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For some, Halloween means fairy wings and face-paint.
For others, it's a time of spiritual warfare.
PromiseLand Church in East Austin has, for the past four years, created Virtual Hell, an evangelical haunted house that features "real life horrors," said youth pastor Ricky Poe - acted-out scenes of domestic violence, teen suicide, date rape, abortion, school shootings and fatal drunk-driving accidents. While critics call the house of horrors a fear-mongering conversion technique of the religious right, Poe says the aim is to reach youths on a spiritual level.
The church spends $10,000 each year, and 120 congregation members commit hundreds of volunteered hours to create the Christian-themed haunted house.
The goal, Poe said, is to show these scenes and offer the audience a positive alternative.
"We want young people to make good choices," he said.
Ultimately, Poe hopes Virtual Hell will inspire people to convert and "accept Christ into their lives." Perhaps even more important than that, he said he hopes young people will reconsider destructive choices they make that could jeopardize their lives.
"We want to save people physically and spiritually. But if you don't save someone physically, there's no hope for spiritual salvation," Poe said.
Every October, thousands file through the graphic maze of Virtual Hell, past sordid scenes and into an "elevator."
The elevator, a solid box set on a forklift, first takes the audience up seven floors, to heaven.
The ascent is pleasant enough: Kenny G plays through the loudspeakers. The light is white and soothing. At the top, the strains of Kenny G's saxophone warp, and the elevator begins down again.
The forklift shudders.
Something is wrong.
The elevator opens, and the audience enters Hell.
Chris Higgins, as Satan, taunts them with what they've seen and the poor choices they've made.
For three of the past four years, Higgins has played the Devil.
"It's not really a coveted role, but this guy, I mean, he's an absolute natural," said Poe, laughing.
Casting begins in August and all final decisions are made by Poe.
Or, maybe, by God himself.
"I believe in divine appointments," Poe said. "There are just some people who are destined to play a certain part; I feel that."
Higgins towers 7 feet tall over the audience. He wears a waxy, pitted mask and a long, black wig. His voice, distorted and demonic, projects from loudspeakers around the smoky room, booming over the wail of lost souls. Two people are chained to the wall. He circles through the audience. He caresses his "trophy case"- three glass boxes filled with his prized "sinners." Two of the cases hold an abortion doctor and nurse, their hands still bloody. The third case is empty, and Satan beckons audience members to enter his sinful world.
Higgins said this is the most demanding role he's ever played emotionally, physically (he leaps and growls and lunges for five hours straight every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, as group after group tours Hell) and spiritually.
"People might think I'm crazy, but, spiritually, I try to walk Christ-like. In this role, Satan throws everything he's got at me. I feel fatigue, I have nightmares."
Many cast members talk of this -headaches, sore feet-all signs, they say, that Satan is near and trying to undo the good they've done.
This, Poe said, is more than a haunted house; it's a kind of spiritual warfare.
Members of the PromiseLand congregation have been organized into intercessory prayer teams, Poe said, and 24 hours a day someone is praying for the Virtual Hell cast.
"Spiritual people can spiritually discern things," Poe said. "I tell the kids involved to keep prayed up. I don't want anyone getting hurt. The enemy's tool is fear."
Both supporters and critics of Virtual Hell agree fear is powerful.
Poe argues Virtual Hell provides an alternative to fear: Christ, "who grants peace and protection".
Molly Zdarko, a congregation member who plays the abortion nurse, said the scene changes peoples' minds.
"Many years ago, I had an abortion," she said. "I was pressured into it by my boyfriend. To this day, I regret the decision I made. If our scene makes someone change her mind, take a second thought ... Ricky [Poe] has talked to people after they've walked through [Virtual Hell] who say, 'I've decided to have my baby.'"
Others say Virtual Hell and haunted houses like it attempt to scare people into conversion.
These haunted houses employ a fear-first-and-love-later technique that aggressively and manipulatively traumatizes audience members, offering them a single solution, said George Ratliff, a UT graduate and director of 'Hell House,' a documentary about the first evangelical haunted house at Trinity Church in Cedar Hill, Texas.
'Hell House' is a verite-style film that follows the Trinity Church congregation through the whole haunted house project.
Hell House in Cedar Hill started in 1990. It gained national attention in 1999 when, six months after the tragedy, the creators of the haunted house re-enacted a scene of the Columbine High School shooting, Ratliff said.
The original footage became a 10-minute short, which Ratliff expanded the next year into a feature-length film.
Many churches sell Hell House kits for about $199 a piece, he said. The kits include videos, compact discs with sound effects and scripts, and thousands of churches across the country have made their own do-it-yourself Hell Houses.
"It's being packaged and marketed," Ratliff said.
The growing trend of Christian-themed haunted houses, of hands-on conversion using graphic scenes of "real-life horror," is part of a wider national and worldwide trend, Ratliff said.
"Fear-mongering has become an integral part of our culture," he said. "And our culture as a whole is becoming increasingly fundamentalist."
Some local organizations, such as Texas Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, have spoken out against aspects of PromiseLand's Virtual Hell.
Poe admits the most controversial incident in the whole production may be the abortion scene.
In that scene, a young woman changes her mind in the middle of an abortion procedure. The doctor and nurse consult and decide it's too late to stop. The young woman cries out as the heartbeat of her unborn child thumps loudly on the sound track broadcast from overhead speakers.
Kae McLaughlin, executive director of Texas Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, said the scene is gratuitous and inaccurate.
"Their goal is to terrorize people about the abortion procedure," she said. "Having a child or not having a child is one of the most important decisions a woman can make. The last place we need to be when making that decision is operating from a place of fear and ignorance.
"I would give anything if people spent as much time talking about what it takes to raise a child, to nurture that child financially, emotionally and spiritually, as they do about the horrors of abortion," McLaughlin said.
Poe said each year Virtual Hell draws picketers and angry telephone calls.
In the scene that ends their tour of horrors, the audience is given a choice, Poe said. They can walk through a door on the left into a room where a counselor will talk with them about what they've seen and pray with them, if they like. Or they can just leave, through the door on the right.
"A lot of people just go," Poe said. "But some stay to talk with us."
VIRTUAL HELL A real life haunted hell
* Oct 29 - 31. 7 p.m. to midnight. * PromiseLand Church, 1504 E. 51st St. * Ages 13 and up * $10 (proceeds benefit the church)
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