Hey folks, this might not necessarily deserve its own thread but I couldn’t find an appropriate home for it and what the heck, it’s Halloween. I just read this article over on Slate about an American’s experience in a Japanese haunted house and thought it was an interesting read, a look into the difference in perspective on how a Japanese haunted house would work, and broader scares in general. I’ve always had a perplexed attitude about Japanese horror, my only real exposure being through the movies that make it over here. I’ve enjoyed some of them like Audition and Pulse but the ones that tend to be more ghost stories, I guess, like Ju-On and Ringu seem, while interesting, not so scary. But this story of a more personalized haunted house sounds really cool to me, and I can see how it would really freak somebody out. It reminds me of when I was a kid and went with my mom to a haunted house – a guy in a hockey mask and overalls ran through the waiting lineup swinging a chain saw around. I didn’t know at the time that you could take the chain out and make the saw virtually harmless, and it scared the living hell out of me.
Anyway, happy Halloween everybody!