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Paper 2 Final Draft: Nightmare on 4th Street
October 11th, 2011
Brittany Conolly
Paper #2 Draft
10-6-11
Every year through out the month of October Sioux City hosts many Halloween events. One well-known event is the Nightmare on 4th Streets haunted house. This haunted house provides over 5,000 square feet of terror to the visitors. The house is open on the weekends September 30th to October 26th. After the 26th of the month Nightmare on 4th Street is open nightly. It closes after midnight on the 31st, Halloween night.
MacKinsey Higley, an 8th grader I spoke to outside of the haunted house said, “from the outside the haunted house appears to look like a bar, and that is exactly what it is!” The haunted house is set up under the bar Chesterfields. As you park in the back parking lot you can see that a ticket booth and an extremely long line of people and rope, which establishes the entrance. MacKinsey also said, “the wait is worth it. The whole experience makes my adrenaline pump.” Along with long lines and screaming kids is the phantom figures running around waiting to take you into the beginning of the haunted house.
I got the treat of going through the haunted house as it was being set up. The entrance is a dim light brick room with two doors. There is one door to the back of the room and one to the front. After a creepy, disembodied voice comes over a speaker and explains the rules of the haunting, the terrifying experience begins. The length of the house is a maze of unevenly molded tunnels. The terrain makes one unsteady in their own body because the floors dip and the ceiling seems to get closer and closer to the ground. Throughout are moans and groans coming from skeletons, ghouls, and goblins, men in masks, clowns with knives, a spinning wheel of death, and as the end can be seen a burley man. He chases people with a chainsaw leading them out the exit door.
After my trip through the haunted house I got the privilege of interviewing one of the clowns that works in the house. Ryan Tague has worked at the house for the past two year as a murderous clown. Tague said, “The best part of my job is getting everyone to scream like a little girl!” Others like Tague that work in the haunted house enjoy scaring people. Tague said, “Everyone that works here is a big happy, messed up family.” This family of clowns, ghouls, and monsters make it scary and exciting for everyone who pays to enter the Nightmare on 4th street for an adrenaline rush.
