Ello all you haunted house goers out there. Let me tell you about one of my first haunted houses.
It was the ‘Ween of my fourteenth year and in an attempt to get to know my dear old daddy a bit better and share an interest, I decided we’d go to a haunted house. I asked my mate Knobby if he knew of any activities that I could ease Daddy into All Hallows nice and slow. He gave me a name and address and told me the place would cater to newbies. The name of the place was actually “All Hallows” which was a nice coincidence. Daddy wouldn’t dress up, but I managed to convince him into wearing a T-shirt that said, “I’m with scary.”
We found All Hallows down Soho, London, tucked in a back alley away from the main streets and I marveled that I’d never heard of it before. We knocked and the door opened to this big man with shades and a cigarette hanging off his bottom lip. I told him that Knobby sent us and he looks us up and down and then says, “Well it takes all sorts, come in.”
We went into a darkly lit hall where the lights flickered and my dad almost hit the ceiling when the door slammed behind us. The first thing we saw were several bodies littered across the floor, all in different states of awful. Dad asked me if they were real and then one with a very convincing face wound grabbed his ankle and murmured something unintelligible. The last body at the end of the hall was the most disturbing. Her nose dripped blood, her eyes flicked up repeatedly into the back of her skull, she looked like she had relieved herself all over the floor, and a small needle hung pathetically from her left arm. Dad clung to my arm, telling me it wasn’t quite what he expected but scary nonetheless. We walked up some creepy stairs to the next floor and asked a gothic woman and what appeared to be a large six-foot five leather-clad monstrosity where to go next. She directed us up to the fourth floor. On our way, we passed weird freaks standing and shaking their heads, a mad doctor with a suitcase dripping blood, assorted shifty characters and rooms full of weird screams that made Dad red in the face. Dad still swears it was chainsaw victims, wink wink. I just told him to enjoy the experience. Well shock of all shocks, we hear crashes, shouts and sirens going on beneath us. A dozen coppers in riot gear rush through the whole premises ordering everyone on the floor and we both find ourselves at the local nick for being in a house of ill repute. Dad saw the funny side … eventually, but in that cell, Daddy and I bonded and now share a passion for ‘Ween, so much so that in any city we moved to, Dad always insisted upon living on Elm Street.
Laters all, luv ya bum.
