A screaming good time

By Stephanie De Pasquale | Tuesday, October 14, 2008

I think I may have been the unintentional entertainment last weekend as I screamed myself hoarse while walking through the Davenport Jaycees Haunted House alone.

The trek was part of a story on haunted houses in the area for this week’s Go&Do section. I’ve said in this column before that I love being scared. The problem is it’s not very hard at all to make me squirm.

So, with every step, I was about ready to jump out of my skin. There were faces that quickly lit up, shapes moving in the darkness, chain saws coming toward me, figures following me, fake exits, loud noises and rooms so dark that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Taking notes was impossible, and I didn’t want to be in there any longer than I had to.

What made it worse is that I was the only one in the haunted house during my walk-through, so all of the volunteers were calling my name in the creepiest voices they could muster. One volunteer even declared that he had caught a Quad-City Times reporter.

Needless to say, I was screaming and shrieking the whole way through and very glad when I reached the end, where I immediately wrote down as many details as I could remember once I could see my notebook.

Hopefully, the volunteers who make the haunted house possible got a kick out of my reactions. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one with a scratchy voice at the end of the night thanks to them.

To read more about the Davenport Jaycees Haunted House, check out this week’s Go&Do section or go to qctimes.com/goanddo on the Web.

Stephanie De Pasquale can be contacted at (563) 333-2639 or sdepasquale@qctimes.com.