Haunted hayride

If I died and had to linger around this planet as a ghost, one thing I don't think I'd do is sit in the woods, awaiting tractors whose beds carry innocent people sitting in straw, just in the hopes that, should such an odd and obscure thing transpire, I could run after them screaming for a few seconds. I would instead use my lack of physical being to do neat things like fly, and I would "haunt" places I can't typically go, like the Oval Office, and the bedrooms of hot celebrities. Or maybe I would travel through time and re-observe my childhood, although I have no reason to believe that being a ghost would enable me to move through time. Still, though, I wouldn't waste away the eternal years in rural isolation, and I wouldn't bother scaring people. I mean, if I wanted to scare people, I could do it now, while I'm still alive. Maybe I do just that, unintentionally.

But to each his own. Apparently several ghouls get some sick pleasure out of scaring the living, as was evidenced in the haunted hayride I attended last night. The picture above doesn't do this set-up justice, but it was basically the only decent photo that came out of my flash-less iPhone. They did a nice production ... elaborate with many segments, including a maze, a spinning tunnel, a hayride ... you got a lot for $12. And I did shout once, when we were in a pitch-black maze and something jumped in front of me.

I'm not a frequenter of haunted houses, so my superlative statements should be taken with a grain of salt, but that said, the scariest "haunted house" type of thing I've seen was actually the horror portion of Tussaud's Palace of Wax, in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum in Grand Prairie, a town in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I went to write a story when I worked at the Star-Telegram, and was totally alone; I never saw another person. And, as dumb as it sounds, I was so repeatedly startled by sudden blasts of noises, flashes of light and ghastly imagery that I grew increasingly nervous and on-edge, to the point that I was relieved to get the hell out of there. That complex had a traditional wax museum, the haunted portion of it, the Believe It Or Not exhibits and a mirror maze (pictured). Why am I telling you this? Who knows. Maybe you'll find yourself in Grand Prairie someday, looking for something to do with kids, and remember these words.

Maybe I'm just stalling doing my Corporate Finance homework ...