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University Daily Kansan
Thursday Features
Thursday, Oct. 31, 1985
Area haunted houses aim to scare fright seekers
By Theresa Scott Of the Kansan staff
Black-hooded executioners swinging axes, vampires with blood drooling down their chins and a woman screaming in pain as her leg is amputated are typical horrors in area haunted houses.
Embalmera's Inn, the haunted house at 535 Maine St. is sponsored
by the Lawrence Jaycees and is the only haunted house in Lawrence.
Proceeds from the $3 admission will be donated to charities that the Javeees will announce later.
Scott Pelham, chairman of the haunted house project, said Monday that the Jaycees had sponsored a haunted house for 12 years. However, he said this year's spookhouse was the best he had seen, although he admitted his opinion was biased because he helped build the house.
Brent Stafford, an employee at The Edge of Heli, a haunted house in Kansas City. Mo., screams as he watches fake blood ooze from what appears to be his mangled leg. The colored water was pumped through tubes in the leg to create the effect, he said recently.
"It takes about 10 minutes to go through," Pelham said, "if you come
He said that suspense, misdirection and the element of surprise were the goals he tried to achieve with the house.
"I could set you loose in there," he said gesturing toward the old, white, two-story house, "and you could get so confused that you couldn't find your waw out."
Rick Werner, assistant chairman of the project, said that scaring people was the main goal of the haunted house.
"Fear is the main objective," Werner said. "Some people get so scared they push the monsters. That makes them kind of mad. If I was in there getting all hot and sweaty and somebody pushed me, I'd get mad too."
However, some people say they don't get scared.
"They say it's not scary," Pelham said. "I guess they have to keep up their machoism or something. But, if you touch them when they come out of the house, they jump."
He said one girl grabbed onto a gold chain around his neck and almost choked him while he was leading her through the house. But, after she came out she said it wasn't scary.
Pelham said the location and appearance of the house would help make it successful. He said built-in shelves on the front made in making this a good haunted house.
Rooms relating to themes from several scary movies were some of the built-in effects Pelham referred to.
Pelham said one of the most effective ways to rpook people was with lighting.
Werner said these theme rooms dated from 1917, with Frankenstein and werewolves, to the present.
"In the past we've had some pretty elaborate lighting effects with strobe lights," he said. "But we're keeping
'Fear is the main objective. Some people get so scared they push the monsters. That makes them kind of mad.'
— Rick Werner assistant chairman of the Jaycees haunted house project
Chad DeShazo/KANSAN
Rose Debow, an employee at The Edge of Hell, haunts a dilapidated church and graveyard, which is covered by cobwebs.
it darker this year because psychologists say that children don't comprehend death until they are 8 or 10 years old. Their first fear is the fear of the dark."
Not only did the Jaycees build spooky effects in the house, but, Pelham said, the house came with some of its own frightening effects.
"I went down to the basement once and when I opened the door, a ripple of water 3 feet high went by," he said. "Someone said it was probably just a rat, and I doubt it. I'm not going down there. It would have to be a huge rat."
Pelham said there were also weird noises in the heating ducts in the basement and shadows where there shouldn't be any.
"We started working on the house three weeks early," he said. "We were working in the bathroom and there was a shadow on the wall. It was like a sixth senses because we all turned around at the same time. We all thought that there shouldn't have been a shadow — all the windows were boarded up."
Pelham said all the workers put down their tools, locked the doors and got out of the house.
Many KU students who have the time and money to drive to Kansas City, prefer to visit haunted houses downtown
The Mainstreet Morgue. 1325 Main
St., in Kansas City, Mo., has been used as a haunted house for eight years, said Ken Smith, assistant manager.
Smith said people had to wait from 15 to 30 minutes during the weekend to get into the house. He it said it about 25 minutes to walk through the horrors of the building. The admission is $4.50.
Smith said that a large majority of the people were frightened when going through the house. However, he said, some people didn't scare easily.
The house, which is open through Nov. 2, features a three-story slide that Smith said was unique.
"We get people that don't get frightened," he said. "We try to get them to jump. That's what we're trying to do." He quickens and quickness when it's not expected.
Smith said that every year a couple of people became so scared that they飞
Mike Geller, St. Louis junior, said that he had gone to the Dungeon of Death, 1327 Main St., in Kansas City, Mo. on Saturday and that it was interesting.
"It wasn't as terrifying as I thought it would be." Geller said. "There was not as much surprise because there was always a closed door or a lit corner so you knew when they were going to try to surprise you."
