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The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County.

A Haunted House History...

Grace Church and the Temple of Doom

Contributed by Doug Kabourek.

In the middle of Grace Street, between Pierce and Broadway, not far from a Taco John's drive-through, is a manhole. This manhole was the exit of one of the most unique haunted houses to ever spook the metro area. It was Grace Presbyterian Church's "Temple of Doom," which was put on inside the church itself in 1984. (The year the film "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" was released.) The bulk of the haunt existed in the attic above the church. My younger self remembers peeking up the stairs after Sunday school and seeing lengths of twine taped to the ceiling to create the feeling of spider webs on the faces of those brave enough to ascend. And it was this silly gimmick that gave me the courage to make this my very first haunted house.

When I arrived with my dad, brother and maybe a friend or two, I was happy to learn we had an official "guide" who would lead us through the haunt with a flashlight, which meant safety (right?)! We entered through the Sunday school wing, and I can't adequately describe the uneasiness of this. Someplace I knew as a safe space was now cloaked in darkness with unknown possibilities of terror just around the corner...

The first room didn't waste time on a simple graveyard or mad scientist's lab scene. Oh no, at Grace they went straight for the guts - an operating room! This was probably the first place I experienced the technique haunters call "distract and startle." As we were led around the perimeter of the room, a doctor was working on a bloody patient on a gurney in the center. While we were focused on this spectacle, an actor popped out of a box pushed up against the wall that we of course hadn't begun to notice! Our ankles were swiftly tugged at.

When I say Grace didn't mess around, I mean it. After exiting the surgery scene, we stepped back into the hallway only to be attacked by a man wielding a chainsaw right there in the Sunday school hallway! Talk about a surreal experience. To this day I have not smelled the gas exhaust of a chainsaw in any other church hallway. And in case you're unfamiliar with the protocol of haunted house design, I'll have you know it is customary to build up and save the chainsaw for the end of the haunt. Not the second scare!

The chainsaw man used his saw to herd us down the hall toward the attic door. But it wasn't that simple - the doorway at the end of the hall was covered by cardboard down to about three feet off the ground. So while being chased by the chainsaw we all had to dive down and into that little opening! Perhaps this was to prevent people from running full bore right past the door to the attic and somewhere they shouldn't go.

After the power tool assault and a walk up the dark attic stairs (with spiderwebs, remember!) I pretty much blacked out. The only thing I can remember from up there is a Frankenstein's monster scene where we looked at it and immediately tried to run on to the next room. To which our guide asked, "Don't you want to see him come to life?" We were like, "No, sir!!"

The attic conveniently had a back staircase that led us out and down a spooky staircase at the rear of the church. This lead us down past a miniature chapel, which even my ten-year-old self was surprised was turned into a haunted scene. (Isn't that sacrilegious?) In the chapel were two mourners in monk garb kneeling before a coffin. They stood up and started to come at us but we were out of there just like before, our guide running after us! I wonder if there was a scare set up that we missed out on because we bailed at the first site of trouble.

The back staircase led somewhere I obviously had never been on any Sunday - the basement! I couldn't believe we were going on such a great adventure throughout our church. Down in the dark basement, a zip line ghost came flying at us out of the darkness! And as this was just the "distraction," an actual actor then popped up out of a pile of scrap wood to get the big scare. We were then at the base of a long ladder leading up to a hole in the concrete ceiling above. We climbed up and were dismayed to find ourselves climbing out of the manhole behind the church. Amazing!

So those are my memories of Grace's "Temple of Doom" in 1984. They did another haunted house in 1986, which I was then old enough (and brave enough) to work in. I'll describe "The House of No Return" in my next installment. Until then, keep the lights on!

Grace Presbyterian Church was built in 1898 and sat on the northwest corner of Grace and Pierce Streets. The church combined with First Presbyterian and became New Horizon Presbyterian Church.

The Grace Church building was torn down in 2006 and is a parking lot today but the manhole recalled by Mr. Kabourek in his story remains.

An ecucational wing was built onto the church in the 1960s.

The church was originally constructed as a frame building, as seen in this photo from the 1930s. The church was later remodeled and a brick exterior added.

The House of No Return

Contributed by Doug Kabourek.

In October of 1986, two years after the successful "The Temple of Doom," Grace Presbyterian Church created "The House of No Return" in a vacant farmhouse at 1270 E. Pierce Street (Where Gorilla Wash is now). It was promoted with the humorously self-confident OR self-deprecating suggestion that it was indeed "a house that no one returned to." I played various roles at this haunt and, unlike with the "Temple of Doom," I can remember most every room.


