The Phenomenon of the "Hell House"

My guest today was a Ph.D. candidate in Theater. He researches new forms of theater that break barriers of what we normally expect theater to be. One of the primary areas of focus of his research is a remarkable type of theater put on by conservative churches: the Hell House.

A Hell House is not unlike the more benign Halloween haunted house. Often, the exhibits are put up around Halloween and the feature the familiar pattern of a guide moving the guests from one terrifying room to another. The Hell House, however, does not depict traditional evils, like witches, ghost, and the like. Instead, the Hell House depicts what the sponsoring church perceives to be sins being committed in the world today. Through his research of many Hell Houses around the United States, my guest has identified three “rooms” common to most Hell Houses: (1) the abortion, (2) the gay man dying of AIDS, and (3) the drunk driver.

The abortion room often features a botched abortion that kills the woman receiving the procedure. She often screams horrifically, dies on the table, and is carried out of the room by demons. Similar fates occur to the gay man and the drunk driver. Each dies as a result of his or her sins, and is taken offstage by demons. In some case, the guide is a demon who explains how Satan is using lies to deceive the world.

The end of the Hell House varies. Some Hell Houses feature a depiction of heaven. In some high-budget Hell Houses, the final room has a Plexiglas floor underneath which the audience can see all the people who “died” during the earlier scenes of the performance. These people are now being tormented in Hell for the sins that led to their deaths. Some Hell Houses feature a depiction of Christ on the Cross. One particular Hell House ended with imagery so graphic it almost made my guest vomit (I’ll spare you).

The common event at the end is that the participants are invited to accept Jesus Christ in order to receive salvation. Hell Houses keep careful track of how many people accept such invitations. My guest hypothesized that most of the “conversions” that occur at the end of Hell Houses are likely re-commitments by lapsed Christians. The language of “accepting Christ” and what someone actually has to do to accept Christ is likely only known by people familiar with contemporary non-denominational Christian services. Some Hell House even keep a tally of how many people cried, and how many people threw up while visiting the exhibit.

I can see why my guest is interested in studying these theatrical productions. Hell Houses in particular seem to use theater to affect their audience in a way that traditional theatrical productions do not. The immediacy of a Hell House is more intense than anything you can get in traditional settings.

This American Life also covered Hell Houses. Check it out here.

The Forks

My guest today once worked the night shift in a warehouse, mostly operating a forklift truck. Several of his friends joined him at that job, and they all lived the inverted life of night-time workers together.

Once night, the gang was sitting around contemplating what to do after playing all the video games they felt like playing. One person offered: "let's do something mischievous!" They undertook to toilet paper the house of the leader of their religious congregation. (My guest belongs to a faith with a lay clergy, where the congregation members have close, chummy relationships with their leaders. Please do not envision him toilet papering the home of some aged Irish priest.) A late-night trip to Walmart secured them the toiled paper and forks needed for their undertaking.

If you don't know, the forks bought by the mischievous gang were to be used in a process called "forking." Forking involves jamming hundreds of disposable plastic forks into the sod of someone's lawn. Forking does most of its emotional work through incongruity. The victim emerges from his or her home and sees two things which do not normally go together: landscaping and dinner ware. For a few bizarre moments, the victim tries to reorient him or herself in this new reality. It's like discovering a clown in your shower.

(In recent years, forking has become part and parcel with thorough toilet papering. Personally, I think forking looses a great deal of its punch when paired with toilet papering. Toilet papering is a crude prank in that it simply steals the victim's time; the pranksters are essentially forcing the homeowner to engage in a tedious cleanup operation. If, as I have posited, the primary value of forking is disorientation, toilet papering reduces that effect because it announces that teenage pranksters have been afoot. Rather than the lawnowner contemplating what incomprehensible set of forces could have driven forks into her lawn, the toilet paper immediately evokes the image of teenage pranksters silently driving plastic stakes. The clown in your shower isn't surprising if you know your cruel cousin hired it and hid it in your shower.)

The mischievous gang set about their secret work and toilet papered the home and forked the lawn. They retreated into the night. Later, they discovered that their congregation leader was away on business, so his pregnant wife had done most of the cleanup.

The Fish

My guest today told me about a problem with his fish. In a class he is taking, the professor asked each student to introduce him or herself and share an interesting personal tidbit. My guest mentioned that he has nine fish. Somehow, my guest forgot he actually owns ten fish, and forgetting to mention the tenth made him feel guilty.

My guest owns these fish because his brother has a grandmother who is trying to empty out her estate before she dies by giving cash gifts to her family. The brother used those gifts to purchase progressively larger fish tanks, the largest of which is several hundred gallons in size. The brother gifted several smaller tanks to my guest. The brother also gifted my guest several fish, many of which the brother had bred himself.

The problem arose when the brother gave my guest a fish who was fighting with another male of the same breed in the brother's tank. When the new fish was introduced into my guest's tank, a smaller fish began attacking it mercilessly. The smaller fish ripped chunks off of the new fish's fins. The assault was so vicious that the larger fish has been hiding full-time behind the only piece of cover in the tank: the thermometer. The victimized fish had to orient itself vertically to hide effectively behind the thermometer. It was so scared it wouldn't even come out for feedings.

My guest reacted in the only sensible way: he removed the victim from the tank and placed it in a bucket. The victim remained in the bucket overnight as my guest readied its new tank. Apparently, the victim fish continues to live in terror. Through the night it apparently did not move, and made no effort to eat the food offered to it. It used the barest strokes of its ragged fins to maintain its position. I wish it a speedy recovery. Perhaps a little Zoloft in the water would help it recover from its apparent PTSD.

For more information on using human anti-psychotics to treat pets, see this This American Life episode where veterinarians gave Harriet the Hedgehog some anti-psychotic drugs to help it recover from cancer surgery. The segment about pet health insurance starts at 31:26, with the bit about the hedgehog starting at 39:19. You will also learn about how to sedate a hedgehog.