Friday Flashback: Breaking & Entering

Halloween….the time of year when people shell out big bucks to go visit a seasonal “haunted house” where some loser kid jumps out, wielding a chainsaw, and scares the bejeezus out of them. The set has been decorated with care – the make-up has been applied with precision – and everything is carefully choreographed to provide the best scare and terror for the buck.

Posers.

I was lucky enough to have a real, honest-to-goodness haunted house on my campus when I was in school. And not just any haunted house. Epperson House was featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” as one of the top five haunted houses in the country. It had a reputation for being one bad-ass scary place.
One dark (and of course, SPOOKY!) night, a bunch of us got a little too – ahem – inebriated at a party (I know – hard to imagine – getting drunk at a fraternity party. Go figure.) Someone had the stupid brilliant idea of breaking into Epperson House to hunt for ghosts.

With copious amounts of Everclear creating a false bravado amongst ourselves, we staggered walked through the campus streets to Epperson. Once there, we opened up the trap door in the back yard, climbed down a ladder, crawled on our hands and knees through a dark & spider-filled tunnel and eventually made our way up into the house. (What’s so amazing about that is not that we were able to so easily break into a campus building – but the fact that we didn’t break our necks in the process. Seriously.)

Once inside, our ghost hunting began in earnest. We tiptoed and crept through the hallways, our hearts pounding, palms sweating, and adrenaline pumping. Ten minutes into our illicit and illegal adventure –we saw the flashing lights of campus police headed in our direction – and so we scattered.

Did we find any ghosts? I’ll be honest – I was too inebriated to remember much. But – I DO remember being terrified. Was it the house? Or was it the fear of being caught by campus police? I’m not sure – probably a little of both. It was creepy. It was spooky. And it sure scared the hell out of me.

And it was free. ☺

Peace.