The Spooky Place, Part I

Because I am reasonably old, I have quite a few Halloweens under my belt (although I am not that overweight), and a long list of favorite Halloween memories. For me as a youngster, Halloween was a special, thrilling time. In certain circles, it might be common knowledge that I was the world’s most terrified kid. I mean, up through my elementary school years, even into middle school, I spent a considerable percentage of my day-to-day life genuinely, heart-poundingly, mind-numbingly terrified. I am certain this innate, inexplicable terror was among the most motivating reasons for my becoming a writer of scary things once I grew up. I don’t know whether Halloween represented a means of making peace with my juvenile fears, but I do recall that dressing up in costumes (the scarier the better) and trick-or-treating was both exhilarating and cathartic. (I still love the costuming and socializing aspects of the season.) As often happens with youngsters, once in my late teens and through my early twenties, Halloween lost some of its shine; however, as a full-fledged adult, my passion for all things Halloween came roaring back, and it has been my favorite holiday for more years now than it hasn’t.

Perhaps my most memorable, most exciting Halloween came when I was fifteen, in 1974. At that time, much to my parents’ chagrin, I spent most of my waking moments immersed in scary, monstrous, otherworldly realms of fiction — cinematic as well as literary. In May of that year, The Martinsville Bulletin ran a full-page feature about me, following my sale of a Godzilla vs. the Thing filmbook to the long-dead but well-remembered monster movie tabloid called The Monster Times (see “Accent on Nerds” from October 6). I have no recollection of how anyone at the Bulletin came to find out about this particular feather in my cap, but the piece caught numerous eyes, including those of the Associated Press, who picked up the article and thus facilitated its publication in newspapers around the country. And as a result of that, WLVA-TV, Channel 13, out of Lynchburg, VA, sent a crew to my junior high school one day to interview me that I might further elaborate on my blathering from the newspaper article. Exciting times. Also as a result, a couple of members of the local Jaycees, who had begun plotting a massive haunted castle attraction for Martinsville, sought me out to recruit my help with the planning, design, and execution of this, their most ambitious community project.

And so, excited beyond words, I attended a series of meetings with the Jaycees to brainstorm ideas for a bona fide castle of horrors, to be set up in an abandoned warehouse in the small community of Koehler, just outside of Martinsville. All the classic creatures would be showcased in their own specially designed chambers: Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde... with a pretty fair budget to boot. Finally, one evening, just about sunset, the redoubtable Dickie Globman (whose wife, Pam, is nowadays a geocacher of high reputation), came by the house, picked me up in his MG sports car (which was a thrill because I had never ridden with a madman in a sports car before), and drove us out to Koehler.

Holy Yog! The warehouse, an old stone monstrosity half-hidden by trees and rising above the nearby Smith River, was imposing and downright scary even before any attractions had been set up. To enter, you had to go through these massive doors and down a long, earthen-floor passageway into a vast cellar with five-foot-diameter stone columns at regular intervals. What a perfect place to set up a maze of horror chambers! I was ecstatic, and to return a few times to contribute to the physical grunt work — sweeping away actual cobwebs and piles of dust, setting up sheets of polyurethane, connecting miles of extension cords, and the like — only heightened my anticipation of its completion. On top of everything, I got to write and illustrate the promos that ran in the Martinsville Bulletin. I wish I still had some of those little ads because, as crude as they might have been, they were among the most fun artistic projects I ever undertook.

For whatever reason, I wasn’t present when the actors for the various horrific roles came on the scene, but on opening night, my little brother and I dared to enter the now-transformed halls of this most haunted of haunted castles.

I couldn’t believe it. I had been in some big, scary, professional haunted attractions before, but this thing blew me away. The rooms, full of sparking, screeching scientific instruments; massive spiderwebs; fluorescent passageways leading to dizzying abysses, all were fantastic. And through it all, expertly made-up monsters roamed, screamed, and grabbed (ah, for those good old days!).

This place... this spooky, spooky place... was Halloween heaven. And from that moment on, to me, the old Koehler warehouse became known as simply “The Spooky Place.” At some later time, one company or another purchased the warehouse and returned it to its more traditional usage, which sadly put the kibosh on the classic haunted castle. The Jacyees moved the attraction to another location or two in Martinsville proper, and I think they were pretty good, but I had no hand in them. The most memorable thing about one of those was coming out of the exit and stepping on a stray roofing tack, which went through my shoe and punctured my sole, so that, upon taking off said shoe, I left a lovely trail of very real blood out to the parking lot. At least I’d had a tetanus shot at the time, and the wound healed up without complication.

Nowadays, the Koehler warehouse is still operating, I believe, but it’s still a spooky, spooky place, and I used to have a geocache placed right out in front of it. That one had to be archived, but I still have an active cache on the Smith River Fieldale Trail, just across the river, that overlooks the warehouse. I doubt the Koehler warehouse will ever again serve its true purpose — doubling as a haunted castle — but the memories it offered me, and many others, are priceless.

In 1982, I made something of a return to the fold for that year’s Koehler Halloween event. It, too, was classic stuff, although the rest of that Halloween season was far from joyous. More on that one tomorrow, or whenever I can get around to it.

Be spooky. Safe, but spooky.

Read “The Spooky Place” Part 2 here.