Happy Halowe'en! Evangelical Hell Houses

[Lurky]

Happy Hallowe'en!

In celebration of the season, I was reading this piece on Vice today, about evangelical Hell Houses, and especially Trinity Church's famous ones.  The piece is written by an ex-Evangelical, and contains lots of videos.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/3kvkmy/evangelical-hell-houses-are-waking-nightmares

I am fascinated by this - we don't have these in the UK as far as I'm aware, so I'm about to jump down a rabbit hole.   I can't imagine how they'd work on a non-believer like me, because they seem so camp/kitsch, but I can see them making people who do believe feel even more guilty about being gay, having an abortion etc.   I guess I don't understand them, so  I was wondering, dear FJers - have you been to one?  Or acted in one?  Did they work?   What was it like?  I'd really love to know more, and of course, if you guys have any articles etc that you like about it, I'd love it if you shared.  That Vice piece lead me to these, for example:

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/av4d78/the-best-little-hell-house-in-texas

https://www.buzzfeed.com/sarahburton/evangelical-hell-houses-that-will-terrify-you-if-youre-int

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/31/halloween-texas-hell-house-wayward-christians-scared

Happy Hallowe'en!

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

Happy Halloween, @Lurky!

Spoiler

I've seen news stories about different groups having a "hell house" locally over the years, but not recently. I hope that means they're losing popularity. I never went to one, so I'm not much help! 

[Alisamer]

A local church near me has a sign out for a "Judgement House". I have no intentions of going, and can't imagine why anyone would. We have plenty of good haunted houses and trails around, plus zombie hunting with paintballs, so why go to something called a "judgement house"? That just screams "not fun" to me.

[Lurky]

@Alisamer I can't even imagine why one would go there through choice, unless it was to feel smug about none of it happening to a saved Christian... or to go and gawk, and report back to FJ, of course! 

[EowynW]

It's to scare the hell out of people. Scare them into salvation. Like Chick tracts. A terrible way to share the gospel. 

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

38 minutes ago, Lurky said:

@Alisamer I can't even imagine why one would go there through choice, unless it was to feel smug about none of it happening to a saved Christian... or to go and gawk, and report back to FJ, of course! 

I suppose some evangelical churches might encourage teenagers to bring their unsaved friends as a "community outreach".

[Lurky]

43 minutes ago, EowynW said:

It's to scare the hell out of people. Scare them into salvation. Like Chick tracts. A terrible way to share the gospel. 

But I can't see how it could work, unless someone believed in demons and hell in the first place?  The whole "you'll burn for eternity" approach is always a weird one to me, because they have to persuade me that there IS an afterlife first.

The thing that makes me upset about these are the evangelicals who do believe in hell, but as the article says, are convinced they're terrible sinners, and getting this full-on treatment.  Or someone who has had someone they care about commit suicide, and getting this treatment.  It seems like a horrible thing to have to deal with.

(I have never, ever understood the "scare them into believing" approach - it's like the people who do this don't believe in the Jesus of the Gospels, except as a way out of Hell, and that's bizarre to me)

[mango_fandango]

Holy fucking shit. That is a whole other level of whack.

If I were to start believing in something, I sure as hell don't want to be terrified into it. 

The answer to all the bad things in life is more Jesus? Are you fucking kidding me? 

Then again I don't expect anything else from these irritating God-botherers.

[Beermeet]

Those people are fn crazy!!!!  Wtf.

[FeministShrew]

I've never been to one, but my oldest went to one with the church youth group not long before we all stopped going to church. She said the scariest thing about it was the gospel presentation at the end, because the guy doing it got angry because no one in their group went forward during his invitation. He was threatening to keep them there all night unless someone came forward, yelling that they weren't taking it seriously, screaming about hell and how one of them could die that night. The people running the thing tried to keep parents and youth pastors with the groups out of the presentation room, but fortunately our youth pastor was a big guy who looked pretty menacing, and insisted on being with the kids. He said enough and ushered his group out. He apologized to the kids and us parents and said he didn't realize it was going to be like that, because he was friends with the youth pastor who organized the thing. Both the hosting church and the church we went to (our last church, lol) were Southern Baptist.
It just made my kid more sure that religion was not for her.

The first Judgement House-type thing I ever heard of was at my aunt's Southern Baptist church back in the mid-70s. They always put on a first class Halloween carnival every year, with a kid-friendly haunted house, ghost story telling, cake walk, etc., but that year they had a new pastor who didn't like Halloween ( this was at the beginning of the Conservative Resurgence). He decided to have a "Walk Through Hell" in the Sunday School building. Only people 13 and older were allowed, so I was too young, but my sister went through and came out terrifed & in tears. My aunt organized the carnival every year & was pissed off, because she said Halloween was supposed to be "good, clean, fun," not about hell-fire and damnation. That was the last Halloween carnival that church had, because the preacher convinced a bunch of people that it was "evil." They didn't even have the lame "fall festival" substitute until the early 2000s.
 

[dripcurl]

I only knew these existed from an episode of United States of Tara. There are not any around where I live. Churches will do trunk-or-treats, which as long as they are not handing out scary tracts are cool (no such things as tracts around here either!), but nothing like a Hell House thing. 

[wotdancer]

I went to Scaremare (from the buzzfeed article) once when I was a student at Liberty. I absolutely despise scary things, so I spent quite a bit of that evening with my eyes closed as my roommate's brother just guided me through the rooms haha. The last "scene" they had that year was a fatal car crash, then we were escorted to the tent where one of the volunteers (probably a pastoral ministries major, if I had to guess) gave the "if you had been in that car, would you be in hell right now?" speech. Now I wish I remembered more about that stupid night, just to share with FJ lol.

