S1: The Tomb of Horrors (Live Version) -Part One

Welcome to Acererak’s Tomb.

The current home of Baron Sukumvit’s Deathtrap Labyrinth

and Pizza Parlor!

Looking for a fun way to spend the evening or week? Come on down to Acererak’s Tomb for good food and a once in a lifetime experience! No reservation required! And check out our brand new kiddie play area for wimps, pacifists, and NPC’s. We do special events.

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a true hero? Then try out our classic dungeon crawl built into the ruins of Acererak’s actual tomb. Make it to the end and your meal is on us.

(Dungeon crawl recommended for players of level 10-14. Please make sure you are in good physical and mental health before attempting the labyrinth. Deathtraps may cause death. Management assumes no responsibility for anything ever.)

So a few years ago, I was in the enviable and somewhat bizarre position to run a stage version of the classic S1 AD&D module The Tomb of Horrors. If you're not familiar with the module, it was the final resting place of the demi-lich Acererak, designed by Gary Gygax himself specifically as a means of killing high leveled characters. When so many traps are insta-death, it doesn't matter if you have hit points well into the triple digits, some things simply negate matter.

In hosting it as a stage presentation, I took the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format and developed a PowerPoint presentation with internal hyperlinks and some severely limited animations to project onto a screen behind me while I read out a pre-written script. A victim from the audience would come up on stage and call out his or her choice of (usually) four options, which would then advance said victim's journey forward or result in their always humorous and always fatal demise.

Regrettably I can't recreate the experience on this blog; although I can direct you to comedian John Robertson's brilliant Youtube game The Dark Room, which was a primary inspiration for my own game. But until I figure out a way to make it available for public consumption, I thought it might be an enjoyable distraction to give you sort of the backstage tour.

Outside The Front Door

As the sales pitch above indicates, I'd decided that Acererak's Tomb had fallen under new management, in this case Ian Livingstone's trap loving overseer Baron Sukumvit (of Deathtrap Dungeon fame). Would-be adventurers were enticed with promises of a free meal, coincidentally the prize for any players who made it through my own creation.

At the front door, you were given the options of a main entrance, a side door to the right, a tunnel to the left, or to spend time in the kiddie play area (which almost nobody did). The play area served as a kind of warm-up, giving you three cycles to try out the slide, carousel, and see-saw before finally deciding that you weren't taking the game seriously. The see-saw gave you the first potential appearance of Jenny Mudge, who it's established is your only friend. Her character came from the Edward Packard CYOA book "Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey", and like her original counterpart, she's always a full step ahead of you and bailing you out of dead ends. The carousel gives you a clue for later. Depending on when in the cycle you visit it, you might ride the lion, the ostrich, or the moose, and each creature has a different carving etched into it (DO+US), (AZ+AR), and (NO+NH). I'm sure that will come in useful later. The slide gives you the opportunity to break your neck.

The Door to the Right

It's not made explicit, but the door on the right is the employee entrance, and it sticks you in a conversation with a purple bouncer. There is a way past him, but it requires a bit of trial and error in the dialogue tree maze. More often than not he'll just slam the door on you and send you back to the main entrance. A few adventurous spirits might die by sixteen ton weight or rhinoceros (???), but the savviest player is allowed access to the entrance through the back.

The dingy storeroom only contains a jukebox and an obvious exit which leads to the animatronic room (see below). Pressing one of the three buttons causes a corresponding reaction; Roll Over Beethoven squashes you with a steamroller, while A Whole Lot of Shaking Going On starts an earthquake. The one in the middle is the fun one. It seems you've just started an encounter on the wandering monster table.

"Well they’ll come out of the cavern, a swarm of hungry rats
A sorcerer lizard controlling giant bats
Or the Aasimar cleric is one of Tiamat’s"

Everybody now!
I said SNAKE, CATTLE, and TROLL! You've got a SNAKE, CATTLE, and TROLL!

I said SNAKE, CATTLE, and TROLL! You'll beat a SNAKE, CATTLE, and TROLL!

With a saving throw, WISDOM will make your spot check roll

A secret passage opens up, revealing an unmapped area of the dungeon, which I graciously admit to, and place you in the best possible spot for you to continue (i.e. the treasure room). We're going to leave this path for the time being and pick up the loose ends as the other route converge.

The Main Entrance

Like the original module, the main entrance is your best bet to navigating the tomb. But unlike the original, you stand a much greater chance of defeating the place through blind luck. Take the original FIRST TUNNEL; presented here in full color glory.

   

    A. Walk on the path

    B. Walk off the path

    C. Walk on and off the path

    D. Walk like an Egyptian


I tend to think of major sections of my Choose-Your-Owns as branches, and typically the first encounter or two will favor success, i.e. three possible choices will keep you alive. The middle section of the branch will lower the rate to half, and the last few encounters will be a one-right-answer thing. In early encounters you can almost guarantee that the silly fourth option will grant some sort of passage. Choosing to 'Walk like an Egyptian' grants a seemingly unimportant chant.

Slide the key in the screen

Lift the plaque

Slip your arm in the cul-de-sac

Light harms the soul

(Oh Wey Oh)

So strike a blow on Acererak

That may prove useful later.


The Left Passageway

In order to make the game function I had to take a couple of creative liberties with the map. The original adventure had the left passageway as nothing more than a dead end, but I saw no reason why Baron Sukumvit couldn't have had his golems knock down a wall, even if it did leave a potential threat of a giant rolling boulder.

Navigating this passageway would ultimately provide a roundabout way of getting to the end of the FIRST TUNNEL where the tomb's iconic Devil's head resided. But not before wandering into the old throne room, now having been renovated into a giant chess board and split across the middle by a barrier.

A purple horse thing (recognized by 96% of the population as a knight) approaches you and asks you to fill in for him while he makes a phone call.

