Sometimes Dead Is Better
Resurrecting ghosts from an old notebook
If you’ve seen my special West Coasting, you’re aware that I spend about five minutes on a bit about haunted houses. What is less apparent is that that was the end result of literally years of writing material about ghosts and haunted houses until I hit on the stuff that both worked onstage and also within the context of my act onstage.
While perusing through a notebook from mid-2016 – early 2017, I found the following material. The carnie bit at the end is something that, ten years later, I’m still toying with.
When I was a kid, the logic of Abbot & Costello movies bothered me. These were two guys who met Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Dracula. And yet in movie after movie, they’d be exploring a spooky abandoned mansion, and Lou Costello would say, “Hey Abbot! I’ve seen a g-g-g- a g-g-g-g- a GHOST!”
And Abbot would then act like it was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. Sure, in their last movie they spent 90 minutes dealing with a vampire, a walking undead corpse who can’t be seen in mirrors and who spends his nights feasting on the blood of the living. But a floating candle? That was apparently completely out of the question.
Horror movies are the biggest thing right now, and yet. Hollywood doesn’t really make movies about haunted houses anymore. Sure you have your Paranormal Activity type movie where a couple lives in an ordinary house that just happens to have ghosts in it, but that’s not a proper haunted house.
When was the last time a young couple was told they could inherit their forgotten aunt’s entire estate if they stayed twenty-four hours in a haunted house?
I’m talking about an old Victorian house perched on a hill like a vulture overlooking a small peaceful town, draped in cobwebs, broken windows, its own personal lightning storm behind it. And in that house is an attic and in that attic is a ghost. And the ghost is supposed to be terrifying because in the middle of the night it rattles chains and makes crazy moaning noises.
I had a worse roommate than that when I was 22.
In the 1980s the horror movies like Amityville or House or Poltergeist were about an innocent family who were tricked into buying a haunted house. If you made those movies in this real estate market, the first act would be about some real estate agent being very upfront about it.
“So yes, this house is haunted by a ghost – a lady ghost which is what makes it a haunted home. The walls bleed once in a while, but with the cost of getting an interior decorator to come and paint, the fact that she’s willing to do it for free is an added benefit. Plus you won’t get burglars, trick or treaters, political solicitors, or really any visitors so that’s an extra cost. Yes, every once in a while you get dragged out of bed and into a hell dimension, which is why I’m willing to sell this to you for only $1.7 million.”
I don’t think it would even turn off a potential date:
“You own a home?”
“Yeah, but it’s a portal to a hell dimension.”
“Understood. But you don’t rent, you own.”
“Well yeah, but once a month the walls bleed.”
“Well so do mine but you don’t hear me bragging about it.”
Ironically, the least scary rides at any carnival are the haunted house rides. Just a cart on a track through a trailer outfitted with red lights and carnies dressed as monsters jumping out at you. “Ahh! It’s a wolf man. Part man, part dog. Hope I got my rabies shots! “ “Oh no! A Frankenstein! Dr. Frankenstein isn’t covered under my insurance!”
The scariest ride at any carnival is of course, literally any other ride because they’re all manned by carnies. Six teeth, eight fingers, he’s in charge of running and maintaining a ride going a hundred miles an hour in loopty-loops half a mile up and half a mile down. You want to talk “haunted”, take a look at any face in the good eye at any carnie. That’s a man who’s not allowed back in seven states or Mexico. That’s a man who married the prettiest girl in his high school when he was 25.
You want a haunted house ride to scare me, halfway through have a carnie jump out, grab me, and say “The curse of a thousand years is broken! We’re trading lives now! You’re the carnie and I’m the normal!”
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