Haunted Axe-Fiend Copper Mansion!

This past weekend, in order to celebrate evil, my wife and I went to a sort of "haunted Halloween theme park." I'm not really sure what makes it "haunted"--it seems to me that someone could come up with a perfectly rational explanation for why chain-saws are able to stand in the air while someone is holding them. Sadly, my wife blogged about our visit first and took all the good material, but I'll try to come up with something.

I suppose the first thing that stuck out to me was the notice of what objects were verboten. During the period of standing in line, I had long opportunity to contemplate whether the contents of my pockets corresponded to anything on the massive checklist. For example, I was forbidden: "knives, mace, guns, weapons of any kind, lighters, flashlights, profanity, and physical contacts." (And those are only the items that I can remember!)

No "Knives, mace, guns, or weapons of any kind?" It seems a little (pardon the pun) overkill; isn't it just enough to say "no weapons of any kind?" I mean, I suppose somebody could try to claim that their knife was just for cutting steakburgers. Maybe someone would say the mace was just funky aerosol. But come on, I can't really picture your everyday gun-wielder saying, "This is not a weapon; it's a way of life." Omit needless words, people! And "No profanity?" I'm all for respecting the delicacy of children's ears, but did this mean that I would only be allowed to be scared poopless?

No "physical contacts?" (And what's with the plural?) Okay, so here we are at a theme park which will depict axe-wielding violence for us, but we can't depict a little hand-holding love? What would Jesus say? "No flashlights?" How am I supposed to figure out which parked car is mine when I go looking through the field that has no landmarks? (Okay, I guess it only took us about five minutes of anxious searching to find my car.)

Given the cold weather, it was nice that most of the attractions had roofs on them. However, since all of the place names seemed similar to me, the names blurred together. For example, the "Haunted House" is different from the "Axe Murder Mansion," which is not to be confused with the "Copper Canyon Massacre." I suppose I have a paucity of vocabulary when it comes to death, so I just called them "the haunted one," the "axe one," and "the one next to the axe one," respectively. The "Axe Murder Mansion" seemed particularly ill-named. First of all, since the crazy-looking dude effigy outside the mansion was holding two axes (perhaps Bush's "Axes of Evil?"), it should have been the "Axes Murder Mansion." Second of all, once I got inside, I don't really see how the axe was involved. For example, inside the mansion, there was a perfectly intact skeleton sitting and reading a book. Even now, I can't figure out how in the world that the axe and this skeleton's death can be remotely connected: did the axe murderer chop off the guy's arm (presumably while the person was running away), sew it back on, and then place him in front of a book? That seems like rather more genteel behavior than I would have expected from the snarling crazy guy effigy outside.

My wife notes that "the scariest part of the experience was undoubtedly the dark maze in which one couldn't see anything and had to grope around for the door, hoping that the person one had just bumped into was one's actual spouse and not either a member of a different party or one of the workers." I agree that it's scariest, but for a different reason. I didn't really mind bumping into the people behind us, because they were obnoxious loud kids who probably deserved being accidentally trodden upon. No, I suppose what bothered me was that these pesky kids would get to the exit first, and beat me. (Now I understand why the Scooby Doo gang provoked fear and hatred wherever they went.) I was scared, "What if several hours pass, and they close the attraction down, and they have to say, 'Hey, Leonard, take a look at the dork who couldn't find his way out!'"