Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Hell Houses

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Happy Cultyweeeeeeen! Our favorite holiday at Sounds Like A Cult is here, and to celebrate the spooky season, we’re asking: What could be more frightful than a haunted house dedicated to pushing an oppressive right-wing religious agenda onto high school kids just trying to have a good time? That’s the topic on Amanda and Isa’s minds this week for our very festive ‘sode on the “cult” of Hell Houses, a phenomenon that is somehow even scarier than it sounds…. Get tickets to Sounds Like A Cult’s first live in-person show in Los Angeles, Sunday, December 4th! https://www.dynastytypewriter.com/events-calendar?loxi_pathname=/sounds-like-a-cult-live-3418 Thank you to our sponsors. Go to Zocdoc.com/CULT and download the Zocdoc app for FREE Athletic Greens Is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/CULT

The views expressed in this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian. Every week on our show, we discuss a different culty group from the cultural zeitgeist. This week for Halloween, we'll be discussing the cult of hell houses to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really?

To join our cult and see culty memes and behind the scenes materials, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeAcultPod. If you want to worship me on Instagram, you can find me at Amanda underscore Montell. And if you want to slide into my DMs or actually tell me where to perform stand-up comedy, I finally updated my website. You can check me out on Instagram at Issa Medina, Is-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A. And feel free to check us out on YouTube where you can watch our show or hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult where all of our episodes are ad-free, spooky. Advertisements are scary, but necessary. We love them. Before we get into the episode, we wanted to encourage you all to listen all the way through

because we are going to make an extremely exciting announcement about our first ever in-person sounds like a cult live show. We're going to be doing sounds like a cult live. So listen through to know the details of when and where you can join us. Join us. With ZockDock booking appointment with a doctor that suits your needs, fits your schedule, is in your network, and your neighborhood is easy. Go to ZockDock.com slash cult and download the ZockDock app for free. Then start your search for a top rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash cult. I love athletic greens because getting the vitamins and nutrients that you need is so hard, but they make it so easy.

Athletic greens is giving you a free one year supply of immune boosting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athletic greens.com slash cult. That's athletic greens.com slash cult. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited about today's topic. Today's topic is my favorite sort of topic because literally no one asked for this. Yeah. I asked for this. I have been rubbernecking at hell houses ever since I was a little kid when this documentary about them came out when I was maybe 10. I didn't even know what they were until you brought them up. And then even when you did mention what they were, I just thought they were regular haunted houses, but oh baby, they aren't. No, no, no. These are evangelical

Christian haunted houses. Ever since I watched that documentary, I've been fascinated by them, but I hadn't thought about them in quite a while until we were brainstorming Halloween themed episodes. And I was like, oh man. And famously you love Halloween. I think the first time we met was like early fall. And the first thing you ever invited me to was your Halloween party. Yeah, I absolutely love Halloween. October is my era because here's my explanation. I love adventure. I love big feelings. I love spontaneity, but I'm also famously controlling you. No. So when you engage in a haunted house or a scary movie, that's a way to have big feelings and feel scared and excited and overwhelmed knowing that it's objectively safe and controlled.

It's like when people are into kink. I don't know how much money you spend on those decorations, but it definitely seems like a cult that people are going to come join and have to go through the house to be able to make it to the final stage. Yes, it's true. But it reminds me of the show Los Espukis when this super rich man dies. He selects five people to survive a haunted night in his mansion and whoever survives at the end can keep his fortune. That sounds amazing. And that's like you, but like the fortune is your company. I don't know. So culty. Yes, I love haunted houses. I love haunted hayrides. I love the ritual of Halloween. It really is a cult. I also love it because I love fall and like, oh, that crispy air that I just feel like when I step

outside, I'm just like, am I in a relationship? You know, I'm like, I haven't gone on dates in months. All of a sudden there's like a ring on my finger and I'm like listening to Taylor Swift. Yeah. And there are pumpkins everywhere and I'm like, I'm either a princess engaged or just went through a recent breakup, but like in a fun way. I know there is something so evocative about fall. You can project whatever you want onto it, romance, fear. And because we don't have seasons in LA, we like need Halloween decorations. It's the only thing that reminds us what month of the year it is. And I've got them. So anyway, I love rubbernecking at evangelicalism. Listen to our youth groups episode if you haven't. Listen to our celebrity mega churches episode if

