P1010028, originally uploaded by appledale.

My friend Mose came over Saturday night to drink wine and be a porch-sitter with me. Somehow the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast came up in conversation and I felt inspired to go back and look at the pictures from when Henry took me there for my birthday. I think it was in 2003. So now we know that 2003 was the last good birthday I had.

Anyway, he and I were the only guests that night in July, aside from this really goofy guy named Mike who was house-sitting for the summer. I remember being beyond scared to the point of barely sleeping, and then cracking my thigh on the underside of the super-low dining room table the next morning over a breakfast of jonny cakes. Scared and bruised, that is my summation.

This is a picture of me and my big arms, sitting on Lizzie’s parent’s bed, writing a very un-ironic postcard to my death row pen pal, Greg. “Hey Greg, I’m in a house of murder. IS THIS WHAT YOUR HOUSE FEELS LIKE!?”

I would like to go back there someday.

Castle Blood has been one of my favorite haunted houses to go to since I was in high school. It was one of the first, if not THE first, in the area to let you interact with the costumed characters by giving each group a mission to fulfill. Granted, they make it fairly impossible to fail and the prize is the same every year (vampire teeth), but damn if the decor and costumes aren’t fun to look at.

Twice a season, they offer no-scare daylight trick-or-treat tours for kids. We took Chooch last year and he seemed rather complacent about it. I thought maybe this year he’d be more into it, but all he cared about was seeing Dracula. Seriously, the kid was reenacting Pee Wee’s Alamo performance with all of his “When do we get to see Dracula?” inquiries.

Before embarking on our mission, we had to meet with Gravely in the library, who informed us what three talismans we’d have to be on the lookout for in order to pass the test at the end. This year’s theme was Night of the Vampire or something, so he asked, “What can you tell me about vampires?” When it was my turn, I said off the top of my head, “They have to be invited in.

” Gravely said, “That’s a good one, and not one that I hear often. Good job.” I didn’t have time to gloat though, because Henry snidely patronized, “You only know that because you just watched True Blood the other day.” Yes, that’s right, you dumb motherfucker. I just learned that fact in 2009 from an over-hyped, commercialized vampire series on cable TV.  FUCK YOU HENRY. And people wondered why I broke up with him on Facebook.

Chooch did not give one tiny shit about the live actors offering him candy and trying to intimidate him with their make-up enhanced sunken cheekbones and bloody lip-corners. He was entirely too busy poking around all the props and admiring the animatronic bodies clandestinely plugged into walls. I’m starting to think he’s showing an interest in set design.

Alisha had a crush on every corseted denizen. It was embarrassing.

In each room, a new dead person would recite their well-practiced script, but it fell on deaf ears.

Chooch was bored out of his mind, toeing the ground, dropping the talismans he was stupidly entrusted with, and hissing from the side of his mouth, “You said Dracula was gonna be here.” Not like he would have understood half of what was being told to us anyway, since the spiel wasn’t toned down at all for the sake of the underage set. I even caught Henry furrowing his caterpillar brow at words that weren’t exactly SAT-caliber, but still too smart for him. Maybe Chooch would have been more captivated if they had spoken on his level; you know, peppering sentences with the Tarantino All-Spice of “asshole” and “motherfucker.”

I was more excited than Chooch over the candy he was collecting. It was hard for me to keep my hands out of each candy bowl we passed. Especially the one full of Reeses Cups. Shit.

I had to give Chooch a reassuring shove to get him to accept the vial of vampire blood from a vampirate who sounded super sick and I swear to god if we get H1N1 I’ll be so excited to say I caught the swine flu from a motherfucking VAMPIRATE, ya’ll.

Chooch was completely over it by this point. He was sitting on the ground, with his back toward the mad scientist. Only the highest form of insult for a performer, and let me tell you, these people DO NOT EVER DROP CHARACTER. I could have dropped a baby out of my uterus right in the middle of their cobwebbed crypt only for a cloaked witch with a hunch back to come swooping in to say, “Ooh, a freshly baked mortal infant for my witch’s brew!”