Geller, who went with a group of people, said he had to wait in line for about 30 minutes. But, he said, he didn't mind the wait because he got to talk with other people in line. Admission to the Dungeon of Death is $15.
Japanese workshop puts area children in Halloween spirit
By Susie Bishop
By Susie Bishop Of the Kansan staff
One hundred little demons haunting the Spencer Museum of Art will gather for a Halloween parade tomorrow afternoon.
The children, carrying handmade paper ghosts, will bring to a close the Halloween Workshop, offered by the museum and the Lawrence Arts Center.
The children's workshop runs from 9:30 a.m. to noon today and 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. today and tomorrow. The children will follow tomorrow's session.
The workshop is in conjunction with the "Japanese Ghosts and Demons" exhibit now showing at the museum.
tion of telling 100 frightening tapes and lighting 100 candles as the darkness takes the day.
The parade concludes Hykko
Mongogatari, a yearly Japanese tradi-
"Our tales won't be as chilling, and we won't have as many," Sally Hoffmann, coordinator of programs at the museum, said Tuesday.
"We frequently have had Halloween workshops before, but not a big program like this," Hoffmann said.
The workshop also will not be competing against elementary school soccer games or other weekend programs, so the attendance should be
This year's program should have good attendance because the Lawrence school district will not conduct classes today or tomorrow. Classes were canceled for parent-teacher conferences, Hoffmann said.
better than usual, Hoffman said.
The activities begin this morning with a workshop on creating Japanese masks and costumes, offered by Michael Bradley and Candi Lawrence, teachers in the Lawrence Arts Center, Ninth and Vermont streets.
The costuming workshop, the only part of the program that required reservations, is full. The other two programs, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. today and tomorrow, are open to all children. Admission for each of the workshops costs $2, or $1.80 for Friends of the Museum, and can be obtained at the door.
Children creating the masks will cut and fold paper into haunting images of ghosts and demons, Bradley said.
The 32 children, ranging in age from 4 to 12 years, will take turns making masks and costumes and spooking onlookers.
Multi-colored kimonos complete the Japanese ensemble. The children make designs on the cloth using paint and crayons, he said.
Candi Baker's Popcorn Co., a local acting troupe, will open the second part of the festivities at 1:30 p.m. today.
The troupe, consisting of children taking classes at the Lawrence Arts Center and a few adults, plan to tell a Japanese folk tale to the children, transporting them to an imaginary head-bighted serpents roam the land.
Each of the prints exhibited at the "Japanese Ghosts and Demons," including "The Eight-Forked Serpent," portrays a folk tale in Japanese history.
The eight-headed serpent_was made by a children's advanced sculpture class at the Lawrence Arts Center, called the Friday Groun.
Popcorn Co. will invite the audience to participate in other folk events.
Films of puppet shows, festivals and real-life adventure will portray more Japanese folk tales.
Stories read and mined from a booklet of Japanese folk tales produced by the museum, "Haunting Tales from Japan," will be presented to children tomorrow afternoon.
Carol, Kendall, award-winning children's novelist, and Hiroshi Nara, Saitama, Japan graduate student, will read the stories as Laura Templet, Lawrence graduate stu
Cemeteries remain quiet even on Halloween night
By a Kansan reporter
Every Halloween, costumed trick-or-treaters try to emulate eerie spooks and spirits. If there are real ghosts and goblins, they have been staying undercover at local cemeteries.
Cemeteryes, the traditional hangout for spooks, remain relatively quiet in Lawrence, even during
Halloween, according to several cemetery employees. However, a few disturbances have occurred.
Cindy Harding, employee of Lawrence Memorial Park Cemetery, 1517 E. 15th St., said that Tuesday a couple of creepy incidents had occurred at the cemetery since she began working there in June.
"Once, someone put a box of remains on my desk," she said. "That
was kind of creepy."
Harding said she didn't know why someone would put a box of human remains there.
"Another time it was raining really hard and a vault came up out of the ground. It was floating like a boat out there."
Harding said the water had to be drained from the vault before it could be reburied.
Employees at two other cemeteries in town said they could not remember anything unusual happening there.
"Nothing has ever happened," said Tom Lee, who has worked for 20 years on the grounds crew that maintains the Pioneer Cemetery on West Campus. "There haven't been any practical iokes, either."
Oak Hill Cemetery, 1605 Oak Hill Ave., said the only problems they ever had at the cemetery were with vandals who climbed over the fence and knocked over tombstones. She said people patrolled the grounds to keep the vandals out.