you haven't. And I fucking love Halloween. So this is the combination of the two, the cult of hellhouses. I know that hellhouses aren't just normal haunted houses. They're extreme in the way that evangelical Christians put them together and then they bring kids in. Remember when we did our youth groups episode and we were like, there's a Christian version of everything, nail salons, radio, fucking haunted houses. They couldn't just let the Satanists have it. They couldn't, which is kind of crazy because I do think some super, super strict religious people, they're not allowed to celebrate Halloween. Yeah. I guess this is like a more moderate evangelical Christianity, right? No, no, no, no, no, no. So these are not evangelicals who think like

paganism is kind of okay. These are extremists strategically trying to co-opt the best parts of Halloween as a way to trick people into consuming their conservative anti-abortion homophobic message. Regular Halloween is witchcraft. It's satanic. It's totally against the rules. I think this is their way of appealing to kids who ultimately do love Halloween while pushing the evangelical agenda. Okay, so what are hell houses? Hell houses are events that combine interactive theater and haunted house scare tactics with the goal of, and here I quote a vice article on the topic, impressing on each patron the fact that the forces of good and evil are at war for their soul. Oh, so kind of scaring them into believing in hell almost? Exactly.

So I was making a sort of kink analogy before how haunted houses are fun because you know it's play pretend. The walls separating fantasy and reality don't exist here. This is them trying to paint what in their minds is a true depiction of what hell will look like if you get an abortion, commit any number of these sins. That is so scary because I think one of the things that safeguards a regular haunted house and allows it to be like just fun for kids is that when you leave your parents are like, it's not real. It's just a joke. Yeah, I just traumatized you from my Instagram feed. But the scary part about these is that the people that they idolize and the people that hold them accountable are the ones throwing it. And I don't think that at the end they're like,

it's just a joke. They're like, if you lie, cheat or steal, you will end up in a house like this. Absolutely. And lying, cheating and stealing, those are crimes whether you're religious or not. Those are the first ones that came to mind because it's the honor code from UVA. No, lying, cheating or stealing. So I'm like, that's the worst thing you could ever do. You will get kicked out of college. Like I literally didn't lie, cheat or steal for four years, maybe like about my age so that I could drink, you know, fair enough. Yeah, I feel like on their best day, haunted houses do have a sense of humor. I remember like 10 years ago, the city of West Hollywood through a satirical lesbian killjoy haunted house. And it was hilarious. There was

an exhibit where a bunch of like curmudgeonly lesbian academics dressed like zombies would just follow you around with like glorious dynom texts being like, probably. That's so funny though. And the reason that's funny is because it's like happening in a safe space. It's happening in West Hollywood with people who are probably queer and so everyone's in on the joke. For sure. No, there is no humor happening here. If only every exhibit or room in a hell house was about lying, cheating and stealing. Instead, they're about the sins of suicide and abortion and being gay, probably. Oh my God, can you imagine that room? It's just like a bunch of gay people like hooking up and they're like, spooky. They're like, these are the ghosts of the gay people.

And meanwhile, everybody's like actually turned on. And that's when you know that a religion is slightly more toward the destructive end of a cultist spectrum. When they're not communicating to you like, this is voluntary. This can bring you a lot of joy and meeting. It's all backed by fear, scare tactics. I wonder if it's like required that they have to go into the hell houses because same way that you have to like get baptized, what if you're like, I don't know, scared to go in water and like you have to like dunk your whole head in water in like an almost waterboarding style way. And they're like waterboarding you into going into these hell houses so that you're scared of being gay or having an abortion. Okay, what's even scarier than being

forced into these hell houses? In a lot of these evangelical Christian communities, this is like the only thing to do for fun. Oh my God. So they're really painting it as something cool and edgy to do on a Friday night. So they paint it as this fun thing. So it makes the kids want to go. But then the messaging sticks with them. Exactly. It's kind of like watching children's TV that has underlying tones of Christianity. Yes. And then they imply that dating is bad. And so you kind of get that imprinted in your brain. So these kids think they're having fun, but little do they know. And the messages are not being communicated in a subtle way. It is like over the top dramatic. So hell houses use extreme scare tactics to get people to buy into the overall evangelical mission.

