 4: This one's weird and specific, but necessary: know where the actual exit is. Find the exit door ASAP, and what's needed to open it (lock, code, etc.), so you know what to look for while you are collecting your clues.

And with our escape room failed and officially the seventh stop on our Long Halloween, we moved onto the 8th stop, a wholly different and brand new game...
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Sinister Pointe is a haunt-based company that's been around for a pretty long time, from all I've seen, though last year was the first official time that Fi or I had attended one of their events. Their Bloody Mary themed haunted house was quite good from a technical standpoint, though not terribly memorable as Long Halloween events go for us. Still, we had fun, and the company has remained on our radar since, which led us to their most recent haunt, Fear... The Darkness.

Described as a trust exercise, in it teams of two are led into warehouses themed to a number of themes (The Possessed, The Dead, Dolls & Clowns... you know, the usual), and split up. One person is brought into a smaller, pitch black room room, while their partner is led to a computer screen with night vision cameras leading to their partner's room. The person watching the cameras has to guide their partner around the dark room, collecting a variety of items in a 10 minute time window, while being stalked throughout the room by monsters who can see you, even if you can't see them.

Then after the ten minutes are up, you switch places, and the process is repeated.

We'd never heard of anything like this before, and so as soon as we could, we definitely got our tickets for this event. After initially checking in at the storefront set up by Sinister Pointe (a great, weird little shop selling all sorts of genre things), we were guided to a warehouse about a block away where the event was being held. After a short wait due to some technical difficulties (it does appear they're still working out a lot of the kinks), a ringmaster character led us into the pitch black recesses of the warehouse and asked who wanted to go first. Ever the brave one, Fi volunteered, and I got to watch.

And then, well, there was madness, mostly good, some not so good.

We chose the Clowns & Dolls theme, and Fi's room was clearly the clown-themed one. It had two cameras in opposite corners of a relatively small room, and two roaming monsters set about to harass her. While I wanted to win the game while helping Fi avoid the monsters, I quickly realized only one would be possible, and left her to the mercy of the creepy clown and doll while guiding her around the room, trying to find the various listed objects in places that seemed likely. Figuring out a system of communication to start with was challenge enough, a challenge made all the more difficult by me not being close enough to the microphone for her to hear all I was saying, and the carnival kiosk in the middle of the room making it impossible to see Fi half the time. Nevertheless, after some growing pains and figuring out the room system, I was able to guide Fi around with a system of 90 degree turns and making her raise items so the camera could see if they were correct or not. And even though it involved digging through some cream pies that made her hands smell for the rest of the day, I was able to get her to find 4 items! (Out of 12, I believe, but still, not bad I think!)

And then it was my turn.

And, well, I didn't do so great. I'm a big guy, and I bumble a lot, and I'm kind of a coward when it comes to a lot of things, so there were some things I probably should have done (like reaching into a terrarium to pick up a rubber snake I thought might've been real) that I didn't do. Fi, my ever patient and wonderful wife, guided my blundering around well enough for me to find 2 of the objects in the room and helping me avoid most of the monsters, even chasing one of them for a while at one point, but to little avail. Also, at one point, I broke something in the room. I was picking up a number of rag dolls (I think, hard to tell in the pitch black), and dropping them as I thought they weren't needed, and then I hear the shattering of glass on the floor, and feel its grit as I shuffled around. I don't know what it is or what I dropped, and I feel terrible for breaking it, but since the secret police of Sinister Pointe haven't come for me (yet) after all my apologies, I think we're all just glad that nobody got hurt.

Though if anyone from Sinister Pointe happens to read this, I really am sorry.

In the end, this was a really fun experience that I'd like to see done with a bit more polish. The instructions and room layouts were a little more confusing than I think they meant, and maybe making some of the objects actually visible to the watcher, instead of having the watcher have to guide people to put their hands in everything, would have added a little extra fun and feeling of accomplishment. That said, this is still a fun and unique Halloween experience I hope they repeat next year.
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Holding up our prize coins.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was our big game day of The Long Halloween. We may not have done great, but we had a great time, and with some of the days ahead, I'll say that the truly awesome and weird experiences are still ahead.

Stay tuned.

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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The Long Halloween Diaries - Ward 13

10/11/2015

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)
 
The fine people at Evil Twin Studios have consistently put on some of the best local haunts that Fi and I have attended during our Long Halloween experiences. When we first went two years ago, to their Theatre of Terror event, we were expecting something low key, maybe fun, probably not particularly scary. After all, they were being put on in an old theatre (and former mortuary) in South Pasadena (i.e. one of the most unassuming stretches of suburbia in the San Gabriel Valley, and for the sake of transparency my old hometown), with all proceeds from the event going to the South Pasadena Educational Foundation.
 
Really, how bad could it be?
 
Well, after surviving the Theatre of Terror, we knew just how bad it could be. Top notch set work, innovative scares with enthusiastic actors, and some damn surprising, damn scary moments. Its quality rivaled, possibly even surpassed anything that Knott’s had done. It was a very pleasant surprise in a busy Halloween season.
 