The Treasure Room

Getting to the treasure room is the most advantageous course of action, although not the only way to progress. Most players went through the coat check girl, for whom I did my very best Harley Quinn impression. Jenny Mudge had to bail you out of one predicament via a phone-a-friend option. You also might have been rescued from the coat closet by Superhero Café if you were thinking ahead.

The treasure room is a little mini-game based on Let's Make a Deal. I give you a key and you can open one of three chests with it (or just walk away with the key). Whichever chest you choose, I'll show you one of the remaining two to rub in your face what awesome prize you didn't win (notebook paper, a trip to the store, or a strange object that nobody has been able to identify). From there you have the choice of keeping the chest you chose or switching to the third one. Two out of three times, switching is the better choice as it takes you to the inner tomb. The remaining third of the time is too graphic to even think about. So don't.

The Second Tunnel

No pizza parlor is complete without a singing robotic bear, and I was quite pleased that the sight of Freddy Fazbear sent an uncomfortable moan through the audience. And dare I say I did a pretty decent Aaron Fechter as Billy Bob impression, even if Looney Bird's appearance was more of a jump scare. Surviving this would take you to the hall of disks where you might face plant the wall if you weren't paying attention.

It was easy to get turned around here, but a little luck and a cameo by Red Fraggle would lead you into the arcade. Chances are if you'd gotten into the arcade you wouldn't have ever gone to the treasure room, so I gave you another chance at acquiring a key, which you stood an equal chance at losing in the next room. In case you haven't figured out by now, keeping the key was the better scenario, even if it looks like the ending is just ahead.

Incidentally, the skeleton isn't pointing to the game console, but to the row of animals above it. Remember the etchings?

Defeating the pseudo-lich got you to the 'good ending', and when I performed this game it took a collective two hours for anyone to reach it. The game was designed to stop there if the player didn't have the key. The young lady who was playing at the time had held onto her inventory, but sadly we were out of time. It's a pity, because I'm quite fond of the home stretch. Unfortunately the free version of blogger.com doesn't like it when I add images to my posts. So why don't we come back tomorrow to finish it off?

Point, Click, Die: The Museum of Haunted Adventure Games (90's Edition)

Ah, the 90's. Remember those? If you don't, try turning on the TV or stepping outside. The 90's is on the pulse of nostalgia culture right now.

My wife and I have enough of an age difference to have really experienced the 90's differently. She hit her teens mid to late of the decade, which means she associates the period with beanie babies, pop princesses, and the Disney renaissance. I, on the other hand crossed into my twenties, i.e. the period where you're an adult but sure as hell don't feel like one. For me the 90's was the death of hope and the wasteland of broken dreams; I was a Liberal Arts major.

It was a great time to be miserable. We started with the deaths of Jim Henson, Mel Blanc, and Dr. Seuss, MTV stopped being fun and then stopped being MTV, a culture sprung up based on vampires, and then Japan sent us a bunch of cartoons that made Watership Down look like a Trix commercial. But amidst it all was a crazy little thing called the internet. And with the release came the need for hardware. As such, the personal computer (PC) experienced a resurgence not seen since the Commodore 64's disk drive had finally given out (i.e. about four months after we bought it).

Which brings me back to horror, if you skip a few steps. I can't prove it, but I suspect any time there's been a new medium outlet available, story tellers will inherently lean towards tales of death first. I think most young filmmakers start off in low/no budget horror. And even the first narrative film in history, 1903's The Great Train Robbery, while not technically horror it didn't shy away from violence. It even had cinema's first jump scare.

PCs of the 90's had some new technologies at their disposals which allowed for a rudimentary blending of live performers and animated backgrounds that games hadn't previously been able to experiment with. Combining those elements with standard adventure game tropes, namely solving puzzles and uncovering answers, it was inevitable that we were going to get some haunted houses. I played a lot of them, as many as I could blow my minimum wage earnings on. And...a lot of them were deeply flawed. Sometimes embarrassingly so. But at the same time there was a B-movie charm to this era that I really can't see duplicated today.

So with that said, let's take a stroll through some of my favorites.


1. The 7th Guest (1993)

If you scrutinize any single element of the Stauf mansion (puzzle design, story, scares), you're bound to find another game that did it better. But you'll never find one that out-blends those elements as a concoction. You're (probably) the displaced consciousness of one of Henry Stauf's victims, existing in a ghost-like state, perpetually reliving the past and/or present as if it's a haunting -oh forget it! The narrative wasn't Trilobyte's main concern. What you have is the point and click version of The Haunted Mansion. Stuff happens in it. Every puzzle you solve or hotspot you uncover reveals...something. It's not always important, but it's always in keeping with the house's personality.

Six guests arrive via invitation, with promises of wish fulfillment should they beat Stauf's games. A deal with the devil plus competition easily brings out the worst in the majority of them. It sounds like a nightmare, but in reality this is horror at its most fun. You know everybody's doomed, but you'd strangely rather spend more time here than actually try to escape.

Most people seem to remember The 7th Guest for what they refer to as 'bad acting'. This is incorrect. The game is chock full of spot on overacting. It's a delight watching these performers try to out-ham each other in front of the blue screen. Their characters may be dying horribly, but everyone looks like they're having the time of their life. But none more so than Henry Stauf himself, Robert Hirschboeck. I can't find much about him on-line outside of his videogame appearances, but he just looks like a veteran Shakespearean actor who was finally given that one role he'd been waiting his whole career for.

The 7th Guest is a joy. It was the Myst before Myst, and the template for all spooky point and click adventures since. Flawed? Yes. But who cares. The game is so beloved that it transcends its own shortcomings, as evidenced in the forthcoming fan-made sequel The 13th Doll. Get that? Out of all the games on this list, this is the only one to outlive the 90's. To paraphrase Hamilton Temple, Stauf may very well have discovered the secret to Rrrreal magic.


