Alley 100 - Woohoo!!!!!!!!

Alleys & Fire Escapes, no. 100  -  “Ghost Story”  (2007, Kansas City, MO, 1:30am)

Kansas City has a long history of haunted spaces and sightings. Turn-of-the-century haunted hotels, long-suffering ghosts, and other paranormal incidents have been local folklore for a century. This colorful past has paved the way for the current crop of haunted houses. It has become big business here.

For a fee, you can enter an old abandoned building in the old warehouse district and have the wits scared out of you. Among your many choices are “The Edge of Hell,” or “The Beast,” or the “Catacombs.” From what I’ve heard, these are hardly your familiar haunted houses. Its adults only, and some leave crying.

These places run in the Fall before and after Halloween - just when I was there. They pipe out loud sounds of people screaming or moaning in pain; monsters or ghosts growling, and other sound effects that can be heard throughout the night in the barren run-down streets of this district.

Now this was a humorous, if not strangely appropriate, background sound for my night of scouting and shooting. But as the night progressed, and as I became absorbed in my work, studying one dark corner after another, my skin began to crawl. I decided to let it crawl, and I let it crawl into my work until I finally left - a little more pale than when I arrived.