Common themes of the different rooms within the hell house are abuse and sexual assault. Of course, they completely ignore any abuses perpetuated by the church or church members. Suicide. They're never sympathetic to suicide because it's considered a sin. There are rooms dedicated to the sins of premarital sex. I wonder what that room looks like. You know what I mean? Like you gotta watch the documentary. Is it just two people like sitting on a couch being like, who's going to kiss me first? Yeah. No, I think it's literal like evangelical theater kids putting on a bad skit with spooky music. It's probably also an excuse for them to like do those things that are like bad that they shouldn't be doing, you know, because they're

like acting them out. Exactly. They're like teetering up against these sins, which are actually just a grand old time. Premarital sex is lit. I've been having it for years. I know I highly recommend it. Yeah, it's actually more fun than marital sex. I mean, I wouldn't know. I've never been maritaled, but that was a stupid joke. That is my exact favorite type of joke. A suffix joke. The end. Good night. There are exhibits. It's so reverent to call them exhibits. They're skits. They're fucked up little skits. There are skits where they'll demonstrate gay people dying from AIDS in extremely graphic ways and you're going to say like gay people kissing and then immediately like falling to the floor. But I guess that's also what they're kind of trying to portray,

which is like so fucked up because actually the gay community now has PrEP and they're the ones helping AIDS not exist. Yeah, yeah. Straight people don't take PrEP. Well, actually with the gay scenes, they're never allowed to show a gay couple because it would be sinful even to act it out. So they'll just get cut to the end result, which is of course death by AIDS. Oh my gosh. Which also feels like they're implying that like secret affairs are hot. So essentially the ultimate messages of hell houses are that every affliction that we see in life from opioid addiction to domestic abuse to gun violence is evidence of demons. Classic, starting with a culty conclusion, working your way backwards to find an argument. It's faith-based,

so there's no way to prove or disprove. It's giving homeless people are homeless because they're lazy. It's giving conservative ideology that blames the victim for having those issues. The evangelical agenda and the American meritocratist agenda are just in bed with one another, so to speak. They're not having sex. They're in bed sleeping, but definitely not thrusting. Our evangelicals, they're barely holding hands. Yeah. So what I'm hearing is like the message suggests that bad things in life are attributable to your decisions and you will suffer the consequences of those decisions in the literal worst way possible. Yeah, by like getting overcome with like boils and ending up a zombie burning in hell. You know all those medieval

paintings of hell? Yeah, I've never really liked those as art. I don't know what it is about them, but they're not something I want to frame and put in my room. Me either. You know how like everybody when they study abroad in Florence, they go to the Uffizi, where the David sculpture is? Yeah, of course. When everybody studies abroad in Florence, they go to the Uffizi, Uffizi, Uffizi. The people who study abroad in Florence not saying I did that, but she did. The people who do. They go to that fucking famous-ass museum to go see all of the iconic medieval Italian portraits, but hot take, they are ugly. They're just like Christian frescoes of people burning in hell and I'm like, this is the conservative Christian agenda and it's gross and not worth

putting in a prestigious museum. I know I feel like sometimes, and this is going to be a really hot take, but I feel like sometimes we idolize like old art just because it's old. Yes. And it's not that good. No, it's not. We're like, they don't make things like they used to. I'm like, no, they make them better. Yeah, actually. Yeah, iPad art is beautiful. AI art? Yeah. Have you gone down that YouTube rabbit hole? No, that's a new thing. I watch videos like, how to make matcha lattes. So something else that the messaging is suggesting is that all people have to do to not succumb to these evil forces and decisions are essentially to surrender their lives to Christ. AKA surrender their lives to the church putting on this hell house. Yeah.

And that doesn't always just mean their free time and their beliefs and their ideology. But a lot of the times, and I think their biggest want is their money. Of course. Because people have to give money to these established months. Absolutely. These established months want your money, your power, your bodily autonomy. Essentially the underlying principle is that the very real systemic and economic issues we face in this country aren't real. It's just these trickster spirits and sprites and spooks that are responsible for your demise. Oh my gosh, that reminds me of this really funny show that I literally just binged on Hulu called This Fool. It's a friend of mine shows. His name is Chris Estrada. And it's about these former gang members

who get released from prison and they join this nonprofit called Hugs Not Thugs where they get reformed. Okay. And so when he goes to apologize to the people that he's wronged, because it's one of the steps, he goes to a former gang member and he's like, I'm so sorry for what I did to you. And the gang member is like, oh, you didn't do that. The devil did it. Like the devil made you do it. And so the whole episode, he's going around being like, oh, yeah, like the devil made me do it. Like I woke up late because the devil made me do it. It's such a funny episode. Obviously, spoiler, he comes to the conclusion that the devil did indeed not make him do it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it is that classic cult tactic of oversimplifying everything