Sadly, all good things must end and once proving that we collected all three talismans, we were all given a pair of werewolf teeth that were really just vampire teeth and then we all had to do our best wolf howl. Of course, mine was phenonemal, Alisha’s was weak, and Henry’s sounded as though he was being fucked by a pine cone. This was also the only time Chooch seemed happy to participate, because he’s good at being loud.

And now tomorrow is Halloween and we still have no costume for Chooch. I almost had him convinced to be an old lady. We even went to the thrift shop last night to find him a dress, but he started acting all stupid about it and I got all stressed out and left him and Henry in there. When I ask him what he wants to be, he says, “I just want to be CHOOCH.” So I asked, “And what will you say if someone asks what you’re supposed to be?” He said, “A motherfucker.” NO, NO YOU WILL NOT SAY THAT.

If he doesn’t decide on something easy and cheap by tonight, I’m stuffing a green box around him and he can go as a fucking dumpster baby. Mama’s not playing games anymore.

Yesterday, Jessi won the title of Best Fiancee in the History of People Getting Engaged by buying Bill two tickets to today’s Steelers game.

Anyway, if you live in Pittsburgh (which I do) and know anything about the Steelers (which I don’t, on purpose even), then you know tickets are kind of hard to come by and not very cheap when you do. So it was kind of a big deal for Bill, whose dream was to see the Steelers play in Heinz Field, and he cried.

I kind of want to steal Jessi from Bill so she can make my dreams come true, too.

This was right after the ticket deal went down at a nearby gas station.

My favorite part of this picture is totally Jessi in the background, God love her.

And here they are today, before they left for the game. You’d never know they’re from Michigan. Until they start talking all weird.

Actually, I guess I had a dream realized as well. Last night, we went to Cheeseman’s Fright Farm, and Freddy Kreuger totally hooked me up with Michael Myers.

I’m talking about Freddy straight up went and FETCHED him for me after Bill and Jessi were all, “Whoa, back up, g. Michael Myers is her boo, not yo’ triflin’ ass” when he tried horror-flirting with me.  Plus, on the hayride, one of the chainsaw guys totally sat next to me and gyrated all up on my side while waving the chainsaw in my face, and I have to say, it was pretty fucking erotic.

Bill had an opportunity to do something nice for Jessi in return by letting her pick out one of the bunnies that were for sale (and desperately coveted by her) at Cheeseman’s farm, but Bill hates all things cute and cuddly.

Pass it on.

Also we ate lunch at Kelly O’s yesterday (which has graced an episode of Diners, Dive-Ins and Drives*), where Jessi had her first taste of haluski and also managed to go the whole weekend without getting maimed by my cat Marcy, so I think it’s safe to say we all had a good weekend. Except Henry. He’s always miserable.

I’m sad that they’re leaving today.

[*Apparently, Bill hates Guy Fieri, and one of the things on the menu was “Mush, the way Guy likes it”. Bill ranted,  quite disgustedly, “I don’t know what mush is, but if it’s the way Guy likes it, then I know it’s the way I don’t like it.” Maybe I still had some of that apple pie in my system, but that was the funniest thing in the world to me and I wanted to make a plaque to monument that moment.]

My brother Corey was home from college over the weekend and we had hi-falutin’ plans to get crunk, slap some bare asses, prance under a shower of Benjamins. In other words, we had tentative plans to go to a haunted house.

I met him at our mom’s house Sunday night, and he informed me that his friend Dave was on his way. In waiting, we stood in the doorway of the garage while my mom blabbered on about BlogTV, MySpace, tarot card readings and her spiritual advisors. “They want to have tea parties!” she giggled, joy-riding on the crazy train like she so often does. And then, “Oh, my favorite knife!” as she plucked a paring knife from the garage wall. True story. (Listen, I grew up in this house so a random wall-wedged knife isn’t too shocking.)

Ignoring her attention-deficient outburst, Corey chose that moment to tell me that he wasn’t driving. This did not make me a happy muffin. I whined things like, I have a car seat in there!, and But I always have to drive!, and But I’m really fucking drunk from huffing formaldehyde! Corey shrugged and stood his ground.

