Fantastic Metropolis

2.

What followed was a forcible immersion in the tropes and techniques of gothic. Led by a Grim Reaper type decked out in flowing sable robes and clutching a gore-streaked scythe, my group wound through a dim labyrinth, emerging every now and then into monstrous tableaus. At each stop the Grim Reaper would set the scene: “In the dank catacombs of a Transylvania castle, famed vampire hunter Professor Van Helsing approaches the resting place of Count Dracula…” And then the actors would start into motion: Van Helsing would strain to throw back the granite lid of Dracula’s tomb, the Mummy would stumble from his sarcophagus, the Wolf Man would lift his face to the moon. Each scene culminated as the gothic fiend lurched menacingly toward the little coterie of onlookers standing transfixed in the wings.

Flight followed, a wild career through black passages festooned with cobwebs, pursued by a chorus of ghostly moans. They were all there, the thrones and dominions of the gothic pantheon—Dr. Jekyll, draining a bubbling concoction from a laboratory beaker; Father Karras and little Regan, projectile vomiting a can of pea soup; even dear old Roderick Usher himself, shrinking in terror as Madeline stumbled across his threshold, freshly risen from the cursed sepulcher of her fathers.

I was in a state of near paralytic horror by the time the Grim Reaper led us into the final chamber. Many years later, watching a video of James Whale’s 1935 expressionistic masterpiece, The Bride of Frankenstein, I felt a shiver of that same horror as I realized that the last room of the Jaycee haunted house had been nothing less than an ingenious simulacrum of Whale’s famous laboratory set. The Grim Reaper assured us that the enormous creature strapped to the good doctor’s table was restrained by unbreakable bonds, but by that time, I had arrived at a visceral, if inarticulate understanding of gothic’s central truth and attraction: nothing, not bonds of steel or prayer, can restrain the Dionysian forces that lurk just beneath the placid surface of everyday life. We’re all in terminal rehearsals for our final curtain call.

Sure enough, Frankenstein threw his switch. Electricity sizzled, sparks flew, and the creature roared as he threw off his chains and staggered to life (I’m happy to report that the frizzy-hired Jaycee inside Doctor Frankenstein’s lab coat screamed, “It’s alive!” with a maniacal gusto Colin Clive might have envied). As for me, I’d had quite enough, thank you very much. I darted by the Grim Reaper, stumbled for a single terrifying moment into the rampaging creature (who, I must note, gently set me back on my feet), and darted down a second set of stairs into the crisp October night beyond.

I stood for a long time gazing up at the dark sky and waiting for my blood to stop pounding through my temples. And then I did a very strange thing. I dug through the pockets of my jeans for another crumpled dollar and stepped back in line for another trip through the funhouse.

Turned out I’d left a piece of my heart inside.

At least one contemporary haunted house novel, Lisa Cantrell’s The Manse (1987) has been set in such a venue. Richard Laymon’s nihilistic The Cellar (1980) and its sequel, The Beast House (1986)—borderline haunted house tales—are set in the eponymous locale of the second novel, formerly the site of a sequence of violent murders, since refashioned as a tourist trap (in quite a literal sense), complete with ticket booths and guided tours.

This essay was excerpted from Dale Bailey’s American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction, published by Bowling Green State Popular Press, 1999.