2. Phantasmagoria (1995)

Switching one mansion for another, we join mystery novelist Adrienne Delaney and her husband Don as they move into the recently acquired home of magician Zoltan "Carno" Carnovasch. After Adrienne experiences a nightmare in the house she begins exploring it's hidden alcoves for clues as to what happened to Carno. It turns out he was possessed by a demon and murdered several of his wives. Adrienne accidentally releases said demon in her search and it enters her husband. The marriage plummets from there.

Phantasmagoria was the passion project of Sierra co-founder Roberta Williams (The King's Quest series) who'd been wanting to do a horror game for several years. As a game, it was probably more ambitious than it could live up to, as you spend most of your time wandering around trying to find that hotspot to advance the plot. But as a horror story, it leaves a disturbingly real impression.

The heart of the game is the relationship between Adrienne and Don. They start as a loving couple, but the demonic possession turns Don into an abusive husband, then a murderous one. There's a rape scene midway through the proceedings (thankfully desexualized) which I'm kind of surprised you don't hear more people referring to today amidst the #metoo movement, as it demonstrates how sex can turn into rape even if it starts off as consensual.

This isn't a fun game. It's more of a test of psychological endurance. Some people find the gore so over the top that it pushes them out of the game to the point they start laughing at it. I didn't have this problem. My sense was that Phantasmagoria's intention was to serve as a sort of re-sensitization of consumers to the effects of violence, physical and emotional. And from that perspective, I feel it succeeded.


3. The Dark Eye (1995)

This one totally slipped under the radar. It's even less 'game' than Phantasmagoria was, and more an exploration of how stories can be told through game format. Namely, the world of Edgar Allen Poe.

While not a direct translation of "The Fall of the House of Usher", the main story mimics quite a few of the beats. You are 'you', brother to Henry and cousin to Elise, visiting them at the home of your uncle Edwin. Edwin disapproves of Henry and Elise's love and enlists you to help drive them apart. Throughout the course of the story, you keep lapsing into bouts of insanity, experiencing Poe's tales "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Tell-Tale Heart", and "Berenice" from both the POV of the victim (uncomfortable) and the murderer (freaking unsettling).

The characters are presented as stop motion clay figures, which adds to the overall creepiness. Edwin is voiced by author William S. Burroughs, with a sweet spot between elderly indifference and contempt. Isolation permeates the production as you truly feel trapped in what would ordinarily be a peaceful ocean-side country house. Elise takes ill and is presumed dead. Edwin's butler murders Henry for no reason other than Edwin ordered it. Then Elise recovers and scratches out her own eyes. All of these events, combined with inhaling too many paint thinner fumes, leaves you bereft of sanity.

Again, not much of a game here, but it's a wonderful artistic experience. Poe's atmosphere is perfectly replicated from the audacious prose to the sinister passiveness. A lot of horror lets you feel what it's like to be chased, and sometimes dismembered. The Dark Eye teaches you what it's like to be discarded when you're no longer useful.


4. Shivers (1995)

Okay, time to go back to the fun stuff. Welcome to Professor Windlenot's Museum of the Strange and Unusual. Take a Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum and add malevolent spirits. Your friends dare you to spend the night in this old museum that was supposed to open fifteen years ago, but never did, owing to a few unsolved disappearances. Do you curl up in a ball by the front gate and wait for morning? Of course not, there's a whole building to explore.

Your ultimate goal is to exorcise all of the spirits roaming the halls, which requires you to search the place for ceramic vessels in which to trap said spirits. There's a tiny bit of a mystery that you solve along the way, but mostly it's a scavenger hunt coupled with solving puzzles to open doors.

It's tragic in a way, because Windlenot had the purest of intentions in building his museum and filling the exhibits in it. One of them sadly turned out to be a collection of cursed pots which took his life, and you're the first person to set foot in the sanctuary of his life's work. Eerie, but also beautiful in its design, Shivers is the kind of location one would love to visit during the day, with lots and lots of other people. Stay awhile, and you might even learn some interesting things.


5. Amber: Journeys Beyond (1996)

We're back at a haunted house, this time as part of a paranormal investigation team. Well, when I say team, I mean there's people back at the office. You're by yourself, going to check on Roxy, who went down early to test the company's newest 'whatever device' which has left her in an astral coma. Three hauntings are occurring at the house, and it's up to you to solve each one in order to restore Roxy's consciousness.

It's kind of like three individual room escape games from past time periods bookended by a lesser game set in the present. The puzzles are fairly Myst-ian and not all too complicated. But where the game excels is in the presentation of the hauntings. In each one you take on the identity of the ghost, and do your best to make them move on. Predating The Sixth Sense by three years, the ghosts don't realize they're dead, each bound to the earth by emotion.

It's hard to say who has the most tragic story. Margaret is the one that hit me the hardest, as she thinks she's still living in the 1940's, waiting for her husband to come home from WWII. It's heartbreaking having to force her to come to terms with the fact that she committed suicide when she received the telegram that he'd been killed, but it's a small comfort to watch their spirits reunite at the end of her chapter. Brice, the gardener in the 60's, isn't quite so uplifting. The implication is he was a man of physical prowess but mental deficiency, who couldn't understand that his employer's daughter wasn't returning his affection. He accidentally kills her, and then himself, and his ghost's resolution doesn't have the peacefulness Margaret gets. The last one I'd just as soon not spoil.

Ultimately my takeaway from Amber is its sincerity. It treats the paranormal investigation seriously, and it views ghosts as conscious beings that just cannot move on without a little external help. A sequel would have been more than welcomed, but regrettably this was the only game Hue Forest Entertainment produced.


6. Shivers II: Harvest of Souls (1997)

Setting is everything. Haunted houses are so common because they require minimal set-up; it only takes a single 'Keep Out' sign to lure a victim in. A ghost town requires a bit more back story, and Shivers II really shines in that department.