But could it be repeated? Well, yes. Last year’s Raymond Hill Mortuary haunt was even scarier and more intense, with moments including a random monster appearance *under* us in a crawl through tunnel, and a trip on a mortuary slab, being standout and scary as hell moments.
 
After two years like this, we were excited to see what they had with this year’s experience, Ward 13, a fairly basic theme of a mental institute gone mad. So… did our sixth stop on this year's Long Halloween match up to previous years?
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I believe my smile speaks for itself here.
Yes. Yes it did.
 
I don’t want to go into too much detail  on this, because this is one of those haunts that’s best experienced, but I do want to share some thoughts.
 
Even though I’m reasonably certain most of this haunt is constructed in a parking lot, it’s nearly impossible to tell from the impeccable set design they do. Despite a few instances where it’s clear that the walls are made of thin plywood, most of the time you’d have a hard time telling that you aren’t walking through a creepy institute. The rooms are well themed and distinct from each other as you wander through admitting, the hydrotherapy and electroshock rooms, the rubber room, and the children’s ward (full of actual, very creepy-looking kids). Secret doors open to rooms open in walls, hiding under a bed leads to a secret, crawl-through tunnel, and a pitch-black maze lined with mild electric shocks in the walls finishes things off.
 
Long Halloween Tip # 14: Watch out for any narrow, pitch-black stretch of smaller mazes out there. It’s become more and more common to put minor electric shocks in, and if you don’t expect them, they can hurt like hell. They won’t kill you, but they’re annoying, and one of the few things I generally don’t approve of in mazes on principle, because most of them don’t warn you that they’re coming.
 
The true highlight of this maze was a tour of the exercise yard, while strapped into a wheelchair. Completely helpless and at the mercy of the monster pushing you, it’s a lot like playing an on-rails video game in the best of ways.
 
This haunt also brought one of my favorite memories of Long Halloweens, when I actually got a monster in the haunt to completely break down laughing. Now, as a general rule, I don’t condone people trying to get the monsters to break character. The monsters are good, hard-working people who just want to scare folks, and they’ve got a really hard job, all told, because so many people are just as apt to fight them as they are to scream. It’s well known that I’m a pretty hefty screamer when it comes to haunts, and, well, one thing led to another here, I was scared, and I may have shouted out a famous four-letter-word that began with the letter “F”, followed by the word burger. This bizarre compound swear word got a man dressed like a gorilla in a hallway made of hallucinations (long story), to completely break character and just keep loudly laughing as we walked away.
 
In retrospect, I feel bad that I broke the gorilla in this fundamental way, but at the same time, well, I hope I entertained him.
 
Tickets are $15 online, $17 at the door, and they’re open Friday and Saturday nights through Halloween night. Come on, take a short trip, enter Ward 13, and let the madness take you. You’ll have so much fun for it.

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)

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The Long Halloween Diaries - The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride

10/8/2015

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(For those new to this article series, please check out my introduction to The Long Halloween.)

The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride is one of our regular favorites for The Long Halloween, as this will be our fourth consecutive year doing it, which is funny in its way, because it's not particularly high up on our favorites list. As haunts in the Los Angeles area go, it's not the scariest (in fact, as scary events go I'd call it the most family friendly), it's fairly low quality when put side by side with comparable haunts, and has never had much in the way of a storyline to speak of. The carnival atmosphere they tend to create around it, as well as the additional attractions they've added in recent years, have always looked on the cheaper side and have been very hit or miss. And as an avowed carnivore, the all-vegan snack selection has always made me nervous.
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What can I say, I've always been distrustful of vegetables.
And yet, in spite of all this, we keep going back, and will continue to go back. Why? Well, in spite of all its cheesiness, this is still a very fun event. The people here are having a blast, and what they may lack in quality they more than make up for in enthusiasm. The titular hayride is always a fun, strange trip (albeit often tasteless in strange ways), the carnival environment is still entertaining, and the side attractions can offer their own holiday excitement. So, this year Fiona and I are setting off for The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride expecting good fun and good times with our special guest stars, Fiona's sister Heather and her fiancée Serith. Will a good time be had by all? Let's find out!

Long Halloween Tip # 12: When it comes to Halloween events, the more the merrier. Especially if it's something you might be split up during (so you'll get the full experience), or if it stands a chance at being pretty cheesy so you can enjoy laughing at it more.
The Haunted Hayride Experience
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Taking place in what used to be the old Los Angeles Zoo, the nestled hillside environment of The Haunted Hayride has always had a creepy, almost country vibe to it compared to its proximity to downtown and the freeways. After hiking through the darkness because we chose the first parking lot we could find-

Long Halloween Tip # 13: Always research your parking options. Know if you have to pay and always have money on you just in case, and know the layout of the area around you to know if you really got the best parking or will have to hike a mile or two to get there.