The guided tour started by entering the kitchen from the backyard. The kitchen mostly served as a place for the guide to lay out the rules as patrons feasted their eyes on an array of bloody body parts in the sink and a severed head sitting in the oven.


From the kitchen, it was up to the second floor and the first scare room. The square bedroom was divided diagonally down the center by two plywood walls about 3 foot high. This effectively made a channel in the middle of the room that the guests would fill up. What they didn't (or probably actually did) know is that as many kids as possible were crouched down behind the walls on either side. Reflective aluminum foil covered the walls of the room, and there was a strobe light waiting! The most memorable guide had a speech that went something like this: "Well, you bought your tickets to get in... and here is where we punch 'em!" With this, the strobe light would flip on and the kids - in various costumes - would stand up and scream! Grace rebooted this design two years later with a room that had the kids hiding in sliding door closets on either side of Jason from Friday the 13th, who stood in the center of the room and turned around wearing a glow-in-the-dark hockey mask and raising a glowing machete before the kids popped out!


To come down after that excitement, guests were led into a dark maze constructed in the next bedroom. It was already built when I first came to help, and I remember being super impressed. They had actual lumber to work with! 2x4s!! The walls themselves were cardboard, but it worked. A great thing about this farmhouse was it had two bedrooms that shared one of those closets that connect - so it's kind of a hallway between the two rooms, only with closet doors. The maze connected to the next room through one of these closets.


Coming out of the closet into the next room was a grave scene. It had a big tombstone and grave featuring... real dirt! I tried to perform Friday the 13th Part VI "coming back to life" Jason with my Mall of the Bluffs Thingsville Jason hockey mask. I must have looked ridiculous. This little 12-year-old Jason getting up from his grave only to rise to the height of 5' 5"... maybe. I did actually hear a guest quip to his girlfriend about my height as they walked away. Well, we do what we can.


The next room was the crowning jewel of this haunt - The Mutilation Room. This was your basic torture chamber, complete with a couple victims in various painful situations and a future victim waiting in a big cage. (Being a future victim waiting in the big cage was the best place to watch the scene that was about to take place!) After the guests had been led into the room, the closet door would blast open and out would come the Chainsaw Man! He would go right for the group and send them all into a pile on the floor every time! Then he would go for his victims. There was a cheap gag of a person hanging from shackles on the wall with only bones left for their legs (see newspaper photo), and the Chainsaw Man would go for those legs as the victim cried out in pain! Chainsaw Man was actually Jeff, our Grace youth group leader. He took pride in his job and had it down pat. He even found two pieces of bone that fit together well like they were a single piece and would place those on a table before every group so he could "saw" through them with his chainsaw, which of course didn't have the chain. But it looked like he was actually cutting through the bone! And when I say bone, I do mean REAL bone. See, this room didn't have rubber body parts. No, it was real! All the bone and meat effects were courtesy of a butcher shop. Which means that meat was in that room - rotting - all October long! The smell of that plus the chainsaw fumes was the scariest thing in the entire haunted house. In fact, it may still haunt me to this day.


After the Mutilation Room folks were led downstairs to the living room. This room featured a reboot of the mourning monks in front of a coffin, which was in the "Temple of Doom" two years prior. This time it worked better because the guide would lead the guests between the monks and the coffin, and the mourners would then stand up and walk toward the coffin. This pushed the guests awkwardly toward the coffin where Dracula was patiently waiting to pop out! Or maybe someone else. I never worked on this floor so can't say for sure. One of the things I love about these old haunts was how there were no rules. A clown could have popped out of the coffin. Or Ronald Reagan!


The exit was out the front door, onto the porch. But there was one last scare on the way. The front of a big train was painted on the back of the open front door - complete with a bright headlight. That entire piece lit up and a train horn rattled your teeth as you passed through! Lucky for you, you survived Grace Presbyterian's "House of No Return."


I remember we had a very fun afterparty when the haunt was done. I brought a super-giant Pepsi slushy from the convenience store that was across the street back then (next to Pizza Hut), and some girl told me I should "watch my figure." I also remember hearing Huey Lewis and The News' Hip to Be Square at least three times on the radio during that party. It was a great time and a great haunted house. Full of memories I can never forget. For me, this was "The House of Many Returns."



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