[JillsFlowerHeadband]

I never understood the whole Hell House thing (or, for that matter, any evangelizing in the hellfire and brimstone vein). I can’t imagine God wanting people to follow him out of fear or compulsion because “God is Love” and “His mercy endures forever”, right? In fact, I remember in the gospels a place where Jesus rebuked his disciples for wanting to call down fire from heaven on nonbelievers. 

ETA Luke 9:54-56

And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

[acheronbeach]

Every couple of years, this subject pops up on FJ at Hallowe'en.  There was a fairly interesting discussion here including a link to a Hell House documentary: 

 Last year it came up on QFOS because some moron church in Chicago made a Hell House depicting Pulse Nightclub after the shooting.  

I'm pretty sure we discussed them on Yuku as well but I'm too lazy to search, LOL.  I agree that they seem to be slowing down.  

[Lurky]

@acheronbeach Ah, I did search for hell house on the site, but there were sooooooooo maaaaaaaannnnnny responses, that I got bored and gave up! But thank you x 10000 for the links!

[CTRLZero]

I don't recall ever hearing about hell houses, so another educational moment courtesy of FJ!  I was at the grocery store today and noticed a woman with a "Jesus is the Lord" jacket and other various sayings attached to her clothing.  I almost said, "nice costume," but then realized that she might be a portable human hell house!  Even though it was busy, no one stood with her in the checkout line.   We were all scared, lol!

Happy Halloween! 

[SuperNova]

Im an atheist but I would love to see the theatrics of a hell house. Normally I'm all about respecting the religious choices of others but this level of ridiculousness is just begging to be laughed at. I think I would play along for full effect. Maybe even work up some tears.

[December]

Growing up, my church would do a little non-scary Halloween party for the kids where you could wear your costume. It was pretty clear to me even back then that Halloween was about being silly and getting candy, not worshipping Satan or whatever! 

Mentions of Hell Houses always make me think of this: 

Spoiler

 

[Briefly]

There is one in Tulsa.  It's actually kind of a thing that local teens like to do, most of them know that it's put on by a church and that the end is an attempt at "saving them" but most kids still like to go to it.  My daughter went a few years ago.  She said it was really scary, she knew going in what it was going to be, but she and her friends still had fun.  I also think of King of the Hill's Halloween episode when I hear about them!

[Ozlsn]

10 hours ago, acheronbeach said:

Every couple of years, this subject pops up on FJ at Hallowe'en.  There was a fairly interesting discussion here including a link to a Hell House documentary: 

I'm pretty sure I saw that documentary at a film festival, which was also the first time I'd heard of Hell Houses (Halloween didn't really take off here until about 10 years ago so nothing here). They struck me as being a very bonding fun kind of thing that church youth groups would do - although I have to admit the 'trapped in a room being strongly encouraged to come to Jesus' bit at the end would be very off putting. Put on a musical instead guys, more fun, less hard sell. 

[CrazyLurkerLady]

I participated in one as a teenager! I went to a Pentecostal church for two years. This was in the late 90's in small-town southern WV. The church had this finished basement with a bunch of different rooms off one hallway, a door to the outside on one end, and stairs up to the sanctuary at the other. So it was perfectly set up for this kind of thing. We did each room themed around a different verse of Revelations.

At the beginning, a person would come around and write on everybody's hand in the group with a yellow highlighter, then when they got in there was a black light and they saw that 666 was on their hands. I don't remember all the rooms, but one was covered in foil with a bunch of fans and red streamers and red strobe lights. We had a plant in every group and our Satan guy would say a couple of lines and drag the screaming plant behind a partition. The room I was in was related to some verse that said something about people not being able to sleep because they were tormented. We had strings of lights shaped like eyeballs around the room and a couple of people in pajamas pacing and screaming that the voices would never shut up and let them sleep. Then there was a room about cannibalism and there were people gnawing on fake bones covered in fake blood and they lunged at the people in the group and screamed about fresh meat. I don't remember any other rooms but I think there were 5 total and I don't know how hard the sell was in the sanctuary since I didn't see that part, but I'm pretty sure nobody ever went there unless they were already Christian anyway.

[Ozlsn]

3 hours ago, CrazyLurkerLady said:

Then there was a room about cannibalism and there were people gnawing on fake bones covered in fake blood and they lunged at the people in the group and screamed about fresh meat. I don't remember any other rooms but I think there were 5 total and I don't know how hard the sell was in the sanctuary since I didn't see that part, but I'm pretty sure nobody ever went there unless they were already Christian anyway.

That sounds like so much fun! I have to ask - what was the cannibalism referring to in Revelations? Famine? I also am going to have to check out the insomnia verse, no recollection of that one at all.

[Florita]

I never heard of Hell Houses until I read about them here. Then yesterday (H-ween) I saw The Simpsons Tree House of Horror XVIII. Ned sets up a Heck House in the First Church of Springfield.

Love a good coincidence! 

[AlwaysExcited]

I'm not going to lie, if there was something like this near me, I would go. It seems very snarkworthy. 

[Lurky]

@CrazyLurkerLady Wow!  My eyes are like dinner plates!

Was it fun?  I read in some of the articles that some Godly Teen Boys really enjoy getting to play evil, and yell at people - what did it feel like for you?  Or was it just annoying, having to yell on cue all evening?

So many Qs!   Thank you so much for sharing!