-thank you for that interruption, Long Halloween Tips.  Anyway, after the hike and getting our tickets scanned, we made our way inside. There's not a particular layout to the grounds of The Haunted Hayride, and bathrooms are hard to find (and being offsite will actually need you to come back in for reentry in order to get in again), but with a little exploring you can see the sights. There's a stage with some shows, a snack cart with all vegan snack foods (great candy apple slices and pumpkin fritters), and the Scary-Go-Round, a rickety merry-go-round with skeleton horses on it. For other entertainment they also have a pumpkin patch and some psychics.

There are a few costumed monsters milling about, scarecrows and zombies and werewolves and even a cameo by the Slender Man.

But what about the main events? Well, this year we have returning favorites, The Haunted Hayride and The In Between dark maze, as well as a couple new attractions, Trick or Treat and The House of Shadow. How do they rate?
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It's hard to tell at this range, but we're packed like fairly large sardines in the back of this hay cart.
The Haunted Hayride: In the past, The Haunted Hayride has always been something of a weird, disjointed set of themes that in spite of any of the Hayride's attempt of a theme, don't really have anything to do with one another. But, they're generally fun, and weird, and if they don't get you to scream, they're usually good for a few laughs. Going in knowing this year's theme was "The Boogeyman", I was curious to see what they were going to do, and, well, I'm still kind of processing it, to be honest. This year they went a bit more simplistic, a bit more artsy, and I think it lost a lot of the silly charm that you'll usually find at The Haunted Hayride. Don't get me wrong, we still had a lot of fun (even though we all lost some feeling in the legs about halfway through), and the grand finale was awesome, but it lacked a lot of what we normally come looking for.

As well, there's an innovation they did this year that, well, just doesn't work particularly well. There was a great moment last year where a sheet is thrown over the cart, leaving the riders disoriented and wondering just what was happening outside as the sheet thrashed and was flung about. No doubt looking to repeat this moment, each cart came in with a built in sheet mechanism on top of the cart, and, well, it didn't add particularly much. The sheet was only used twice, and on neither of those occasions was a big scare lined up after hiding us. As well, the sheet mechanisms on the cart had these steel cables used to suspend them, perfectly at arm height, and though we were warned constantly not to touch them, people kept doing so and finding out how sharp the cables were. Top it off with the sheet mechanism bunching at the front of the cart and making it impossible to see what was ahead, and this was a bit of a bust, unfortunately.
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The House of Shadows: With more haunts going the interactive route, the LA Haunted Hayride tried installing a semi-interactive house experience last year, and though it was just as much a disjointed set of scenes as the hayride itself, it felt a little lacking in its way. This year's house, The House of Shadows, was a marked improvement. Its line moved better, and it mostly fit the Boogeyman theme of the whole event as we tour through various, small suburban rooms. There are a few reasonably innovative scares and even one scene I'd call surprisingly cool (not spoiling it, but it involves a TV, and it was genuinely surprising to see executed). If I had one complaint, it would just be the fact that the line for this attraction is difficult to find and can be easy to miss if you aren't going out of your way to look for it (spoiler alert: it's near the food cart). If I had another complaint, it would be that the end of this attraction opens right onto the ending of Trick or Treat, which can kind of spoil the final scene there, and lead to some confusion as to whether or not the attraction's continuing.

Trick or Treat: I'm not quite sure what I'd call this. It's not a maze. It's not a haunted house. It's not quite an interactive experience. It's, well, it's a walk through a number of doors set up, with increasingly weird people usually threatening us for Trick or Treating. It does have a fun scare at the end though, so long as you're not spoiled for it by House of Shadow.
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The In Between - For my money the most entertaining attraction at the Haunted Hayride has always been the In Between dark maze. It's not the most elaborate of mazes, and in fact it's quite bare bones when compared to most other haunts. For the most part it's just black plywood walls with a handful of characters thrown in to give you scares and occasional props and effects to add to the effect. However, what it lacks in frills it makes up for in being an actual, legitimate maze, as in something you can actually get lost in. Add to that the pitch darkness, only lit by a single, large, overhead strobe, and you can spend some time in here getting fairly lost and freaked out (especially when it comes to the hallway with the big inflatable walls).

In past years they've provided groups of people a lantern to carry which didn't light very much, but did alert monsters to our presence. This year they did away with the lanterns and added, instead, creepy clown masks. These clown masks added a couple of beautiful things to this maze. The first being that they're cheap plastic, and as such cut down on our peripheral vision considerably. The second was that they basically transformed every lost person wandering the maze into evil-looking clowns, upping the number of scary characters in the maze exponentially.
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In retrospect, I really hope they disinfected these as often as they claimed.
So, while it may not compare quality-wise to a lot of haunts, The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride is still a fun, really entertaining haunt that the whole family can enjoy, and I recommend that everyone in the area who can try it at least once.

Thank you for joining me this Halloween season, and as always, please drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter! I'm big into liking/following back! 

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mattcarterauthor  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

-- Matt Carter

(We know there's a lot of Matt Carter's online you could spend your time with, so thanks for hanging around this one!)
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    Matt Carter is an author of Horror, Sci-Fi, and yes even a little bit of Young Adult fiction. Along with his wife, F.J.R. Titchenell, he is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel and lives in the usually sunny town of San Gabriel, CA.

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