I’ve been putting off recapping this evening because IT WAS SO INFURIATING. And I know I usually keep these things contained to my haunted house journal but I still need to vent even after angrily scratching the night’s happenings with a heavy hand.

Two Saturday evenings ago, Henry and I bought tickets online for a zombie tour of Hillview Manor. This is an old poor farm from the 1920s that is allegedly haunted (all of the big shot ghost investigators have shot their shows there). The last several years, they have done a separate outside haunt for the Halloween season and we have had some good times there. (They even filmed our review one time, LOL.)

This year, they just turned the general historical tours they give year round into a “zombie” themed tour for October. So, the same tour but with a few jump scares. We’ve never done the actual historical tour before so figured, two birds, etc etc.

HOWEVER. The way they do it is they have you buy your tickets online for whatever time you want. Then they divide all of the people who booked for that time into three LARGE groups and you have to sit in a waiting room. They have chairs set up for all three groups and I JUST KNEW after we sat down in group 3 and a large family of at least 10 people (all adults, mind you) came storming in and took up the entire two empty rows in front of that the night was basically cooked for us. They NEVER STFU. It was an older patriarch and perhaps a second wife? She looked much younger than him and too young to be the mom of the adult siblings – I think it was three brothers, one sister and two of them had their partners with them. All of the brothers looked like AI John Mayer. I knew they were going to to be trouble especially the two SINGLE ones – one of them was kind of fat and had a wet mustache and the other was the most John Mayer-looking of all of them, made before AI got tired, and he was wearing an Aztec patterned jacket.

The women looked your typical accounting department  bitches who you’d catch talking shit on you in the kitchen while they’re blocking the sink.

They were carrying on like they were in the rec room of their childhood home, like no one else was in there trying to watch the informational video that was playing.

I even considered asking if we could switch to group 2–they had way less people! Our group was 2/3 THAT FAMILY.

Basically, they ruined the whole experience. They carried on like motherfuckers through every stairwell, every hallway, every room. The dad (THE EFFING FATHER, HEAD OF THE FUCKER FAMILY) even GRABBED ME at one point. I assume he mistook me for one of the women in the group (who for the most part were quiet but their silence was actually making me hate them more BECAUSE CONTROL YOUR IDIOT MENCHILDREN) but he didn’t even apologize to me?! I actually gasped and was speechless when it happened, and then quickly did giant side steps to get as far away from that guy as possible.

The men were doing the whole “oooOOooOoooOoooooh” thing on repeat like we were in a Scooby Doo episode, the dad at one point was standing next to me in a hallway and was jiggling a doorknob behind us. I looked at him and he wagged his eyebrows like, “Pretty funny huh” and then kept doing it while nudging me with his elbow. YEAH, GRAMPS, I GET IT, I GOT IT. HEARD IT THE FIRST TIME.

The two single sons were the WORST of the bunch. You could tell that they were bullied in school and now that they’re still blowing off that steam in their 30s, like it’s their time to shine as the class clowns. They mimicked the tour guide (Dana) constantly, turning the most random things she said into vocal stims. The worst was when she said something about going to the floor where the “crabby people” resided. Those dorks latched on to “crabby people” like a baby to a nipple.

“Crabby people!”

“Craaaaaaaaby people!”

“Crab. Crab people. Mmmm, crab people.”

“Craaaaaaaab people.”

And SO ON AND SO FORTH for the next 30 minutes. I pantomimed pushing one down the steps at one point (THE AZTEC ONE) and actually still fantasize about it to this day.

Finally, when we were about to go into the basement and all crowded into a stairwell to hear Dana tell us a story about one of the residents plummeting to her death on those same steps, she actually had to ask them STERNLY to STFU because she was tired of talking over them. To their credit (eh…) they did quiet down, but then I think she felt bad because in the first room we went to in the basement, she tried to tease two of the brothers who were silently pawing at each other like children. “What are you two doing over there, pinching each others butts?” she laughed, and I was standing right next to them (COULD NOT DISTANCE MYSELF ENOUGH, NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRIED) and can attest that they were definitely doing something handsy.

Anyway, I think the whole family took this as their clearance to FUCK OFF again because they went right back to being riled up, loud, boisterous, rude, and disrespectful. Like, we paid $30 each to be there and listen to cool stories about shadow people, nefarious owners, and staged suicides, not hear these chucklefucks yuk it up. They clearly weren’t there to learn anything, to feel the haunted vibes, etc. They were just mocking everything and trying to scare each other, and if this were a slasher film, they’d have been taken out in one fell swoop. Imagine every horror movie you’ve seen where the cocky jock is all, “OOOOOooooooh, look at this big scary man” and then pokes Jason’s mask before getting decapitated. This whole family was that guy.

The worst part is that not only did Dana ask them to settle down, but there were TWO OTHER HILLVIEW STAFF MEMBERS following behind us—one was a man—and neither of them felt the need to pull these people aside / kick them out / apologize to the rest of us for getting a shitty tour and basically wasting our money. Like, I could have just stayed home and watched YouTube videos about this place.

And the second worst part is that none of the jump scares even factored in because these people were being so loud and stupid that it was completely distracting me from the scare actors.

I’m just so tired of people ruining these kinds of experiences for the rest of us. I don’t know if the other people in our tour were as affected as me and Henry (they seemed to be just ignoring it) and maybe I’m just overly sensitive to bad behavior, but it was appalling to me that they just…got away with it. I remember one time, years ago, Henry and I were at Castle Blood (before we became friends with them!) and got lumped in with a group of total assholes who were back-talking and heckling all of the denizens to the point where a staff member came and took them away, and afterward we were given free tickets to come back and go through without having idiots souring the experience for us. I will never forget that.

Afterward, I tried to tell Dana that she did a good job in spite of what she had to deal with and she cut me off, handed me a card with a QR code for more information on the ghost hunts, and walked away. Cool! Cool cool cool

I know it’s not really the fault of Hillview Manor but it definitely left me feeling a type of way and I don’t think I’ll ever go back. I even asked Henry if I was overreacting and he said no, they were assholes. He also said that no one else was probably speaking up because there were so many of them. THIS IS WHERE WE ARE AS A SOCIETY. Bad behavior is excused because everyone is so afraid of the blowback. I hate it.

I truly don’t understand why these people even came to this.

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