Spook House

Let it be known that the girls in my class were very tight.  There were only 16 of us out of our unusually small class of 39.  The peachy thing about this was the fact that, if each of us had a slumber party twice during the school year, we basically could have a sleepover at someone’s house every Friday night.  

We, you see, were very good at math.  

I know that what happens at a slumber party should stay at a slumber party.  This time of year, though, finds me reminiscing about our over-nighters.  This is undoubtedly because one of our favorite activities was to build spook houses for one another.  

Sometimes the host-mom would help.  She’d cover our eyes with a long white cotton dish towel and have us feel “eyeballs” (peeled grapes), “intestines” (cooked spaghetti), and “brains” (one of the more brilliant uses for Jello.)

But usually we were left to ourselves and would methodically divide ourselves into two teams so that each of us could go through the others’ haunted house.  This usually took close to the whole evening, so the moms probably loved the idea.

Sometimes our brain-storming ideas went as smooth as silk and other times they went as well as trying to pick gravel out of a skinned knee!!!  

On one occasion someone came up with the idea to place a men’s black dress sock over the basement light bulb in order to dim the room.  Suddenly there was smoke…then a flame…then a bunch of panicked girls.  

I never said we were good at Science or Logic.

At another slumber party we spent the night without parents in a trailer house.  Out in the country boondocks, the trailer in and of itself became a spook house. A couple of male classmates knew where we were spending the night and kept shutting off the fuse box.  This, for a bunch of middle schoolers, is right up there with the thriller Friday the 13^th.

And then there was the spook house that took place in my own basement.  It was back in the 1970’s when all of us were hip and donning the lovely elephant-bottom jeans.  You will soon discover why this is noteworthy.

Even though that house has been taken down, I can still see the basement as if it were yesterday.  It was a bit dark and dank, and it was a perfect place for our idea.  We had decided to string a piece of yarn throughout the basement.  It was waist-height and the victim going through our creation would merely have to follow it to encounter the unknown.  

Predictably, we had someone tickling legs at one point and making spine-tingling noises at another.  Throughout the entire spook house, the adventurer would encounter unfamiliar objects brushing her face or find herself knocking into or tripping over something.

We had it planned out perfectly, except for one small detail.  We hadn’t counted on someone yanking the string in fear.

We had set a trap. Ironically, it was a small pink toy teapot made of plastic that would begin the havoc.  It was filled with water and hung at head-height of those walking through the haunted house.  The intention was to have them bump the teapot, causing water to splash on them.

The trap worked.  It worked too well, according to Kim.  She bumped the hanging trap, it spilled water on her head as planned, and—in a fight or flight reaction—she yanked the string that had been guiding her.

To this very day, no one will fess up as to being the one who had tied the string to something on the laundry shelf… the something that would change our dragging elephant-bottom pants forever.

It was a gallon-size bottle of Hilex bleach.

In the split second it took to yank a string, the bottle had fallen, hit the concrete floor, lost its cap, and turned what we thought was a good spook house into a very memorable one!

We gasped for air and clamored to find any light switch.  We clawed our way through a room adorned with strings, and traps, and bewildered almost-teenage girls. 

Mom smelled the intoxicating fumes from the next story up, and came to rescue the clan.  She was horrified to find over a dozen girls with their favorite faddish jeans bleached white up to the knees.  The large bell bottoms had virtually wicked the Hilex half-way up all of our pant legs.

To this very day, Brenda believes all of us that attended that party have remained impeccably healthy.  We killed every possible bad germ in our lungs and lived to tell about it. 

After that night, we became a bit more savvy and discerning as to how we constructed our spook houses.  In other words, we became better at learning from History.

And to this day, Kim declares that she is not responsible for the catastrophe.  She only pulled the string. 

And, being as good at math as we are, we know 1/16 of the party goers are really to blame.