The Beast

With four years in the Marine Corps and thousands of dollars spent on my technical training, I was ready to face the world head on.  So what kind of  high tech job did I jump into?  Fiber optic installation?  TelCo Central Office?  Running aerial or underground cable?  Troubleshooting major communication trunk lines?  The answer...none of the above.  After a little coaxing from some friends, I decided to try my hand at a local haunted house.  In a house that always had plenty of room for extra spooks, I got one of the most NON-SCARY positions they had to offer.  Ok, so I started late in the season, they didn't know me, and had no idea that I could literally scare the piss out of people....but a "Talking Skeleton"?!?!  I sat behind the wall of a scene where a skeleton was laying on a table and a broken pendulum blade was hanging over it.  It was supposed to be from "The Pit and the Pendulum", and the blade was supposed to move back and forth.  The customers would be walking in front of this scene looking down at it, and I would be sitting behind the back wall looking out a peephole, talking into a microphone at the customers like I was the skeleton on the table.  Can you say "Chee-ee-eesy"?  Not only that, but the arms and legs were rigged with wires attached to wooden levers behind the wall where I was.  Certain levers moved certain part of the body.  The most embarrassing one,  was the right forearm.  When you operated that particular lever, the right forearm would move back and forth from the crotch to away from the body.  If you're not careful you may suddenly hear a customer yell, "Hey, the skeleton's jacking off!".  That position was awful, but I did get moved the next night to the "Eight Door Room".  It was a room with what looked like eight doors with a curtain in front of them, but only one door was the exit.  The other seven doors opened to a wall.  Plus there's a strobe light in there to play tricks on your eyes.  Basically, my job was to lead the customers to the wrong exit and watch them get pissed.  That was fun, and I got to be in that position a couple more nights.  Now you've got to realize that the lady who ran the show over there has a flair for the dramatic, and there was no one to play the role of Merlin in the Tower.  After some quick tips from a former Merlin, I decided to use a few lines of Monty Pythonesque lines from their "Holy Grail" movie.  Some customers got the joke, but others were clueless.  Shining down the center of the four story winding staircase was a light whose lens would spin leaving the illusion of light beams shining down through the fog.  Miss Theatrical the boss kept insisting "Wave your hand in the light and cast spells", so I appeased her with something stupid I just made up.  I finished up the '93 season playing Merlin.  In '94, I played Merlin a few times until car troubles kept me from getting there at my usual time.  And because she had to have a Merlin, she put the makeup guy in that spot.  Now there couldn't be two Merlins, so I offered to work in a dark space of the forest in the room next door to Merlin.  From the first night, I knew that was the spot for me.  How did I know?  Quite simply.  I could drop not only one person to the ground after scaring them, but I could drop entire groups.  I would get them to run over each other going backwards or forwards, and even get people to piss their pants.  I found my calling.  This was my official position until the '97 season.  That's when one of the owners started putting our personal safety in jeopardy by turning down the lights in certain areas, or lighting up the area all together, thus taking away the element of surprise when we tried to scare the customers.  One thing led to another, and about 20+ employees walked out leaving a practically empty show.  I do not recommend this house to people anymore, since the current owner who runs the show depends on gimmicks to get scares such as air guns that blast you when you walk by them, or a talking pirate on a stack of barrels.  Oh yeah, that just scares the living shit outta me!

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