Cyclone is a secluded town in the middle of a canyon, made up of predominantly self-serving residents. It's also the home of the benevolent Pearl Larson, the aunt (if I remember correctly) of one of the band members of fictional rock band Trip Cyclone, who have gone for a visit to find inspiration for their next album. They've unfortunately walked in on the town's cover-up of a semi-accidental murder of one of their own (Norah Wharton) relating to a land deal, and guy in a mask called Dark Cloud who's out for revenge. I'll pause for a moment while you say "jinkies".

Then people start disappearing, for...reasons; I never really understood Dark Cloud's end game, but it's not that important. The thing is, everyone is being transformed into petroglyphs, residents and band members alike. Whatever Dark Cloud is doing, he's on the verge of completing it. But then you come in.

You're a friend of the band, arriving no more than an hour before the last Cyclone resident vanishes, leaving you alone in the town with Dark Cloud. He's always a few steps ahead of you, but not so many that he can prevent you from moving forward, and he doesn't count on you getting assistance from Norah's ghost. You slowly unravel the plot through puzzles, answering machine messages, and clues scattered through Trip Cyclone's music videos. It all holds together quite nicely, and even though you're never on any kind of time limit you really feel a sense of urgency as Dark Cloud always seems to be close by. The puzzles are a perfect difficulty level, and the music is awesome.


7. Sanitarium (1998)

It's impossible to talk about this game without wandering into spoiler territory, but it's twenty years old and the big reveal isn't all that surprising anyway. Besides, it's the journey that counts. You're a doctor named Max, determined to find a cure for the disease that took your sister's life when she was a child. Your colleague is of the notion that there's much more money to be made from treating the disease than curing it, and he tries to have you killed in a car accident. The game starts with you waking up in a psychiatric ward with amnesia.

Throughout the game Max doubts his own sanity, as he periodically lapses into hallucinations involving an adult-less farming village with a monster at its heart, a circus being terrorized by a kraken, an alien hive, and an Aztec community. We, as the player, know he's not insane, and it becomes clear that Max's mind is trying desperately to repair itself. It's a nightmare about healing, made all the more spectacular by the repeated attempts on Max's life by his colleague.

Out of all the games on this list, Sanitarium is probably the best written story. The puzzles are mostly fetch quests with a couple of attack/dodge encounters thrown in, but the end result is a very satisfying blend of game and story telling. One of the reasons Hollywood fails at adapting games to films is because they keep choosing games that don't translate well. Sanitarium is the kind of game that studios should be looking at. It's frightening, heart wrenching, and uplifting in all the right places; in other words, a great story.

Unmasking the Bogeyman

Come children. Sit down by the warm glow of the campfire. Listen to it crackle, as the destructive force of nature we call flames licks away the bark of these formerly living tree branches.

Odd, isn't it? Flames. The symbol of Hell itself. Although to be fair, the Bible never actually describes Hell, so our understanding of the eternal fiery pit is a creation of our own collective imagination. But the point is, here we find ourselves in the wilderness huddled around flames because the thought of venturing off into the wilds of darkness is the more frightening prospect.

Say, that reminds me. Have you heard of the Bogeyman? Yes, it's a stupid name but he's not a figure to be taken lightly. Well, I suppose at his core he is, because in truth he's nothing more than a manipulation tactic by adults to force children into going to sleep or eating broccoli or any number of other bullshit rules that they know they don't have to follow.

But ignore reality for the time being.

First thing to understand, the Bogeyman is not the devil. The devil, as all cartoons know, is that red figure who sits on your shoulder and whispers selfish intentions into your ear. He wants you to break the rules. Whereas breaking the rules, or often 'rule', is the core of the Bogeyman's wrath. Now this does not place him on the side of the angels as some might conclude, as the whole 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' axiom is irrelevant when dealing with an amoral being. As such, he views himself as neither good nor evil, but as a self-appointed protector of one element that he believes is 'correct'.

One of the oldest and most oft told tales is "Overcoming the Monster". To paraphrase Brad Dourif, the monster is a figure who does not negotiate (unlike the devil). He is a combination of the worst in both humanity (a cold calculating intellect) and nature (animalistic ruthlessness). He exists by one rule: do not break the rule.

What rule is that? I just told you. The rule is, do not break the rule. How do you know if you've broken the rule? Simple, he fatally punishes you for it. Did I hear somebody mutter something about that not being fair? Well of course it's not fair! To you. It's perfectly fair to him. He has no need to bother explaining his motivation to you.

This is why adults have the power to lord threats of the Bogeyman over children. They've obviously lived long enough to at least know plenty of behavior that doesn't break the rule, giving them the advantage of expertise. So if they tell you to do your homework or the Bogeyman will get you, you don't have the background to challenge them.

Did you notice something I said just now? I'll say it a different way. Take out the trash or the Bogeyman will get you. Keep the noise down or the Bogeyman will get you. Grab your toe, yell like Tarzan, and place a Kleenex in the refrigerator or the Bogeyman will get you. Do x or y will happen.
Now I realize I'm introducing algebra to a bunch of children, but this is too fascinating to let slide.

Notice how x varies from case to case while y is consistent, and yet y is still the more ambiguous variable? No matter how insanely preposterous x gets, it's very specific, y  never is.

What does it mean to be 'gotten' by the Bogeyman? He gets you and...what? He ties you up? Stomps on your feet? Forces you to become a dietician? No specific horror is as unsettling as the undefined outcome of him getting you. Uncertainty is the nightmare. And it's this same reason why the Bogeyman's appearance is shrouded in so much mystery, often portrayed with a burlap sack over his head.

So now that we understand him a bit more, which portrayal of the character was the greatest? And when I say greatest, I mean most true to terrifying form yet somehow engaging in a psychological unsettling but charismatic way. Naturally I have the answer, but let me explain how I got to it by working backwards from the ones who fell short of perfection.


