Saturday before Halloween...haunted houses/real vs not real

Haunted Houses

One year...hmm, maybe I was 8 or 9...our local church had a Halloween party which included a "haunted" house. My Mom and I were in charge of one room.  I remember a lot of hay and candy, really not much else and certainly not anything near as spooky as they have now.


Anyway, at that time I had really long hair. My Mom teased all my hair in a frightful mess and put me in a witches hat and clothes.  I looked fantastic! (The only problem is, there is no photo of me then.)I wish I could say that I won the costume contest but that turned out to be my baby brother who at the time was 4. That story is in a previous post.

I digress. The point is that "house" was not scary. However, I have NEVER liked the whole haunted house thing. The couple that I have gone to it took a load of coaxing for me to go in and even then I turned right around and went out! Did I mention the whole I hate the gory stuff? Don't even get me started on the whole pitch black-can't see two feet in front of your face stuff! Scary!!!
Seriously, I can hardly stand to look at the commercials for those places.  My brothers and kids on the other hand love to visit them.
The funny thing is a few years ago I was a character in one of our local ones. I could be in the room and scare the pants off of other people BUT I could not lead a group for the life of me. Nope, even knowing what was in the house scared me. I know, crazy right?


Truly though, I went to a REAL haunted house about 5 years ago. This one to be exact!

For the record, I will most likely not ever go back there.  This is the Lemp Mansion. It does not look very scary from the outside but the inside is a little different. It is a beautiful house inside which includes a huge dining room that people can still dine in today (if you so dare.)

The house was owned by John Adam Lemp from Germany. He was a brewer. The house sits on top of underground caverns that were used to store and cool the beer.

You can read the whole story of the Lemp family with the link above but essentially several members of the family committed suicide in this very house. Tragedy surrounds the place. It is said that they haunt the place and can often be seen and sometimes heard.  This house is on the national registry as one of the most haunted houses in the country (top 10 to be exact) and has been investigated more than once by paranormal investigators.


I am here to tell you that this is no joke. It totally freaked me out and as I said, probably will not go back...even though I think paranormal stuff is kind of cool.
However, if you want a good thrill and like that kind of stuff, I certainly encourage you to go.  The history alone was enough for me!





Do you like haunted houses or paranormal stuff? Tell me about it? Tune in tomorrow. 


~Naila Moon