Vivian Mier, office manager at
"We don't have any ghosts or spooks," she said. "We have more respect for the dead than that."
DARLING WIFE. INTERNATIONAL LAWYER BRAVE. LOGICAL. HUMANE WE ARE ALWAYS TOGETHER NOW. AND WHEN WE MEET AGAIN.
Epitaphs create fond memories that are carved in stone
"She was but a smile which glistens in a tear. Seen but a little while. But, ob how loved, how dear."
By Susie Bishop Of the Kansan staff
The epiphysis found on graves in Oak Hill Cemetery, 1605 Oak Hill Ave., combat the Halloween images of glowing ghosts rising up from underneath cracked tombstones in a deserted, haunted cemetery.
But the headstones can be damaged by the seemingly harmless pranks and stunts that go hand in hand with Halloween.
The spooky excitement of Halloween entices some people to seek the dend in local cemeteries.
The stones signify the love for the person and the pain the family felt at his death, Vivian Mier, office manager of the cemetery, said Tuesday. The graves shouldn't be used as Halloween props because of the holiday.
"Gone to the harvest above."
Mier said headstones broken by vandalism increased at Halloween.
"I have overcome the world."
Some of the epitaphs found in local cemeteries read: "Use the thought our brother is dead. In silence rests his peaceful head. His blood is by early graces. In heaven has sought his active place."
"People need to learn respect for the dead and those left behind." she said.
"Earth is better for having known him; Heaven sweeter for his sake."
"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. I die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take."
"A light from our household is gone. A voice we loved is silenced. A place is vacant in our hearts that never can be filled."
Epitaphs carved in stone, proclaiming the life that once was, don't appear on all graves. In fact, some of the graves lie completely unmarked.
"I wouldn't even want to guess at the number of graves out there." Mier said.
She said it was hard to count
them because it was easy to miss some of the marked graves and to know where all the unmarked ones lay
Other local cometeries also have quite a few graves that He unmarked.
"Some people can't afford a stone at the time," said Harold Garrett, general manager of Lawrence Memorial Park Cemetery, 1517 E. 15th St. "As years go by, people try to forget about it. If they don't do it then, or soon afterwards, it usually doesn't get marked."
many people back to find the graves of relatives.
Garrett said he had seen people coming back 30 years later to place a headstone on an unmarked grave. The renewed interest in family lines and geneology brings
Some stones are so weathered and disintegrated that the words are illegible. Many are eaten away by the algae* that covers some of the granite and marble stones.
"When the old stones get knocked over and break, we fix them and lay them flat on the ground," Mier said.
If the damage is not too great, the broken stones are cemented back together, she said.
"It's interesting. A lot of the younger generation is coming back to find their grandparents and great-grandparents. They are the people placing a stone on the grave," Mier said.
dent, creates the drama in mime.
After the workshop, the ghosts designed by the children will accompany them in the parade of demons around the museum's center courtyard tomorrow afternoon.
The ghosts, born from a child's imagination, will take life from the paper and marker and dance in celebration of Halloween.
On Tap
Nancy Haney
Peggy Helsel
CONCERTS:
The Romantics will perform at 8:30 p.m. Nov. 9 in 8th Auditorium Tickets are $11 with a KU ID and $12.50 for the public. They can be purchased at the Student Union Admits or at the Union on the Union and all CATS ticket outlets, including Omni Electronics, 540 Fireside C.
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Screamin' Lee and the Rocktones will play at 9 p.m. today at The Jazzhaus, 926% Massachusetts St. Cover charge is $3.
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The Screamin' Sirens will per-
form at 9 p.m. Tuesday at Past the
Pavement Hall, 737 New Hampshire
St. Tickets are $3 and can be purchas-
ed at the door.
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PLAYS:
"Chambers: A Recreation in Four Parts," by Paul Stephen Lim, lecturer of English, will be performed at 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Lawrence Community Theatre, 15th and New Hampshire streets. This is the last weekend for the play. Tickets are available at the theatre and are $5. Tickets for senior citizens are $4.
SUA MOVIES:
"Dracula" will be shown at 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. today at Woodruff Auditorium. Tickets are $1.50 and are available at the SUA box office in the Union. "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" will be the midnight movies today at Woodruff Auditorium. Tickets are $2. "The Terminator" will be shown at 3:30 p.m. 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday at Woodruff Auditorium. "Repulsion" is the midnight movie for tomorrow and Saturday at Woodruff Auditorium.