5. Michael Myers

Late seventies through the mid-eighties had a whole slew of masked juggernauts competing for the spot. Michael Myers wasn't the first, but he was the first breakout star, and thus the template for any prospective Bogeyman. Even his debut film identified him as such when Laurie Strode and Dr. Loomis deliver the final exchange of the script. "Was that the Bogeyman?" "As a matter of fact, it was."

It's a question of heated opinion whether or not Michael was the greatest of the slasher baddies. He certainly can't compete with Jason for any tangible statistic like box office draw, kill count, or number of film installments. And Jason all but rendered Michael obsolete by perfecting the slasher movie formula and ultimately making the audiences root for him instead of his victims.

In order to get at Michael's significance, you pretty much have to ignore anything past his first appearance; H20 was fine enough if not all that memorable, the Rob Zombie movies were just too mean spirited, and Halloween II never sat right with me seeing as how an entire hospital staff got slaughtered just for showing up to work. So screw all that. Let's treat Michael as a one shot character.

We don't know why Michael does what he does, and any attempt to explain it seems to cheapen the appeal. He's a kid who puts on a mask and believes he's the Bogeyman. And thus he is. That's what's fascinating about him. He's like the wrong side of the Disney mantra where he just believes hard enough and his dream comes true. Unfortunately his dream is to be a serial killer.

So where does he fall short then? After that great setup there's really nowhere for him to go. There's no possibility of a character arc, you just have to let the night play out. Sure, the Bogeyman is a concept, but he has to be a bit more than that to really shine, and Michael just doesn't.

Jason has the staying power, as he managed to crack the fun factor of horror movies, and in my opinion Leatherface was a sorely more engaging character. So while I don't think Michael makes the best Bogeyman even in this batch, his first story might be the most brilliantly concise campfire tale told around the monster, striking that perfect balance of less being more. You could never get away with a slasher movie with such a low body count today, which makes it all the more special.


4. Pyramid Head

Let's try a different medium. The modern era of videogames has graced us with a creative blend of back story and presence in the survival horror genre. The best thing is, courtesy of reloading from a recent checkpoint your character's death and survival is all part of the same story. Fiona Belli can die gruesome impalements over and over throughout the course of Haunting Ground and still canonically live at the end. It's a loophole that films rarely get to abuse (check out the delightful Happy Death Day for a charming exception).

There have been so many stalker characters in recent video games that it's nearly impossible for any of them to really stand out. Yeah, Slender Man is frightening but we kind of got it after his first appearance. Freddy Fazbear is the stuff of nightmares but again, more backstory doesn't really accentuate anything past jump scares. We're not looking for which creep can sneak up on you the best, we're looking for someone who can intrigue you while scaring the hell out of you. For that we turn to Silent Hill.

Take the concept of the executioner; hooded, muscle-bound shirtless guy with a heavy blade. His an interesting figure throughout history because he's not inherently thought of as evil but merely the final step in the medieval judicial system. It's his job. If he's horrifying it's because the system is horrifying. But if we turn him into a monster he would be Pyramid Head.

If you have only a passing familiarity with the Silent Hill series, you might think Pyramid Head is the primary antagonist of the series. He's not. He's not even in most of the games. His importance is ultimately limited to Silent Hill 2, and even then he's not your antagonist so much as he's your sheepdog; keeping you on the grueling path to enlightenment.

He's similar to Michael in that he's not about to go running after you; he'll get you when he damn well feels like it (although in his case he's dragging a massive sword that might be slowing him down). But the difference is a question of humanity. Pyramid Head abandons all humanity which may have been within himself because he's at work. There's no ethics for him, there's a task. Michael on the other hand...well, what is humanity? I like to equate it with benevolence, in which case Michael consciously renounced his humanity. But what about sadism? That seems to be a uniquely human concept which serves as more of Michael's motivator than Pyramid Head's.

So that leaves us with an interesting variation on the Bogeyman. Old Heady still can't be reasoned with, or even defeated, but unlike Michael he can be cooperated with. If you can figure out what Head wants you to do and do it, he's cool with letting you go. If the Bogeyman were purely robotic, we'd have our winner. But no, the real terror has to come within us, which means we have to place corrupt humanity back into the death bringer.


3. Dracula

If I were you (the reader) I'd probably be inclined to skip this section purely on the grounds that Dracula is yesterday's cliché. Don't get me wrong, the guy's earned his place in film history. But post Hammer Horror era, he's probably outlasted his own dignity. Even the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film left me feeling like the whole concept was a very well lit, made-up, costumed, technically precise, yet none-the-less DEAD horse of achievement in cinematography. But I bring him up here because of how well we can get to know the Bogeyman by understanding what he's clearly not, as represented in Dracula.

First off, did you ever notice the whole throwaway plot line in both Dracula and his template stealing contemporary Nosferatu? There's a sequence of the character's boat passage where the crew starts disappearing. If you were to chop that one scene out of the story and blow it up to a full length feature, you'd have a perfectly rendered Bogeyman formula.

Ah! But you still wouldn't have the Bogeyman, and here's why. The ship's crew is just a ship's crew that happens to be in the wrong place. There's no greed, or ignoring of Crazy Ralph's warnings, they're just hired hands who become food. The Bogeyman requires his prey to be doing something, however slight in measurement, wrong. The punishment of execution for being nosy is excessive, but there are no truly innocent victims. Hence the final girl.

Now I want to take a brief moment to explore the uncomfortable relationship between horror and beauty. Poe was the master of killing female characters to evoke emotions in his readers. The Phantom of the Opera is the classic tale of the ugly monster coveting his object of purity by murdering anything that threatens to knock her off her pedestal. This is undoubtedly a factor in why the figure in darkness is so often a male, and the only one capable of defeating him is a young attractive female who doesn't smoke, drink, swear, and gives generously to Unicef.

