Hell House

WASILLA — This Halloween, members of the King’s Chapel in Wasilla host a graphic and somewhat controversial haunted house-style event.

Instead of ghostly ghouls and skeletons in caskets, Hell House depicts, in detail, sins and their consequences, including a girl having an abortion, a young man taking drugs at a party, a teen getting beat up by his drunk father then killing himself and a group of gothic Satan worshippers performing a human sacrifice. In each elaborately staged scene, Satan’s henchman taunts the sinner and then drags him or her off to hell.

Like the Scared Straight program that introduces teens to hardened criminals in prison to frighten them away from committing crimes themselves, Hell House, through its shock value, aims to save souls. Hell House, also commonly called Judgment House, is not a new concept. The haunted house-style attraction, typically run by fundamentalist Christian churches, are scattered across the United States and have created a stir in some communities.

Daniel Bracken, pastor at King Chapel, said his church’s Hell House is meant to show youth the divine judgments that await unrepentant sinners and the torments awaiting the damned in Hell.

“Hell House is not a haunted house, but rather a real-world display of the world today,” Bracken said. “This is a guided tour of real life situations aimed at exposing the real evil in America.”

At the entrance of King’s Chapel on Friday evening, a line of eager adolescents await their entrance into Hell House. Rated PG-12, the tour is not for young children. Signs at the entrance express this warning. Some are told it’s a haunted house. Others know exactly what to expect. Inside, King’s Chapel volunteers dressed as security guards lead the first group of 15 up a small staircase and into the darkness, where strange noises and music is heard.

The group is led to into a smoke-filled sitting room where they take their seats in front of a large casket. The red glow of the coffin is the only illuminated object in the room. The music is eerie when suddenly, a red-faced, horned demon in black emerges from the darkness.

“Welcome to Hell House!” Satan’s henchman declares.

From here, participants are led through a series of rooms depicting hell on Earth. First up is a dark living room.

A television plays mixed martial arts, a woman is ironing, a disheveled man is drinking his beer. The henchman, acting as tour guide, is also the antagonist, narrating what is happening within each scene. The drunk man throws his can of beer on the floor and becomes irritated at his wife for not bringing him his another. He starts to verbally abuse his wife as his son runs in to try and stop the chaos.

“You wanna piece of this?” the father yells to the son. “You’re useless! You got your girlfriend pregnant, you loser! You should just kill yourself! I wish you were never born!”

The scene intensifies with domestic violence as the son flees the room to find solace elsewhere.

Next up, Satan leads the crowd into another dingy living room. It’s dark and hazy room with teenagers, including Kevin, smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine and shooting up. A young girl starts to have a seizure on the sofa. No one notices as they are too high. She’s pregnant, overdosing from heroin and dying. Kevin wallows in his self-pity; no one understands him, his girl is pregnant, his dad is a jerk.

“People come to get scared and don’t think it’s too funny at this point,” Bracken said. “We’re trying to reach the cross-section of the culture here and expose the fact that there is a demonic world we live in, with a very real devil aspect to it. So yes, there are some very upsetting scenes here.”

On to a doctor’s office where a graphic abortion scene shows Kevin’s girlfriend in grim detail.

“I don’t go in there, it’s too realistic,” Bracken said. “We use real nurses and medical stuff.”

Bracken said the abortion scene plays on the church’s belief that abortion is not birth control, but a sin.

“It plays off of the, ‘it’s just a fetus, it’s no big deal,’ theory,” he said. “In the scene, the 16-year-old girl pressured into the abortion by her family, by her boyfriend, destroys the argument that abortion is birth control. She’s lying on a gurney, knees up and the audience is looking from her head to her toes, with the back lighting showing the shadows of her knees, with fake blood. That and the suicide rooms are the two most shocking rooms in there.”

Bracken said counselors are available through the tour to provide a safe support for those unable to digest the material.

The crowd is next led into the suicide room. Here Kevin, demeaned by his father and overwhelmed by drugs, is sitting on his bed rocking back and forth. The narrator, the devil, is whispering in his ear, confirming his worst thoughts — he is worthless, useless. The scene winds into a fever pitch and Kevin pulls out a .45 and blows his head off.

“When the gun goes off it absolutely scares you,” Bracken said. “The myth that is destroyed is that you go to Heaven if you kill yourself.”

Lastly, the group is taken into a room of witchcraft. Black-robed Satan worshipers are about to perform a human sacrifice, but the subject is not clear. The audience is involved as a screaming member is dragged to a table, a knife surfaces and the lights go out.

When the lights are turned on, security guards rush everyone through a tunnel of light where they emerge the main chapel of the church. There, real people await and Pastor Bracken comforts them. The music is light and uplifting, offering hope to those shaken by what they’ve seen in Hell House.

“I’m here to tell you that there is a loving God who, above all, loves you,” Bracken said. “He’s got a great plan for you. Some of you have separated from his plan, and we’re here to tell you that you are beyond the evils you’ve just seen and there is a way out.”

The visitors are then asked to accept salvation by repenting of their sins and trusting Jesus. Everyone receives church-related literature and Hell House tickets to give away to others before Halloween.

“We explain at the end of the tour why we did what we’ve just done, giving a presentation of the gospel and reminding you how you can be free of torment by giving your hearts to Christ,” Bracken said.

Outside, the youths discuss what they’ve just seen; many are laughing and joking.

“A friend asked me to go and I was curious mostly” said 14-year-old Carlie Bailey. “I live a really good life, so it did teach me a lot of good stuff.”

Bailey, a Colony High School student, said she was terrified during a couple of the scenes.

Bailey’s friend Nik Young, 13, said it scared him more than he thought it would, but overall he found Hell House entertaining.

“She dug her nails into my hand!” he said about going through with his friend.

After one of the 20-minute tours of “Hell House” on Friday evening, many teens were confused, believing they were going to go through a traditional Halloween haunted house.

Bracken said he believes people know they are walking into Hell House for a different kind of haunted experience and that he is not misleading the public with his message.

ReligiousTolerance.org, a religious consulting group based in Ontario, Canada, most Hell Houses are disguised to resemble conventional secular haunted houses, but visitors realize they are being exposed to a religious theme after they have bought a ticket and gone part of the way through.

“The fact is that, they’re coming into a church, so they’ve got to know something’s up,” Bracken said. “I am trying to reach the people who don’t really care they are smoking dope, not thinking it will lead to heroin, or to meth. The fact is we live in an area hit hard by drugs and alcohol, and that these are real life evils.”

Bracken said King’s Chapel is not instilling the fear of eternal damnation into young people.

“We will scare the hell out of you, but we’ll also show you that God’s good and in a good mood,” he said.

Bracken realizes Hell House might offend some people and said some area churches have expressed to him their concern about Hell House. When contacted by the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, several other area church leaders declined to comment about Hell House.

“My goal with this is to plunder Hell and populate Heaven by all means possible without violating my conscience,” Bracken said.

Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.