http://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2008/10/an_adult_haunted_house.html
An Adult Haunted House
by Inara Verzemnieks, The Oregonian
Thursday October 16, 2008, 2:58 PM
This is the season of haunted houses -- grand spectacles of blood and entrails and raw-throated screaming that come to occupy weeks, if not
months, of their organizers' lives.

On a recent Saturday, I drove out to Gresham to visit one such haunted house. It was held at an old Grange Hall and was put on by a couple I
had met in another capacity in their other lives, which is presenting children's puppet shows.


The last time I saw Jason Ropp and Shawnna Cady they were showing me Jason's latest creations: a host of sweet-natured articulated bugs (a
dragonfly, a praying mantis, a ladybug, a flea), the newest characters in one of Jason's traveling puppet shows, which he and Shawnna take to
libraries, classrooms and community centers around the country.

As Jason showed me how the dragonfly could flit about the room on gossamer wings, he and Shawnna mentioned that they nurtured another
consuming interest: creating haunts, as the industry parlance goes. Shawnna, in particular, had been involved with haunted houses since high
school, she said. They both talked about this part of their lives with great intensity.

When the call came a few weeks ago, inviting me to see the haunt that they had come up with this year, I don't know, I suppose I was still
thinking about the bugs. That was my last good reference point, really. So you can probably understand why it threw me just a bit when, by the
end of the evening, I was interviewing a topless woman, her legs up in stirrups, who had just simulated giving birth to a mutant child, while
nearby, a man in a bondage outfit took a break, jockstrap peeking out from the edges of his leather codpiece.

Dissonance.

There is no other word for it.

Extreme dissonance.

The distance between what you expect and what you find.

I drove for a long time to get there, passing fast-food restaurants and apartment complexes, then empty fields, an abandoned house, the
boarded windows decaying.

Sometimes when you go way out, you end up farther than you ever imagined.

Shawnna and Jason had created two haunts -- one suitable for all ages, featuring black-light artwork and 3-D glasses -- and another suitable only
for those 18 and over. This, obviously, was the one I happened to catch, although on my particular visit I missed the suspension artist, a pedicab
operator who had offered to spend the occasional night hanging from the ceiling of the haunted house on hooks carefully threaded through his
skin by a man known as Dale the Nail. Jason brought out a video camera to show me how it looked the previous night, the skin separating,
stretching from the suspension artist's back. Jason's hands were spattered with fake blood. He had just finished adjusting the pregnant
character's prosthetic belly, trying to make it rounder.

"Jason and I are both Christians -- believe it or not," Shawnna said, laughing. She was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Will Scare For Candy."

More things to try to square. I was having a hard time keeping up: The sweet blonde who spoke to me from inside an animal cage, her head
sticking through the front opening; the fact that there was a fundraising function to all of this. The blood, breasts, bare bottoms and body
modification were helping to raise money for Gresham Little Theater, which calls this Grange, with its failing roof and antiquated electrical
system, home. Shawnna and Jason had promised to donate a percentage of their take to this cause.

After we had walked the haunt and I had interviewed all the principals -- "I'd shake your hand, but I'm tied up right now," said the evil doctor;
"It's nice to be a main attraction," said the naked pregnant woman, sitting in a pool of blood -- Shawnna realized there was one more person
she would like me to meet.

"Dad!" she called.

Brian Cady emerged from the Grange kitchen, where he was cooking up fry bread for the haunt's performers.

He had been through the experience last night, he said. And he thought the tweaks they had made since then really improved things. There
were several points along the way when characters pleaded for help; I mentioned that this made me uncomfortable, having to watch, being
unable to do anything.

"It's interesting," said Brian. "All those movies these young people watch. And now it's like they're walking through one. And they have to ask
themselves, 'Should I suspend my disbelief, or should I help?' "

Eventually he went back to the fry bread, and I drove home, trying to find my way in the dark.