When you trace Drac's origins to history's most accomplished brute Vlad the Impaler, it's interesting how that thirst for blood has been revised. Vlad was a ruthless monster with a personality pretty close to the typical Bogeyman, while Dracula is a much more seductive devil. Drac may be King of Universal's monster lineup, but he has standards that Michael and Jason do not.

It may seem like I'm changing subjects, but just sit tight. Are you familiar with Vlad's female equivalent in history, Elizabeth Bathory? She's inspired her own vampire mythos, although strangely it hasn't caught on like the Bela Lugosi films did. Truthfully we don't really know if Bathory was the cruel presence she's made out to be, as her history was recorded by people who detested her. But the main thing that stands out about her legend is her M.O. of bathing in the blood of virgins to preserve her own beauty, an idea that you really can't imagine folk tellers assigning to a male character. Again, that opens up a whole other discussion, but for now let's set that to the side because we're going to need it in a minute.


2. Jack the Ripper

The grandfather of both the serial killer and the unsolved mystery. We all know what he did, even if we'll never know who he was or why. What's interesting about Jack, it's the perfect way to put a face on the Bogeyman without actually putting a face on him; both humanizing the monster and monsterizing the human.

The more we delve into the current climate of sexual assault survivors, an unfortunate truth is revealed. We never question why a man assaults a woman. Topics like what she was wearing, or to what degree she stressed her objection are often raised. But when it comes to the actions of the male, cases seem to either fall into the straight up denial that he did anything, or if he did then boys will be boys. We kind of skip a vital step in the process.

Is it because we've grown accustomed to the notion that all men have within them a floodgate separating their Mr. Hyde from their more amiable public Dr. Jekyll? We men certainly have our own gender based problems, but I've never had to worry about a strange woman following me to my car at night. Throughout my life I've never once thought that saying no to a female's advances would provoke a violent reaction. On the flip side, I have my own story or two involving a male coworker from a previous job who couldn't accept 'no' or the multiple variations thereof as reality. And that is a frightening spotlight to be in.

But my Halloween blogs are supposed to be about the joy of darkness, so let me try to steer us back on the main road. What we can regrettably accept is that probably the reason Jack the Ripper's identity was never discovered was because it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that any man could have been him. Could he have been a woman? Sure. But as we don't tend to think of women as having that same internal floodgate to darkness we can't explore the option without a prospective motivation for her.

Like Dracula, Jack has a historical female counterpart in Lizzie Borden. But her mystery isn't in who she was, it's in why. You'd think we would have explored her in more depth throughout film history. Did you know she was the subject of a major movie released last month? No? Not surprised, nobody went to see it. I don't think anyone even knew about it. Do you think we're just prone to romanticizing our male killers in a way that our female killers just don't intrigue us? Or maybe we just can't accept a woman going bad without a clear cut reason for it, and motives tend to detract away from the fear aura that the Bogeyman thrives on.

Well, what if I told you that the Bogeyman was actually a woman? I.E. the greatest portrayal of the frightening figure who's going to 'get' you is a female character? She meets all the criteria discussed in this blog, her identity is fully revealed, motives are clear cut, and she's still more of a nightmare than anybody else heretofore mentioned.

Okay, I warned you.


1. The Final Girl

Like dinosaur DNA in amber, you just have to know where to look (and no, it's not the T-rex). Think. Where is the one place you can go for a surplus of feminine cruelty that completely outclasses the masculine brutes? That's right, fairy tales. And who was the ultimate catalyst for placing fairy tale characters firmly in the mainstream's collective consciousness? Right again, Disney. You're two for two. Final round. Who then is Disney's mistress of nightmares?

No! It's not Maleficent! I mean, yeah, Mal is awesome and badass and a freaking dragon, but she's not the Bogeyman. I'm talking about the queen. You know, Grimhilde? Sort of? Well, I don't think Disney's confirmed her name, but from Snow White. Now we're on the same page.

Well think about it. Her evil comes from her own obsession with beauty. Like Elizabeth Bathory's reputation, she simply has to preserve her status or it's all out war to set things back to the way they always have been. She's a wasp who views Snow White as her potential replacement, and thus an obstacle to eliminate well before the threat becomes apparent. You can just see the fury in her eyes. Even Walt Disney's own animators said that after Snow White was released Walt would never let them draw a villain as innately scary as the queen.

So we have the identity, the motivation, and now we have the transformation where she sacrifices her (alleged) beauty to turn into the hag, where she can murder Snow White personally. And the fascinating thing is, once she sacrifices the one thing she held so dear, she gets really crazy. Delighted with the newfound freedom she has. And it is the single most frightening -what are you all looking at me like that for?

Oh...I get it. You think I'm talking about the movie. No wonder you're confused, you poor sad, stupid, naïve little...dears. No, I'm talking about the ride.

This isn't some sequence of images on a screen that you can just block out by covering your eyes or leaving the theater should it become too intense. Nothing as generous as that. Instead imagine your family has taken out a second mortgage to cover the cost of a four day ticket to the world's favorite resort, full of overpriced balloons, pastries, and the occasional plague of seagulls. You've shaken hand with Captain Hook who turned out to be much more pleasant of a fellow than you've been led to expect, maybe bought a hat with ears, took a spin on a magic carpet, got a replacement hat with ears. It's been a good, safe, unintimidating day so far.

So now you're at the front of the line for one of the Fantasyland attractions, and a minecart/bed hybrid pulls up next to you. Oh look! It's got Dopey's name on it! Your favorite! Well this should be fun, you say as the Stepford smiling attendant locks you into your vehicle and gently launches you into the serpentine adventure that's about to change your life forever.

