Hell House

Short and sweet version of my experience:
Long lines, poor organization, rap music while you wait was nice. Some conflicting ideologies were presented as well. This is not a haunted house. It’s a series of skits designed to scare Jesus into you.
Throughout the trip I felt really uncomfortable and confused. Like really uncomfortable.
It wasn’t fun and I was RELIEVED when they let the atheists out first to get «t-​boned.»
Honestly, the most horrifying thing about Hell House was all the brain-​washing of young kids that seems to be going on here. Plus, I’m fairly certain they’re violating some piracy laws by showing clips of the Passion of the Christ.
My take away from all this: victims are to blame for all their problems. Everyone is going to hell unless they believe in Jesus. Also, rich white kids are horrible at channeling the complex social issues their poorer peers experience. It reminds me of how Marie Antoinette would dress up and play «peasant.» Privileged children pretending to be sex abuse victims made me literally laugh out loud at some points. I almost felt like I was watching the Disney Channel.
Go for a laugh though, it’ll take awhile but it is worth it if you’re drunk enough.

Bad acting. Long lines: long line followed by a hayride to another long line. Then being rushed in, forced to kneel on my bad knees, yelled at to hurry up… I mean, I know it’s supposed to be hell but it’s also an apparent business so customer curtesy should be respected. Oh btw they say don’t touch actors and that no ones supposed to touch you BUT someone grabbed my ankle… I almost kicked them!
It took a total of 4 hours to finally «enter» so I could watch maybe 10 scenarios all lasting about one minute each. Horrible acting! When I attended one of these was in 1997ish and the Event targeted the cities youth group (obviously a different town and church). I feel like this would’ve been more engaging, affective, and surreal had the scenarios been relative to teens and young adults… since a majority of those in attendance fell into that age group. Definitely wouldn’t recommend it, regret not going to the haunted house instead and now I’d like to manage my own version…

Hell house is always a good experience when we go. I’m a youth minister and we take our teens each year. It’s good for allowing people to sober up to what the world around us is really like. Kudos to Trinity church for continuing to put this on each year. Go at least once and decide for yourself.

I am not a churchgoer. Organized religion works well for some people but I’m very much of the «whatever floats your boat, just keep it to yourself» way of thinking. BUT Hell House is such a icon of crazy religiosity that when I realized it was only 30 minutes away, I had to check it out. There’s a documentary streaming on Netflix if you want to learn a little about it.
I’ve never been before but I do have to say, I was mildly disappointed. The preview on their website was bananas and while there was some WTF zaniness present last night, there wasn’t near the amount of rape, incest, or drug abuse we expected. Lame!
We thought there was going to be alot of waiting but we timed it just right that we barely had to wait at all. The waiting was also made more pleasant by the boozed up Limeades we had brought along. I would not recommend going into Hell House sans buzz. There is an ominous hayride into the woods and then you wait a little outside a bunch of trailers. The first lame thing was that you could hear the fake gunshots from the line so you were like immune to it by the time you got in there. The shooting scenes were the least climactic parts, surprisingly.
The concept is that each scene shows people being encouraged by demons to do bad, bad things like not be Christian, deal drugs, beat their wife, have an abortion, go to a party, etc.
Another lame thing: the «death monitors» that usher you through the rooms are really annoying –they yell at you and are «mean» but in the silliest way possible. Ours kept telling us we walked slower than her grandma and «she’s really old.» Zing, Death Monitor!
What wasn’t lame was the abortion scenario –it was clearly the scene they put the most effort into. The girl who acted as the nurse demon was really funny and good at delivering her didactic, misguided anti-​choice rhetoric. They pulled out some «baby chunks» and showed them around to the crowd and one of the death monitors said «Mmmmmm.» And the fake abortion doctor’s name was Dr. Tiller. Stay classy, Hell House. The nurse shouted to us as we left the room «November 2^nd vote to keep me in office!» Nice touch.
There was also a really odd scenario about human trafficking. It basically said that if you are a teenage girl who drinks and goes to a party to hook up with a guy you like you will be sex trafficked by him. Yeah.
It gets really hot and stinky in Hell House cos it’s mostly sweaty teens and tweens in there with you and when someone farts, it is very apparent. They cram you into a upright coffin and one point and it’s pretty scary, mostly because there were four of us in there and it got a little intimate. Does Hell House encourage 4 person 7 Minutes in Heaven? Kind of. Except that you don’t actually reach «heaven» until they finally let you out of the coffins and watch a video montage including (but not limited to) I Am Sam and a bootleg Passion of the Christ torture scene.
Hell was surprisingly silly, just a dark room with a strobe light and some bandaged bloody demons running around growling at us. Then you go in a room and a pastor says something about how we might go to Mickey D’s and die tonight and what if we aren’t saved? We didn’t get saved and we didn’t go to McDonald’s that night but we were entertained.