Hell House Maze
Jacque Waiden
Hell houses are haunted attractions typically run by evangelical Protestant churches or parachurch organizations designed to act as moral instruction. They depict acts which the organizers deem sinful and their consequences, including the torments of the damned in Hell, and usually conclude with a depiction of Heaven.[citation needed] Scenes portrayed may include date rape,[1] same-sex marriage, gambling, abortion, extramarital sex, raving, the use of alcoholic beverages and drugs, and teen suicide.[2][page needed] Other hell houses focus on the theme of the seven deadly sins.[3] Hell houses typically emphasize the belief that those who do not repent of their sins and choose to follow Christ are condemned to Hell.
A Hell house, like a conventional haunted-house attraction, is a space set aside for actors to frighten patrons with gruesome exhibits and scenes, presented as a series of short vignettes with a narrated guide. Unlike haunted houses, Hell houses focus on real-life situations and the effects of sin or the fate of unrepentant sinners in the afterlife. They are most typically operated in the days preceding Halloween.
The idea was first popularized by Jerry Falwell in the late 1970s.[4] The first known hell house was set up in Lynchburg, Virginia, beginning production in 1972, and was called the "ScareMare".[5] Similar events began in several regions during that period.[citation needed]
From 1995, the concept was promoted and adapted by Keenan Roberts, originally of Roswell, New Mexico, who started a Hell house in Arvada, Colorado. Since that time, Hell houses have become a regular fixture of the Halloween season in parts of the United States. Roberts remained active in the Hell house ministry by providing kits and directions to enable churches to perform their own attractions.[7] As of 16 January, 2017, the "Hell House Kit" was still available.[citation needed] As of 2023, a package of hell house scripts and scenes was being sold for $479.[8]
In October 2000, documentary filmmaker George Ratliff filmed a production of a Hell house in Cedar Hill, Texas from scripting to the final night of the production.[9] The resulting documentary, Hell House,[10] has inspired numerous live plays and hell-house performances, including one based on Pastor Roberts' production, which played for a month during the 2006 Halloween season in an off-Broadway production in Brooklyn, New York by Les Freres Corbusier.[11][12]
Holidayz in Hell was one of the ten haunted mazes that were featured during Halloween Horror Nights 2019 (Hollywood). It was located in the Parisian Courtyard. The maze would later return four years later during Halloween Horror Nights 2023 (Hollywood) located in the T-Pad Venue
The facade was a giant New Year's Eve greeting card that featured some of the monstrous holiday mascots inside that had a projected clock that would count down to New Year's Eve, 1929. Sound effects and lights imitating fireworks went off as guests would enter the maze through an entrance in the greeting card.
As guests entered, they were greeted by an Undead Male Party Reveler (or on some occasions an Undead Female Party Reveler) who held a martini glass in their hand. They stood in front of a giant martini glass with a skeleton inside.
Guests then entered a infants nursery filled with undead, crying babies standing in cribs. Guests then saw nursery murals all around the room, along with shelves littered with broken toys, toys also appear in the babies cribs. Guests see on the left the Nightmare Nurse brandishing a knife with a baby in her arms as she pops out at guests. Beside her she has a skeleton zombie baby (played by an actor) fussing in a crib as two adult skeletons stand beside the crib. Before the appearance of the Nurse, Father Time could be seen overlooking the guests and nursery on the right.
Guests proceeded through a tunnel of love with flashing red lighting where there was a postcard on Valentine's Day featuring Cupid hunting down a couple riding towards the tunnel of love. Cupid popped out from behind a black box boo hole scare.
Guests enter the altar where the Cupid held a woman (presumably a bridesmaid) at knife point. The woman was bound to a gift box, and could only cry out for help as the Cupid cut out her heart. To either side of the table, a prom couple was bound to the walls, dead.
As guests exited the tunnel of love, candy hearts adorn the walls with macabre messages written on them, such as "Kill", "Kut Me", and "Dismember Me" as Cupid pulled a candy heart back and pop out with a knife.
Guests would enter the outside of the Leprechaun's house and a man, presumably a victim of the Leprechauns, could be found tied up inside the well, and occasionally spit water, spraying any guests in front of him.
Then, they came across four giant Easter eggs, one containing a ravenous bunny, one with a Jack-O-Lantern face, one with human arms sticking out, and one where a beakless Peep pops out. Then, the Easter Bunny popped out from behind a curtain, and after guests pass him, they came across children traumatized and being held captive by fairly normal-looking yet emptily-staring Easter Bunnies.