Dave arrived and Corey began walking over to my car. “I was serious about the car seat, dude. I don’t know how to take it out,” I called after him. (This is not a lie. I fail at motherhood.) Corey, remaining undeterred, jutted his lower lip and made his eyes have the pleading look of an orphan begging for more crust. So I batted at the damn car seat two or four times, and Corey and Dave both made feeble attempts, but even Henry blathering instructions via speaker phone proved to be about as helpful as a retard reciting the Kama Sutra in Swahili to a eunuch. Meanwhile, my mom just stood around and laughed, hiccuping on her psychosis.

“Dave, it’s not so bad, right? You can sit next to it, right?” The car seat is smack dab in the middle of the backseat, so no matter which side you sit on, you’re getting a hard plastic hug to your ribs. Dave was all, “Whatever, it’s ok. Let’s just go.”

So then we picked up their friend K.C., who sweetly lied and said she was so cozy back there, like it was an arm rest made from cotton candy and clouds. Dave chimed in that he had even forgotten it was there. I have sat back there before. Granted, it’s much worse and way more painful when the seat’s keeper is strapped in, but even when Chooch is being docile (yeah, that’s never), it is not a comfortable traveling condition.

Anyway, I tried to let it go and have a good time when we arrived at Demon House. Since it was a Sunday, there was hardly any wait at all and we ended up being the last group to go through. There were some legitimate scares, K.C. accidentally smacked my boob and then talked about it for a full five minutes, and I coveted all the Satanic art work. Some dude with a hooded face kept droning, “Igor wants your soulllll!” all up in my thang but I just laughed and said, “Yeah good one. The devil already has my soul.” Stupid ass.

But still, I feel like I would have had more fun if Corey had driven!

Of course I refused to let it go. I was intoxicated off annoyance. I’m Erin Appledale (Corey ridiculed my name choice, by the way, during the drive to Demon House. The drive in which he did not drive, but rode comfortably in the passenger seat. It reminded me of another bonus of the name change: lengthening the distance from my family.) and everyone knows that Appledales like to drunk rollerskate, fellate exotic things, and dwell on every small bump in the road. Sometimes we go hog wild and drunk rollerskate over those bumps while doing the fellating.

After I came home that night, I was recounting the horror of the car seat to Henry. “I can’t believe he made them ride like that, he’s so mean to his friends,” I scoffed.

Henry laughed. I mean he LAUGHED, and then said, “Wow, sounds like someone else I know.”

Since I was sixteen, I’ve been keeping haunted house journals. It might be the nerdiest thing I do, but I imagine there’s a chorus somewhere caroling, “That’s debatable.” So at the end of every September, I dust off my dork tome and begin penciling in my haunted house calendar. (I know, I really need to take up ant farming or something.)

I had the opportunity to add a new entry to my current Goosebumps diary when my new friend Niffer asked if I wanted to hang out, perhaps go to one of those haunted casas I’m so hot for. Christina happened to be visiting as well, so I deemed it the perfect night to go to my all-time favorite haunted house, Victory Haunted School in Elizabeth, PA. Two reasons: 1. I only like going to that one with at LEAST two other people because it freaks me out that badly; 2. I wanted Niffer’s first haunted house as a Pittsburgh resident to be really fucking supreme.

On the thirty minute drive, we embroiled ourselves in talk of men perfumed with the stench of cigarette rolled in dog shit, and Christina pumped Niffer for all kinds of pertinent information to ensure she wasn’t KGB. I made Christina ride in the back because that’s where bitches belong, and she kept popping her head between the seats like an attention-starved seven-year-old riding to the strip club with her parents.

Eventually, the strip malls, car lots, and chain restaurants became more and more sparse and the road became less lit. We turned onto the road where Victory lives and began our descent into the hollow. I’ve always thought that the last mile to get to Victory is nearly as scary as the haunted house itself and I always try to guess how many prom dates have been murdered in those woods. Because what else is there to do in Elizabeth? I mean, other than watch their sucky high school football team?

