I love Halloween! It’s by far my favorite time of year. I don’t know if it’s because you have an excuse to dress up, the chance to use your creativity, or if it’s the endless choices of places to go to drink. It’s so much fun! For one night, you have free reign to be anyone you want to be. It’s all in good fun.
Growing up, we were never allowed to go Trick-or-Treating. My dad believed it went against our religion to partake in the night of the dead…or something like that. Luckily, my dad has never been a very strict man. He knew how much us kids loved the holiday. So, he had the idea to take Halloween to a different level. Our church would get together and have an “Un-Halloween Party”. Instead of dressing up like demons, cowboys, Marilyn Monroe, or a dead cheerleader; we had to dress up like characters from the Bible. May sound kind of boring to most people, but it was a lot of fun.
We had contests, food, games, ect. It’s an annual event I will always remember having. Unfortunatly, our youth group was all the same age. We started growing up and going our own ways. Eventually, the Un-Halloween parties ended. It was really sad to watch it go away.
About 8 or 9 nine years after our last party, the youth group had grown to a great size once again. Around Christmas we were having parties. In the summers there were events every week. Our church started thriving again. Then, Halloween came around again. By this time we were old enough where we didn’t want to dress up like Bible characters. That was in our child years. We wanted to do something bigger and better.
My dad came up with a great idea. Instead of having an “Un-Halloween Party”, why don’t we have a religious haunted house…in the church! It was a far fetched idea that raised a lot of trouble and concerns with people around town and other churches. My dad has a very good, popular name in my home town, and people thought he lost it. That is until they understood where he was going with it.
The concept was not to scare you with chain saws, inmates, and a labroratory in your typical haunted house. No, our concept was to take true “horror” stories out of the Bible and bring them to life; including some modern twists. We titled it “Bible Horror Stories. We’ll Scare The Hell Out Of You!”
There was the death of the first born, of the 10 Plague. We took a baby dolls, cut them open, displayed real guts (chicken livers and other parts you can get from any store), and fake blood. We tore the dolls apart and laid the guts and fake blood all about. It stunk and it was very graphic. It actually made one girl cry and she had to leave.
There’s the story of Jezebel. We all know who she was. She was a whore queen. She was thrown from a window, trampled by horses, and her body was eaten by dogs. The only left over were her feet and her head. We didn’t recreate the entire story of her death, just the dogs eating her bloody carcass. We had real bones, blood, a fake skull, and a couple dogs that were not fond of people and were very good at acting out barks and growls. It was very graphic and cool!
We of course we had Satan in a pit of fire outside the backdoor of our church. That was really cool too. We just had a great time with it. We added things here and there to make it scary and jumpy for people.
At the end we had Jesus on the cross. I know many of you don’t care or don’t believe, that’s your thing and I respect your opinions. Anyway, we had him on the cross at the end after having many scenes of graphic violence. You had to have been there, but it was very moving.
It was a great time. We did it 3 years in a row, and every year got bigger and better each time. It was a great concept that really took off. Pretty soon, other churches started taking our idea and doing their own thing with it. As far as I know, some of them are still doing it. I hope so. It was a fun concept and a great new approach to teaching people about the Bible.
So, now that I’ve moved away from home, and my church, I’m left to dressing up like Mini Mouse or one of the Shirelles. It’s fun, but doing that with my church was a great time and I made some great memories.