Why, it's the castle doors. And who is that to greet you from the second story window? It's the queen. In a clearly sullen mood. Perhaps she wasn't expecting you. Well, surely you haven't broken any rule by allowing this pre-laid out track to guide you where the Imagineers have decided you should go, right? I mean, all you did was get on the damn ride like you thought you were supposed to.

You approach a mirror. Not THE mirror, but A mirror, which serves as a friendly reminder of how mirrors are meant to work as you turn the corner. And there, ahead and slightly to the right of you is the queen. With her back to you, staring into another mirror. Her reflection indicates that she has not magically cheered up since a moment ago, and it's a tad on the eerie side to be dragged uncontrollably up to her, as she's clearly not someone you'd want to surprise from behind. Fortunately startling her is not something you're going to have to worry about. She makes it evident that she knows you're there as she turns around to face you...

And holy shit! The face of the witch in all of her three dimensional Tony Baxter designed glory has been described as hawk-like, gaping, and drunk off her own dementedness. Something in your psyche shrivels up and dies as her image permanently burns its way into your mind. On reflex you try to hide your eyes, but it's too late. All you see is her.

You peek through your fingers at the sequence of skeletons reaching toward you, a warning that comes well beyond the point of usefulness, and she reappears on your left at her cauldron. Surely her manifestation is not as unsettling as the vestige she implanted in your young brain. You want to look at her again but find yourself physically incapable of making eye-contact with any part of her. A shelf crashes overhead from the sheer force of her presence.

You're outside the castle, and she appears so suddenly that she may have climbed into the vehicle. You spin wildly through the forest, and the trees and logs themselves are out for your blood. You arrive at the dwarf's cottage, but who cares anymore. Animals stare at you through the window. Disney animals. The kind that intern for Cinderella for no retribution other than the joy of involvement. They stare at you in fear. You've been marked, and there's nothing they can do about it. There's the dwarfs. Screw them, they're as helpful as the cops in a slasher film.

The witch. And the witch. And the witch. She's actively trying to kill you. With a minecart, a support beam, and at last a huge gem stone. And then she succeeds. Strobe lights flash as the doors to the outside world open. You're not dead. Much worse. You're alive. And the Bogeyman has gotten you. She's inside you. Every ride you go on from now on you'll be peeking around the corners for her. Every dark corner, sharp turn, or shadow is another potential appearance of that damned animatronic. For the rest of your freaking life you're going to feel her a few inches behind your shoulder. Maybe catch a glimpse of that banana-shaped snout of hers. In your own home when you turn off the lights as you exit a room. She will always be one false glance away.


And that, children, is the Bogeyman. He's in every adult. And he comes for every child. And why? Because you have something that we don't. And we detest you for it. You have the innocence that was stripped away from us when we were you.

Have pleasant dreams.

Block 238 on the Camino Real: The Door to Halloween

It's October! And you know what that means! It means it's no longer those other months that don't end on Halloween! That's what.

Welcome back to Annie's Acropolis, my virtual Halloween theme park which I guess is technically open year round since I don't ever delete the blogs. You're currently in the Camino Real, a café on the edge of desperation courtesy of Tennessee Williams. I've selected it as my central hub for you to wait in while the other attractions open.

A little back story: Camino Real was a Williams play that I got to act in in 1993. It's a combination nightmare/allegory/we-don't-really-know-since-Williams-is-dead production that kind of defies explanation. My character Lord Mulligan died halfway through the play, and then I got to play the corpse of the lead character towards the end. It's strange how my college friends who were also in it and I used to love hating on the play, but it somehow left a real impression on me. Evoking famous figures like Don Quixote, Casanova, Lord Byron, Esmeralda (of the Hunchback of Notre Dame fame), Kilroy (of...'was here' fame, perhaps?), and the occasional appearance of possibly zombies, kind of robots, and an offstage plane crash, it was all over the place. I can't help but wonder what it might look like if it were adapted into a video game.

But why should I try to help out Mr. Williams's writing career when I have my own work to promote? Here are links to all of my past blog posts that I can argue are Halloween related, with a few more to come throughout the month. Please enjoy these attractions!


Walk Through Spook Houses: The bread and butter of all Halloween tourist traps.
MTV's House of Horror: Journey through the nightmares of the golden age of music videos!
The Maul of America: Just a fun day through a shopping mall. It's not our fault that Universal's Halloween Horror Nights icons have taken up residence in it.
The Checkered Game of Death: A tour of the home of Mrs. Parker and her sons, who love classic board games as much as the next children. Maybe even more.


Breakout Rooms: Want something a little more interactive? Try not to get lost in these puzzle-based stories.
Thinking Without Portals: No Portal gun, just you, GLaDOS, and a virus that mustn't be unleashed. Mustn't it not? No, it mustn't.
The Zodiac's Labyrinth: Signs, signs, everywhere a sign! And it's not just your sign you have to worry about, it's the whole horoscope! Your fortune awaits.
The Twelfth Toll: Pursued by one stalker through the woods, you take refuge in an old house. Get in. Get out. But be warned, the inhabitants might be even worse than whatever is already chasing you.


Live-ish Music: Dungeons and corridors not your thing? Why not relax and let the pros (and amateurs) entertain you?
Welcome to My Nightmare 1&2: Nobody does horror like Alice Cooper! Sit back and hear the tale of Stephen spanning through both Welcome to My Nightmare albums.
Bat Out of Hell: Two albums not enough for you? How about three? Come hear the whole Wagnerian opera trilogy in the amphitheater. Three out of three ain't bad.
The Halloween Soundtrack: I did a deep search to bring you a few spooky anthems that don't usually show up on most Halloween soundtracks but are certainly as ghost worthy as the latest edition of The Monster Mash.