Victory’s website hadn’t been updated for 2008, but all of the haunted house listings swore that it was open. WELL THEY LIED. I mean, I never expect a crowd when I pull up, but I do expect that the front door will at least not have a board nailed to it. It was most certainly closed, nailed up tighter than Jesus. I stared at it for a few seconds, mouth agape, refusing to accept it. This was the longest-running haunted house in Pittsburgh! For thirteen motherfucking years I was harrassed and heckled in those pitch-black corridors. I went there while I was pregnant, even, no fetus was going to hold ME down. (I was only two months pregnant, chill.)

This was the place that had unrelenting chainsaw action. One of my friends fell running from him up basement steps and he showed no mercy. She was crying her fat face off and I laughed and laughed because I could run faster. The scariest part was that most of it was squeezing through cramped hallways, hands held out as feelers. You’d always end up groping one of the monsters and then they’d snarl in your ear and you’d pee your granny pants and shout “OMFG LET ME OUT.”

My favorite memory of Victory was from 1999 when I was nineteen. I had gone there with my friends Brian and Heather, and after a traumatic run-through which featured Heather very dramatically dry-heaving from the overly ambitious fog machines in the basement (the basement, might I add, made the basement in Blair Witch Project look like Candy Land), we had a horrific run-in with two chainsaw guys in the parking lot. The lot is a small gravel area across from the haunted school, at the base of a wooded hillside. As we approached my car, one of the chainsaw guys came barrelling at me from the woods, and the other had come from across the street. Brian and Heather had already got in the car, and of course they thought it would be fucking hysterical, a real lovely story for the hobos in the soup kitchen, to lock me out of the car. So I’m running around this dark, mostly empty parking lot, punching myself in the crotch to keep from panic-pissing, two chainsaws buzzing against my billowing hair. Brian actually had a change of heart and unlocked my door, but showed no mercy in ridiculing me.

Angry at Brian and shaken up by the chase, I tried to make a hasty exit. Unfortunately, the parking lot is poorly lit and I didn’t notice the car that was parked perpendicularly behind me. I sure noticed it after the sickening crunch it made as my bumper violated its side, that’s for sure. And of course, it would belong to one of the chainsaw guys, who happened to witness the whole thing. His chainsaw dropped and he flung his mask onto the gravel, then stood in front of my car, furiously miming for me to  get out. The next hour was spent waiting for a cop to come (he insisted on having a report filed), me sobbing and repeatedly asking if I was going  to jail, and being reamed out by a very pissed off car owner. At one point, the other chainsaw guy sat with me in my car, consoling me by saying, “Don’t let him get to you. He’s a mother fucker to everyone. He made me feel better and if Heather wasn’t in the backseat, I probably would have given him a handjob for his effort.

But last Saturday night, there were no other cars in that dark gravel parking lot for me to batter. I blame all these big commercial haunts that are popping up. The ones that herd you through like cattle in groups of fifteen and just aren’t scary.

Luckily, one of the fire departments in a neighboring town has been putting one together in the basement of a school gym for the past three years. It’s a little too short, but it has promise and some legitimate scares (NIffer almost had a heart attack because not only were there clowns, but a midget one at that), some horrific encounters with Freddy Krueger and Leatherface, and a robed man with a needling eastern European accent of some sort that kept reappearing to heckle us.

Christina and I went to this same one last year and I seriously was near-tears because the whole thing made me feel uncomfortable and they literally have you walking through small rooms in this damp cement basement and I kept shouting WHAT IF THIS IS REAL AND WE DON’T MAKE IT OUT OMFG DID I TELL CHOOCH I LOVED HIM BEFORE I LEFT??

Unfortunately, there was no Michael Myers.I have recurring fantasies of a chase ending with an erotic rape romp so my thighs quake subsequently every time I see him. Michael left me with a wet hot memory at Cheeseman’s haunted hayride two weekends ago, at least, when he had me pressed up against a wall in an empty hallway and we were face to Shatner-mask. He kept trying to shoo Janna away and I really believe that a child could have been conceived that night if Janna had left. Either that or the knife that was so dangerously near to my cheek was real and Michael and his friends would be dining on Erin Appledale flapjacks the next morning.

Anyway, I really hope whoever was behind that mask was at least of legal age, because his jock bumped against me several times and I had urges, mighty urges, to cup his ballsack. Scandelous.

And that’s how I like my haunted houses.