Revivalist Christian haunted houses — their history, their spread and the horrible morality plays at their core. Plus a new story from Jake entitled 'Q House'.
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Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 149 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Hell House episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Brokatansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
This week, we are going to Hell.
Specifically, Hell Houses.
A form of Christian haunted houses that pop up every year around November across the United States.
There, we will confront the real horrors of sin as defined by a group of Pentecostalists, which of course include homosexuality, drug use, abortion, and many other unpleasant satanic practices.
Your visit to this podcast episode will shed some light on the history of hell houses as a cultural phenomenon and the incredibly dramatic scenes they include.
After this, I have prepared a story about a very special kind of hell house, one where you learn to fear the nefarious adrenochrome drinking cabal.
Jesus may be able to save you from sin, but can he save you from Gitmo?
Find out.
Hell House History In 1972, Reverend Jerry Falwell organized what he called a Scare Mare with his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Now seen as the ancestor of Hell Houses, the Scare Mare continues to be put on every year except the last two, which according to their website is due to, quote, the high transmission rate of COVID-19 in our area.
The website describes the experience like this.
Scare Mare presents fun house rooms and scenes of death in order to confront people with the question, what happens after I die?
Groups of people experience a 40-minute journey, passing through creepy trails, dark woods, and eventually entering the house.
At the end of the experience, visitors are presented with an answer to this question and given the life-changing message of Jesus Christ.
Approximately 26,000 people have made decisions for Christ over the past two decades.
Ironically, this house of death points to the way of life.
So it's like a Chick Track come to life, basically.
Chick Track the ride.
The idea for ScareMare apparently stemmed from Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion, which first went into operation in 1969, just three years before Falwell's first event.
According to academic Ann Pellegrini, the rise of these Christian haunted houses, now known as Hell Houses or Judgment Houses or a plethora of other names, was intended to, quote, combine secular culture and Christianity to extend a Christian message.
She explains the thinking behind this.
Quote, "Sometimes you have to traffic with the devil to do the Lord's work.
Engagement with popular culture provided an idiom and effective style that could transcend
denominational divisions within Protestantism and compete for takers within an increasingly
commercialized public square."
Pellegrini traces Hell House's back to 18th century revivalist George Whitefield,
who engaged in elaborate, self-dramatized sermons on theatrical stages in London and
the United States, using the acting skills he had developed in his youth to bring the
message of God to more secular audiences.
Combining theater and entertainment with revivalist Christianity came to be a hallmark of American evangelism.
Figures like Ted Haggard, Jim Baker, and Jerry Falwell were all obviously well-versed in this practice.
And just like its spiritual forebears, hell houses proved useful to convert or recommit attendees, but also to make some sweet, sweet money.
Designed in the image of secular entertainment products, they charged attendees a fee for entry and quickly became lucrative fundraising factors for the communities putting them on.
And nobody did it better than Pastor Kenan Roberts of New Destiny Church.
When he got wind of the concept, Roberts immediately started up his own Hell House in 1995, at the time for the Abundant Life Christian Center in Arvada, Colorado.
Ann Pellegrini describes him in her 2007 paper, Signaling Through Flames, Hell House Performance and Structures of Religious Feeling.
Pastor Kenan is a charismatic man whose easy laugh and gift of story belie an intensity of purpose.
He went to college on a basketball scholarship and, at 6'5", He is a towering physical presence.
You must have made quite an impression as a Demon Guide, a role he played every Hell House season until 2006 when he decided to take a year off from acting in the production.
He himself describes his Demon Guide performance as the best and somehow I have no reason to doubt him.
He quote, had a great time doing it, he says.
Being big was fun.
Within a year, Robert Keenan started selling Hell House outreach kits.
These now cost over $300, but in 1996, a Christianity Today article detailed what you got for your money.
The 500-member church is selling Hell House kits for $149.
Buyers get a 263-page manual, a video of the Denver Hell House, and a tape or compact disc with sound effects.
The manual includes everything from a script to prop advice, including, quote, "Do your very best
to buy or purchase a meat product that will resemble, as much as possible, pieces of a baby
that are being placed in the glass bowl for all to see."
That's... it's just such a good note.
Here's the sale pitch as of 2006 on the New Destiny Christian Center website.
Shake your city with a most in-your-face, high-flying, no-denying, death-defying, Satan-be-crying, keep-you-from-frying, theatrical-styling, no-holds-barred, cutting-edge evangelism tool of the new millennium.
Being utilized to preach the gospel from coast to coast and around the world, hundreds of
kits are equipping churches and ministries on the front lines of spiritual battle in
virtually every state and 18 foreign countries and counting.
And it's available today for your church or ministry.
Several years ago, the world watched and the media was shocked as a church began to take
an uncompromising stand on the red-hot issues facing our culture today.
Piece by piece, prop by prop, costume by costume, the master plan is organized in a comprehensive
manual.
A video of what Hell House in action looks like and a special effects compact disc audio
master are also included.
This sizzling evangelism event is designed to capture the attention of our sight and sound culture.
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