As the Halloween season comes up the air becomes cool and brisk, decorations are put up, and anticipation for Halloween night begins to grow. The best part of the Halloween season however, are haunted houses and tours. People flock to haunted houses to feel the thrill of the scare and to get into the spooky spirit. However, I believe that there are some haunted houses that go too far. 

Many are familiar with being chased around by creepy clowns or a zombie while visiting a haunted house, and even a fake chainsaw or two. However, I think that as soon as the actors are allowed to touch or hurt you, then the haunted house has crossed the line. A famous example of a haunted house that takes this to the extreme is the McKamey Manor. McKamey Manor paid anyone that could get through the house 20,000 dollars without tapping out. But there was a catch. All participants had to sign a forty page waiver before, that allowed them to be tortured and pushed to their breaking point. I think that haunted houses like this should all be banned, and that haunted houses should not break personal boundaries through touching.

Another boundary that should not be crossed in haunted houses is an emotional boundary. I think that haunted houses shouldn’t be based on real life murders, deaths, or events, especially ones that happened in the recent past. The reasoning for this comes down to basic respect. If my family member was horrifically murdered, and someone made a haunted house experience based upon their death, I would feel disturbed. Not only that, it would be hard to come to terms with a family member’s death when a haunted house based on their death is put up every Halloween to make money.

Here in Boise we have the Old Penitentiary. Every Halloween the Old Penitentiary puts up two haunted houses based upon the inmates that were imprisoned there only fifty years earlier in 1973. There are many family members of former prisoners, especially prisoners that died, that now look at the Penitentiary as a disturbing  place where their relative’s death is used to make money.

Overall, I think that Haunted Houses that are based upon real life deaths and which allow for the actors to touch the visitors should not be accepted and should be shut down in order to spare people from emotional and physical trauma.