Welcome to Gaia! ::

*Note: I know that our captain wants this guild to be swear-word-free, but first of all, I don't think the word "hell" is a swear word, and secondly, this is a Christian guild. The word "hell" is bound to come up, so can we all agree that it's acceptable to say "hell" in this guild?

Anyway.

Over the years, I've heard and read about "hell houses," which to my understanding are basically haunted house attractions (popular around Halloween) that basically try to enforce conservative Christian ideology, teaching the danger of various "hot-button" sins. Popular scenes include abortion, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, drug use, and not being Christian. From what I understand, these attractions are generally aimed at a fairly young audience, and are often terrifyingly graphic. As far as I can tell, the overall goal of hell houses is to more or less scare younger generations into following "the righteous path."

If you search "hell house" on youtube, you can find footage of various scenes in various hell houses that have been done over the past few years. I'm not going to post any links because, as I said, most of them are really quite graphic, but if you're curious, you can feel free to look it up yourself.

So, what do you think of hell houses? Have you ever been to one? If so, what was the experience like? Would you go to one in the future? If/when you have children, would you take your child to one?

Using something like this to try and "force" or "scare" ANYONE into a certain frame of mind is not only terrible, but also is why people hate christians. While i do enjoy a good "haunted house" simply for the fact i laugh at the people working there (and mess with other people) using them in this manor sickens me. We get such a bad rep because of these things. I wish people would see that faith in God is a CHOICE. not something you force. As is said in the bible, the only reward they will get is the attention they get from their church for "converting" people. In reality, it's one of the worst ways to go about it.

To add to this point forcing or trying to force a religion on anyone is called terrorism, and I know people in America have problems with them. And being a terrorist isn't even being Christian, so I agree with pp they are a bad idea, I've never been to one and will never go to one

Oh my goodness. I have such an opinion of hell houses.

tl;dr: They are a terrible thing and it would surprise me to hear that even one person had ever truly been saved in a hell house.

Long version:
I can't properly articulate how much I actually hate that hell houses are a thing because RAGE. I wandered into one once at an agricultural fair (I live in the midwest, so this is also a thing) not really knowing what l was getting into and it scared me very deeply. The idea of hell did not scare me- I considered myself Wiccan (which has no concept of evil or hell) at that time, and I was pretty devoted to my spiritual path. What scared me was the way they portrayed people that they didn't understand as demons. Terrible creatures that need to be wiped off the planet. I felt like a target for them to attack. THESE PEOPLE were coming to get me. Not the devil. It was the crazy Christian people who were going to torture me because I was different.

I asked to quit, and they told me I could not. When it was finally over, I was given a piece of paper to sign stating that I had accepted Christ as my personal savior. I signed it because I was afraid they wouldn't let me leave if I didn't. They gave me a copy of the new testament and let me go.

I was in a really turbulent time of my life at this point. I was about 15 and was getting abused at home and I was very mentally ill. I was forced to pay lip service to a church that I didn't like, and I practiced another faith in secret in order to feel like I had some control over my life. I already had a pretty low opinion of Christians. After that incident, I started HATING Christians. That feeling eventually waned, but up until quite recently I was still pretty distrustful of anyone calling themselves Christian.

Obviously, things have changed quite a bit since 10 years ago. I've forgiven these people for the damage I felt they did to me. But it fills me with rage to know that there are people still out there trying to force others into a faith they may not be ready for by using deception and scare tactics. That makes me physically ill and I think it's evil.

All this being said, I am a haunt industry professional. Notice my signature button. That's my real job, and it's the best job in the world. A large number of the people I work with are Christian, including the couple who owns the haunted house I primarily work in. It is a secular haunted house, but they take special care not to use Christian OR Satanic imagery inside the haunt. The owners are of the opinion (which I share) that using religious imagery not only excludes people from the fun (and that's really what it's all about), but it gives bad spirits the opportunity to find a foothold. If we don't mess with bad spirits, we give them fewer opportunities to mess with us.

You make an excellent point about how a lot of Christians deal with Halloween.

"Halloween is evil, so we're going to have a church event that is more or less exactly the same." rolleyes Seriously?

Way back in the day (and this tradition still survives in many predominantly Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries), what we now know as Halloween was called All Saints' Day, which was a feast day to honour...well, all saints. All Saints' Day is followed by All Souls' Day, which is a time to pray for the souls of departed loved ones who may be in Purgatory. Sounds like devil worship to me. confused

Modern, secular Halloween traditions are sort of one big mash-up of old Christian and pagan traditions (much like Christmas and Easter, for that matter).

And yeah, I somehow doubt that God sees dressing up in costumes and collecting candy as some sort of evil satanic practise.

I've never been to a hell house personally, either. I don't really see them advertised around here. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar did exist here, but it's obviously not as big of a thing as it seems to be in, say, the "Bible Belt" of the United States.

I still can't believe they made you sign a contract, Ophelia. Do they really think that everyone who signs their stupid piece of paper has made a genuine heartfelt conversion? Because that's delusional. That's like asking people to sign a contract declaring themselves to be pink unicorns that crap rainbows and believing that after signing said paper, those people really will become rainbow-crapping pink unicorns. It makes me sad to have to acknowledge that such a degree of stupidity really exists.

Don't get me wrong; I'm sure that many people who participate in putting together these "hell houses" probably have good intentions. Plenty of them probably do genuinely want to help save people's souls, and for any number of reasons they've become convinced that using fear is perfectly acceptable so long as it turns people away from sin and leads them to salvation. But we've all heard the old saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." The ends don't always justify the means.

And in my experience, people don't respond well to threats. If you tell a friend, "Repent your sins and accept Christ today or you will suffer eternal torment," you're much more likely to put people on the defensive, and they're a lot less likely to take you seriously or take anything you say to heart. If you go up to a friend and say, "Hey, I know you don't consider yourself to be a very spiritual person, but I care about you, so I want to share something with you that has given me fulfilment and inner peace. Would you consider coming with me to church sometime?" you're much more likely to be taken seriously. You're not threatening anybody, you're not giving them an ultimatum, you're just offering to share something that has had a positive impact in your life out of genuine care and concern for another person(s). You're using love, not fear, which is how all Christians should approach other human beings.

I did not know this existed. My thoughts are this: If the Word of God does not convince someone, I don't see how a Halloween attraction will. Faith is a gift, not something you can force into a person. I can only see this concept hell house damaging the faith. I can't believe any good will come from it.

Well, this is probably going to be the post that determines whether I can comfortably stay w/ the guild or not.

At the risk of holding a match to a powder keg, what do you think satanic rituals have to do with Hallloween?