Gone are the days of piped-in Vincent Price laughter and cardboard tombstones. No more cold, slimy vats of linguine and peeled grapes, the traditional substitute for guts and gore.
Today's haunted houses--designed to appeal to connoisseurs weaned on "Friday the 13th" and the evening news--offer a little something more. Something new. Something '90s. Something with strobe lights, throbbing Nine Inch Nails music, hockey masks and roaring chain saws.
Something like the dim and creepy "Haunted Factory," set in a cornfield in Simi Valley, which touts itself as the world's scariest haunted house. Word of the scares beyond compare are what prompted a group of four Camarillo 15-year-old girls and a parent to drive down the Ventura Freeway on a school night.
The creepy components of a successful haunted house are almost as old as the desire to confront--and conquer--things that go boo in the dark, the girls said, shivering in their sweatshirts and flared jeans while in line for the spectacle.
Rule 1: "You've got to have, like, people jumping out, screaming and getting in your face," said Courtney Watkins.
Rule 2 was explained by Joanna Hochenedel. "I think the mazes are good," she said. "And the strobe lights and loud, loud music."
Libby Woods fills in the rest. "It's got to be really dark, so you can't see."
That said, the gaggle stumbled arm-in-arm into the haunted house with the scarred corrugated metal exterior.
It would spoil the surprise to say whether the girls' exacting criteria were met as the quartet went through blackened rooms with Freddie Krueger, Jason and pinhead look-alikes around every corner.
Suffice it to say that the actress/victim chained to the wall in the "Haunted Factory" wasn't the only one screaming at 7:15 on a cloudy, moody Thursday night.
With Halloween a mere week away, it seems that adrenaline-seekers from Simi Valley to Santa Paula and from Thousand Oaks to Ojai are steeling their nerves and heading for the nearest haunted house--or reasonable facsimile thereof.
Some are too scary for the younger set and others are tame enough for toddlers. Haunted houses take place in schools, churches or the great wide open. As with "Haunted Factory," most of the houses-o'-scare raise money for theater groups, PTAs, the Boys & Girls Club or other organizations.
No matter what your neighborhood social worker might claim, most thrill seekers claim no deep-seated psychological reason for voluntarily offering to be scared out of their wits.
