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!
