Halloween is scarier than usual at “The Haunting” at Parsonsfield Seminary. It is a beautiful 19th-century campus that lives and breathes in secluded solitude.

Grown men hired to work on the building alone have been known to leave the grounds never to return for the feeling of “being watched.”

On a recent All Hallow’s Eve, the rain progressed from intermittent to steady, but we left our umbrellas in the car and quickly walked toward the dormitory, Doe Hall.

A cloaked and masked figure approached, but did not speak. She came very close and looked into our faces, tilting her head as if asking a question that we hadn’t heard and couldn’t answer.

We slowly entered “The Abnormal School” and were greeted by Headmaster Buzzell with a bloodied face.

After paying the fee, goose fleshed and shaky, I was ready to leave, but the tour only goes forward. We joined a group with eight others ranging in age from adult to 7.

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Remembering the survival skills from horror movies, I was careful not to be the first or the last in line. The hallways billowed in sheets separating corridors and corralling the tourists into a singular path, spider webbing Spanish-mossed the periphery.

In the chapel, eight cloaked and masked figures silently worshipped on the pews.

Suddenly they turned in unison to face the voyeurs.

The leader thumped a cane yelling, “Get OUT!” at us as we all pushed and scrambled for the narrow door. Regretfully, I forgot about my daughter. Upstairs, the dormitory room ghosts jumped out at us or presented bloodied body parts that turned my fear to panic.

We entered an operating room for the anatomy course. The professor delicately removed a visceral organ from an ingenue slabbed on the table.

As the professor placed her spleen into a stainless steel container, the patient turned to us and whispered plaintively, “Help me!”

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Rushing from the anatomy room, I caught the 10 silver buttons from the arm on my witch dress in the chicken wire of the electrocution room.

Like a June bug trapped in a spider’s web, I pulled and thrashed with all my might, succeeding only in making my tangle worse. I screamed. No intelligible words rang out, just a banshee wail understood in all languages.

Stepping out into the soothing rain and breathing deeply, I looked around for my 10-year-old daughter for the first time in an hour. She was fine, the tour was over, and “Brrrrrruuummmmm,” a chain saw prepared to massacre us Texas-style.

I ran for the parking area, leaving my daughter behind again.

“The Haunting” continues the next two Friday and Saturday nights (www.parsonsfieldseminary.org).

I’ll try not to scream.

– Special to the Telegram

 


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