Guests enter a black hallway with a 4th of July postcard that featured children playing with dangerous fireworks, with the central figure being a headless toddler holding dynamite that form the number 4. Guests then enter the outside of a fireworks stand where a static figure of Uncle Sam could be found holding fireworks.
As guests passed him and enter the fireworks stand, they came across an Injured Kid who lost his legs and half of his face as a result of a fireworks accident. Towards the end of the area, Uncle Sam popped out at guests from their right as fireworks went off on the left.
Guests enter the outside of a Jack-O-Lantern where there was a Halloween postcard that featured a pumpkin monster painting on decapitated human heads to make them resemble Jack-O-Lanterns. Guests then entered a large Jack-O-Lantern filled with UV Pumpkins wearing black robes. Most of the Pumpkins stood still, though some came to life and lunged at guests.
Guests entered a black hallway with a Thanksgiving postcard featuring a turkey bursting through an image of undead Pilgrims and then entered a dining room occupied by a dead family sitting at a table with a human cooked instead of a turkey. Turkey Lurkeys would come out at various areas lunging at the guests.
Guests then went down a black hallway with a Christmas postcard featuing Satan Claus gathering frozen corpses with his undead reindeer. Guests then found themselves outside in a Christmas Tree Lot, surrounded by trees decorated with intestines. Satan Claus popped out from behind an opening in a fence.
Kelly Baker: I grew up in rural north Florida, and I first encountered Judgement Houses (the tamer siblings of Hell Houses) in high school. Many of the youth groups from local churches would bus teenagers to churches in nearby Dothan, Alabama. There was a certain excitement about going to Judgement Houses. While ministers, youth group leaders, and parents hoped to scare the hell out of teens, attendees were mostly excited about the salacious scenes of sin that they were able to watch. Judgement Houses offered up horrors that teens wanted to consume under the scaffolding of preventing damnation. Religious horror appeared more acceptable than secular versions.
My sophomore year of high school I asked my mom if I could caravan to a Judgement House with all the other kids I knew were attending. I thought she might find the ministry appealing, and I would get to go to a haunted house, even if it was a Christian version of one. I was a horror movie buff throughout high school. My mother, on the other hand, stopped watching horror movies in 1968 after she watched Night of the Living Dead at a drive-in. She was aghast at the idea of Judgement Houses much less me attending one. However, she let me throw a costume party for Halloween that same year, and she drove my friends and I out to Bellamy Bridge to look for the local ghost.
Since we are both historians of Christianity, I am curious how you think about this phenomenon within the broader traditions of the religion. The connection between terror and salvation is an obvious starting point, but I am wondering what analogs you see elsewhere in Christianity?
religions to see what happens if we pay attention to how religious movements employ fear, violence, and harm to achieve their this and otherworldly goals. This is not entirely popular with other scholars of religions in America or historians of Christianity. That terror can become a method for salvation seems obvious to me. A quick glance at the world around us suggests that not only Christians employ violent and terrible means to achieve their goals.
The history of the South, like the history of so many other places in the U.S., is drenched in blood, guts, and loss. I had this book in middle school about the famous ghosts that could be found all over the South. Quite a few of the ghosts were enslaved people most often killed by white slave owners. Other ghosts were prisoners murdered by mobs before a trial could determine their guilt. For awhile, I imagined if I looked at my surroundings just right, with a tilt of my head and a squint of my eye, maybe I could see all the dead who continued to haunt us. The landscape was full of ghosts who we could never quite see. These ghosts never seemed that scary; they were the reminders of how dangerous our capacities for violence and hate can be. But, the people who ended their lives were truly frightening. For me, the South has always been haunted, but it took me awhile to realize that this region of my birth, where I chose to live now, was also Christ-haunted.
The churches I attended and abandoned found fear, no, terror, to be a powerful motivator. Jesus might bring you redemption, but fear from hell was what would bring you to Jesus. Redemptive love was too soft a message compared to brimstone, fire, and wiles of Satan. Preachers would spend more time cataloging the punishment for sins rather than encouraging the congregation to not be sinful. Sin was something we were supposed to fear, even as it tempted and tantalized us. (Hell Houses materialize this conflict in every scene, prop, and scripted line.)
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