In the fall of 2002 I worked in a haunted house on a county fairground in northern Illinois. The “Barn of Terror” and the “House of Horrors” drew the biggest crowds. A traveling carnival crew set up on the fairgrounds so there were rides and concessions. The colorful fall leaves blew everywhere, adding just the right festive touch. I was a ‘runner’ so I basically ran around doing errands for different scenes where the actors weren’t able to leave. Occasionally filling in for dead people or other actors when they needed a break.

There were five haunted houses/barns total in the different buildings on the fairground using a lot of what was already there: tractors, hay, rusty fences, etc. We used all kinds of scare tactics — chasing people through a maze with chainsaws, making people crawl through a tight space where the glass overhead was inches from their faces with tarantulas crawling on the glass, and of course the classic witches, grim reapers, werewolves, and goblins. We recreated scenes from as many horror movies as we could think of. We even had a real telephone pole that fell on a car as people passed by the scene, portraying a drunk driving accident, complete with a weeping driver over the death of his girlfriend.

On Halloween, the last night the haunted houses ran, we were let off around 3am (so technically it was Nov. 1). I took off my headset and started wandering around the different areas of the main haunted house with my friend Sean. I had been desensitized to all the scary soundtracks and screaming actors and bloody hallways by that point and was ready for some fun. The pulley that was used to raise and drop the telephone pole had broken, and all night I had heard over the headset the various updates as to whether it would be operational by the end of the evening, but it was never fixed.

As the last few groups went through the haunted house that had the drunk driving scene, my friend and I thought we would make things more interesting so we decided we would be the casualties of the “collision.” Sean lay on the ground and played dead, while I leaned over the front end of the car with my forehead touching the hood, my upper body resting in the enormous dent the telephone pole had made in the car. We didn’t have time to get any fake blood on us, but we figured it would look creepy enough.

As the next group rounded the corner to enter the scene, I heard a loud rush of wind behind me. I realized the pole was falling on the car (and me) and I started to push off the hood with my hands. I had just enough time to lift my forehead from the metal of the car when the pole crashed down on me. I felt my teeth rattle. I stood up and looked around me with too many thoughts. My head throbbed. I was definitely going to get in trouble. Why in the world did I decide to lie where the pole had been falling? Why is everyone staring at me in terror? Oh right, I’m supposed to be playing dead right now. I think I need help. When did they fix that pulley? I can’t feel my left arm.

Looking back now, I know I was in shock and had a concussion, but at the time I was just suuuuuper confused. I ran away from the scene and just aimlessly ran through the fairgrounds. The cold Illinois air stung my face, and frost that had already formed in the early morning crunched under my feet. As the adrenaline wound down I came across my friend Chad who was working security.

“Whoa, what’s wrong? You look really spooked,” he said.

“I think I need help…”

I must have looked pretty banged up because I could hear him speak into his headset, “I’m going to need a medic over here *pause* over here by the corndog stand.”

Paula drove me to the hospital and I spent the rest of the evening in the emergency room trying to explain exactly how (and why) I had been hit in the back of the head with a telephone pole. They gave me a C.T. scan and x-rayed my left arm, which the pole had also landed on. Once the doctor understood and believed me (finally) he said: “Well, you’re really lucky you were able to lift your head at least the few inches you did before the pole crashed on the car, otherwise the weight of the pole and the force of the fall would have crushed your head, like an egg.” He made the hand motions of an egg bursting open and said – POP! “When you put some space between your head and the hood of the car, it created a kind of cushion that basically prevented your head from being crushed between the two.”

A few people came to visit me at the hospital (I remember Megan and Dan being there). Although I was very sore and existential for the next few days, I was fine. Sometimes when I pass a telephone pole that is just the right shade of brown I am haunted by that teeth rattling, wind rushing, unexplainable feeling of ‘blunt force trauma’ to the noggin.

But you guys! I’m alive and well, celebrating yet another Halloween where I have a non-crushed skull.

Happy (early) Halloween, friends!

And if you are interested in winning a 1TB External Hard Drive from yours truly, you can enter here.