52 Years Ago
The October 24, 1973 Golden Transcript included an article that invited kids of all ages to the 1st Annual Heritage Haunt. They promised a “Costume Contest Halloween night, the Spook House, the Great Pumpkin, fortune telling, apple bobbing, and the hay ride to the stables for a marshmallow roast,” all free of charge courtesy of the Heritage Square merchants.
In later years, Heritage Square had a haunted house called Spider Mansion. I never went there (too chicken), so I asked my daughter for her memories. Curiously, the first thing that came to mind was that they got $1 off the $10 admission fee if they brought a can of non-perishable food.
She remembers strobe lights, blacklights, and a lot of claustrophobic feelings: at times she and her friends had to crawl through half-height rooms. At other times they were forced to crowd closer to things than they wanted to–for instance, in a blood-stained bathroom where a murder had apparently occurred, they had to squeeze past the bathtub. Monsters jumped out at them at various times, and she said the character from the horror movie “The Ring” (a girl in a nightgown with long hair that obscured her face) kept popping up in different rooms. Finally, they were encouraged to leave by a guy who chased them out with a chainsaw.
There’s some valuable Golden history, captured for the ages!