The Outdoor Theatre: Let's watch some movies together! And then tear them apart!
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The original! The music still rocks and the plot still befuddles.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show remake: The remake! A chance to fix the issues of the original, and they totally didn't do that.
The Saw franchise: A look back at the whole series minus the 2017 film. Gory? Yes. But it could have been worse. And then it got worse.
And a few film montages. The best horror theme songs, and the best death scenes on film.


The Children's Pavilion: Entertainment just for all the stupid little kids.
Top Ten Scooby-Doo stories: The title is pretty self-explanatory, I don't know why you're even reading this. But thank you for your thorough attention.
Scooby-Doo's Unsolved Mystery: Better known as my five chapter Scooby-Doo fan fiction. I'm proud of it. You should read it. Right now.
Maleficent (a tribute): She's awesome. She knows it. And deep down inside, so do you.
And lastly, a few trick or treating safety tips to at least keep you from getting punched in the face.


The Wooly Side's Museum: A personal collection of stories, real and mostly made up.
Decorating the Lawn: My favorite Halloween memory.
A Thousand Words: A gothic flash fiction piece that Edgar Allen Poe never wrote. I have to do everything around here.
Grand Exit: A comedy sketch with a mummy. What more do you need?
Stakes and Ratings: Even vampires have nightmares.
Review of The Ogre: A review of a silent film that I had the pleasure of acting in. Includes my famous "I am So Ugly" song.
The Treehouse of Horror Marathon: I got frustrated with the crap The Simpsons had been giving us for Halloween as of late, so I drew up my own version. My Exorcist parody predated theirs by two years. In your face!
Missed Direction: A Carousel story where a paranormal debunker goes up against a fake psychic who's a little smarter than he is.
Return to Nevermore: Pretty much this blog from last year, but with my Poe version of Janet Jackson's "Black Cat".
13 Hitchhiking Ghosts: Speaking of Disney, here is my experienced collection of the creepiest things from Disney's theme parks.
The Haunted Hayride: And finally, a laid back tour of my childhood nightmares, with a discussion on fear and a haunting children's rhyme for added measure.


Now then.

I don't imagine a whole lot of you are going to even be viewing this particular blog post, much less sticking with it all the way down to this point. But for those of you who have: first off, thank you. You rock. Secondly, when I first started my blog back in 2014, I had created a personal cutoff of 238 posts. 238 was the number of a bus I rode as a child and subsequently adopted as my lucky number. With that esoteric limit in mind, I thought "238 is a decent run for a blog site. I imagine I'll be out of things to say by then".

Well, it turns out that this particular blog happens to be my 238th post.

Am I out of things to say? Maybe not quite. I've been dealing with a lot more writer's block this year than ever before, but it still feels incomplete (that damn Disney fan fiction is only half written, for starters). I don't know how many more posts I have in me, or how much longer I'll be doing this, or if there's even an end in sight at all. So I won't say "Here's to another 238," or commit to a full 814 (another bus I rode on), but suffice to say this blog post represents a monument that really only means something to me.

I knew it was coming up, and I expected I would do something kind of self-indulgent for it as a celebration. As it just so happened to coincide with my annual Halloween kickoff I thought it appropriate to go full on nobody's-going-to-understand-this-but-me mode. Which brings me back to The Camino Real.

As I said earlier, I was in the play in 1993. Peter Gabriel's Us album had come out the previous year, which included my favorite of his songs "Steam". Being a college student, I would look for any reason to postpone actual schoolwork in favor of feeling like I was working on something. And one of those 'things' was a parody of "Steam" which summarized the 'plot' of Camino Real as best as Gabriel's rhyme scheme would allow.

Thus, I give you a link to the song, and the my lyrics with which you're more than welcome to replace the originals. The rest is all on you.

Camino Real

Turn back!

Ransack!

Just drop the tab let it run to Marguerite

They turned a Trique into a rug

That can hug

The street

Retreat

It’s a dream

With what appeal? Camino Real

Seal the fountain turning green

And it’s dry

Pass the Ovaltine

Survivor –didn’t. Now he’s dead.

Go call a student from Ahmed.

We’ll have to cut him in half.

I hope he won’t laugh

Or I will too

You know you’re trapped inside a cage.

Your knees at center scrape the stage.

We’re stranded in each other’s space

I wish I'd brought my mace

Disgrace is blue

It’s a dream

A sour meal –Camino Real

Steal the play behind the screen

Pour the wine

Dress for Halloween

Jam-packed

Abstract

Esmeralda wants a medal for shedding a tear

The lunar restoration of virgin-hood

Is a good

Career

Sincere

It’s a dream

An endless spiel –Camino Real

Deal the Queen of cuckoldry

Get her high

Off the potpourri

I think she’s going insane

I think they’ll both crash the plane

Let her go to Bide-a-While

No man is an aisle

And I’m here too

Don’t take the daughter for a spin

Don’t ask her Nursie where she’s been

The king has traded in his throne

So leave the guy a loan

An IOU

It’s a dream

A broken wheel –Camino Real

Reeling down a steep ravine

Here I lie

Let the cleaners clean

Everybody ninth block

Patsy down, what’s up Jacques

A. Ratt, vacant mat

See the Fugitivo dive and splat

White shipped, cash gypped

Cabaret is in-equipped

Kilroy’s killed, his heart is ripped

I can’t see my f**king script

More light!

I need sleep

I’m in deep trouble

Don’t you know I’ll leave the show

Once Camille has returned

But I’m moving through the snow

And I haven’t ever learned to ski

Don Qui!

It’s a dream

And how you feel Camino Real

Is real as making desperate scenes

Never write

On amphetamines

Show me out!

Where is the greyhound depot?

The violets have broken the rocks

Mr. Gutman!
Saint Mary have me pumping, thumping,
Clumping, slumping, bumping, jumping
Off the balcony
Hear me scream -landing
Give me a beam I'm trotting now
Into the light!
Exit stage right!

I'm living the dream...