Alright, so Karen and I went out to The Realm of Darkness in Pontiac on Thursday since it is supposedly the best haunted house in all of Michigan.

They had some really great special effects and had things pretty well planned out. They had spikes that looked like they were going to crush you, faces that appeared out of nowhere, bookcases that looked like they were going to fall down, a hall of mirrors, and all sorts of other neat stuff.

For me, one of the coolest things was the gimmick that they run where if you answer the Wizard's riddle at the end, you get double your money back. Supposedly only twelve people have done it, and unfortunately we weren't one of them. We didn't even get to see the wizard.

How it works is, there will be different things that happen throughout the event. Someone asked us what the phone number was at the beginning, and we remembered that and got a magic gem/glass bead. Then later there was guy that was like "stick your hand in this corpse" and I did and there was a gem in there. We failed at a part where there was a guy that asked us what his name was so somewhere we must have missed seeing a labeled picture of him or something. We got a third gem from a treasure room and then turned them in to a sea hag who sent us on through the exit (where someone chased us out with a chainsaw). I'm assuming if we had the right number of gems, we would have gone to the wizard to get one final riddle.

We had a lot of fun though despite not besting the wizard. We were in a group with a high school guy and two girls, so me and the other guy covered the front and back while everyone else squeezed together in the middle. All participants made it out alive.

I think it would be fun to conduct the interviews for the haunted house actors where you say "Ok, now you're in an asylum and there's someone that's breaking through that door. Give me your best terrified scream." I'm not sure how they have any voice left after screaming all day.