'HELL HOUSE' terrifies tricksters seeking treats

ELLETTSVILLE -- Halloween is often associated with ghouls, ghosts, goblins and costumed children and adults prowling community streets in search of candy and other festive treats from neighbors and local businesses. \nBut for Pastor Larry Mitchell of the House of Prayer Ellettsville, 4100 N. Hartstrait Rd., Halloween is a night in which "millions of Christians will encourage their children to pay respect to the devil and his gang of evil spirits," according to a church pamphlet. Pastor Mitchell's parish, in response, has continued its holiday tradition of furthering the Rev. Jerry Falwell's three-decade evangelistic quest to proselytize community members about Jesus Christ during the Halloween season by transforming their church into a "HELL HOUSE."\nIn a document titled "The HELL HOUSE Outreach Manifesto," the House of Prayer Ellettsville, a Pentacostal church known for HOPE Ministries and the Un-Chained Gang of motorcycle evangelists, states the ultimate purpose of its "real life," no-nonsense haunted house is to "proclaim the love and hope of Jesus Christ and the truth of God's word to our world so that lives will be changed." \nPastor Mitchell's document further states the method of presentation in HELL HOUSE is to propagate the message of "Satan as destroyer" and "Jesus as Savior."\nParticipants are asked to arrive 30 minutes before their scheduled tour. I was assigned to group 16 Friday night, the last pack of 15 to 20 people to receive a "demon-guided tour through reality," a church representative said.\nBefore departing, participants are informed they can ask for an escort out at any time throughout the tour. Brother Mike, who was standing at the tail end of the single file line with his arms crossed, the group is told, is acting as security and was instructed to remove anyone for any reason at any time.\nAnd then the journey into HELL HOUSE began.\nThe first room revealed a funeral scene in which about 10 church members, all draped in black with tissues at their noses, sat weeping on the left side of the church. Each participant was handed a black rose and escorted to the pews on the right side of the church.\nA demon-costumed tour guide emerged and began the scene by informing the audience that the body in the coffin is that of a man named Jason. Jason, the participants learned, was born gay.\n"What kind of idiot believes a lie like that?" the demon screamed, a few inches from a teenage participant's face. "What kind of fool believes something like that?"\nJason, the demon continued, is off to the eternal fire with the other sinning souls to practice their alternative lifestyle in hell. \n"AIDS got Jason," the demon said, before instructing the audience members to place their black roses into the open coffin one by one before leaving the scene. "Demons one. God zero."\nThe second scene in HELL HOUSE involved a Ku Klux Klan cross-burning ritual in which a black woman was whipped.\n"Lies of racial hatred and prejudice," the demon stated, while pointing his index finger into another participant's face.\nDomestic abuse took center stage during the third scene, in which a wife attempted to leave her husband before he strangled her to death.\n"If I can't have you, nobody can," the husband declared before the lights faded out.\nFrom one bedroom to another, the fourth scene involved a teenager named Kevin contemplating death by suicide. A demonic-spirit type, dressed in all-black, danced around the young man before he a strobe light illuminated the youth's body laying in a pool of his blood. The demon instigated the action, leading the youth to chant: "No more pain, no more problems."\nHELL HOUSE's brief fifth scene highlighted a fortune teller, but the action did not include anything other than the demon's ability to tell the character what to say.\nParticipants are then led to the sixth scene: an abortion room, in which the "product of young love in the backseat of a '69 Camaro" is vacuumed from a teenager. In front of blood splatters on the wall and a pool of blood covering the sheet between her legs, the demon informs participants that the mother has made the "wonderful choice to murder her baby."\n"Shut up," the nurse screams at the teenager. "I told you there is no pain -- it's only a medical procedure."\n"I want my baby," the girl screamed back.\n"(The baby) would have been a preacher," the demon told the audience. "It was a tissue with a brain and a heartbeat."\nThe seventh scene involved a drunken-driving accident in which a car slammed head-first into a telephone pole. A bloodied man, whom the audience is told was a factory worker on his way home from the bar after work, whimpered on the ground in front of the wreckage.\n"You and your alcohol have killed your wife and daughter," the demon mocked before addressing the audience. "Look at this picture. In doing so, you are gazing into your future. One day I'll be standing over you. Think about it."\nHELL HOUSE did not include a literal representation of hell until scene eight, in which a winged and tailed devil appeared and reminded the audience that "Mommy and Dawddy cannot save you now." The "lake of fire" backdrop included skeletons, bats hanging from the ceiling, sounds of groans and screams, multiple hexagrams and various hellish-looking characters with medieval weapons of all kinds.\n"I'm Lucifer, the adversary of your soul. You will burn in hell forever," the devil declared several inches from a participant's face.\nSeveral teenagers from group 16 burst into tears by the end of the scene, and the demon guide then escorted the audience past five or so persons behind jail bars begging for Jesus' forgiveness.\nWith white blankets on all walls and covering the ceiling, scene nine involved numerous angels and a Jesus character whose lips did not move despite a soundtrack of dialogue playing throughout the action. \n"Do not let your heart be troubled," the Jesus-like voice said, as an angel placed a purple sash over Jesus' shoulders. "Believe in me ... Confess that I, Jesus, is the Lord and that God raised me from the dead. I stand at the door of your heart. Open the door and have fellowship with me."\nAt this point in the scene, a congregation member stepped forward, knelt in front of Jesus and the son of God dropped to his knees. When the soundtrack called for audience members to recommit their lives to Jesus, no other participant stepped forward from group 16. \nHELL HOUSE concluded in scene 10, in which participants were shuffled into a trailer next to the church and asked to fill out comment cards among several religious and moral instruction pamphlets strewn about school desk tops. Church members offered immediate fellowship for any interested participants, although the mostly teenage audience filed immediately out the door into the parking lot.\nHalloween festivities at the House of Prayer Ellettsville were both bold and shocking, not to mention at times offensive, exactly as Pastor Mitchell declared in his HELL HOUSE manifesto.\n"God does not send people to hell," as stated in the manifesto. "People choose it by rejecting God's gift of salvation through His (sic) beloved son, Jesus Christ."\nThe participants in group 16 did indeed choose to attend HELL HOUSE, but they did not choose to receive messages of guilt and fear. Because the primary audience demographic consisted of young people aged 10 to 18, the House of Prayer Ellettsville's Halloween show seemed to terrify and frighten the participants more than educate them about modern politically polarized issues facing the nation in the 21st century.\nScene two, in which the Ku Klux Klan is represented, seemed especially out of place considering the stereotypical religious-based themes involved in most of the other scenes. In addition, the abortion scene seemed problematic because of the misrepresentation of the medical staff and the actual psychological issues associated with the procedure.\nMight the House of Prayer Ellettsville construct a HEAVEN HOUSE next year to provide teenagers with a more positive spin on the difficult choices and issues they face each day living within contemporary American society?