into a good evil binary. You want to be with us so that you're not like them, those sinners, those blasphemous heretics. And in order to make that message fun, they have to create these evangelical haunted houses for the kids. At the end, you're ushered through a dark hallway where you can expect to find Satan sometimes seated on a throne. I'm telling you, these are so theatrical and low key, kind of like opera, kind of very homosexual in presentation. Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like what churches are really doing is making people more gay. I know because they're so theatrical and flamboyant. Yeah. And the very last room is this heaven room where Jesus comes in and saves the day. This is supposed to be the sort of conversion moment where everybody's been

in fear and in like desperate concern for the past 30 minutes. And now Jesus is coming to save you like daddy does. I can so picture Jesus being like the senior kid who's like head of the theater department at the evangelical church. And it's like, I'm obviously Jesus this year because I've been working my freaking ass off all freaking past four years and what you guys will respect. And there's probably like a cult of personality around whoever is Jesus that year. That's so meta. It's like they're worshiping like hot boy in theater camp energy. Yeah. And every girl is in love with him, but he is 100% gay. I have been there, you're triggering me. Imagine how like competitive and intense those auditions must be that these kids want to play these weird creepy roles in these

hell houses. I know you're like, you're not auditioning to play Oliver Twist. You're auditioning to be the girl on the medical bed fucking bleeding out with a demon baby coming out of her vagina. Yeah. I mean, like these kids are freaking out and getting excited as though these are totally normal parts that they're getting. But it's like, Oh, you're the guy who gets to rape the girl or you're going to be the abortion girl. The scenes that these kids have to play because they're portraying good versus evil or a lot of these like traumatic acts, the scenes they have to play are really intense. There was one story we saw on Reddit. It's a scene where a girl had to put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger and then they flung brains up the wall behind her. And then

imagine being someone who's like watching this scene. Imagine if there are kids in the audience who like are struggling with suicidal thoughts and they have to watch this scene. I mean, it's bad on both ends. There's the girl who's playing someone who has suicidal thoughts killing themselves and then there's kids in the audience watching it. That is so traumatic. So triggering. These are very, very young people walking through that hell house. They'll carry that image with them through the rest of their life. I just watch a documentary and I can't get that fucking fake ass, cherry ass blood bleeding out onto that doctor's table out of my own head 20 years later. There's a statistic when you either watch or experience someone in your life have suicide.

You're a lot more likely to commit suicide. So for them to have a suicidal scene in the hell house and have kids watch it, it probably actually increased their likelihood of suicide. I mean, I remember I used to volunteer at a suicide lifeline and there was talk of a suicide contagion after 13 Reasons Why came out. Yeah. Yeah. If there are people moving through that hell house who are already in a really bad mental place and maybe this hell house is making them feel even more self loathing, that could increase their risk of suicide. It's true. So speaking of auditions, it's not just the fact that they have to audition and it's a combination of theater kids and youth groups. But if they do get the role and they become a part of the production,

rehearsals start in August and they go all the way to the end of October when the hell houses run through. So you are practicing day in and day out for months on end with these people and ingraining these beliefs in your head. Yeah. You're dedicating such an inordinate amount of time to living in hell house land. You're not exposed to anything else. Yeah. And I mean, I can't imagine what they must believe in when they come out of that hole. And it's so disturbing, especially if you watch the documentary, to see these kids laugh and joke as if they're rehearsing the goddamn music man, but instead they're rehearsing plummeting straight to sing. Yeah. This isn't suzical to musical. Okay. That's the musical I did in middle school.

As promised, before we continue the episode, we have one of our most invigorating announcements ever here at Sounds Like a Cult. We are doing our first ever live in person Sounds Like a Cult show. It's going to be Sunday, December 4th at 7.30pm at the Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles. And it's going to be the cult event of the year, possibly the century in a live your life way, of course. If you're in LA, you are not going to want to miss the once in a lifetime opportunity. I'm just kidding, but it is going to be such a fun time. You're going to want to join the Cult of Sounds Like a Cult in person with the help of special guests and games, audience participation, and of course, juicy analysis. We're going to deep dive into a much

requested, never before discussed, super secret topic to answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? Yeah. And you really want to come in person because we are not going to publish the live show. You got to be there to know the show is going to be at a really fun, intimate venue. So it'll feel like you're inside the episode with us. We're going to invite the audience to be a part of the final verdict to figure out whether the cult is a live your life, watch your back, or get the fuck out. And you'll have a chance to join in on our podcast classic games like Coltty Questions or Would You Rather? Cult Edition. We're going to spill the tea on the things too hot to put in the podcast. And it'll be like a classic Sounds Like a Cult

episode, but live, unedited, IRL with tons of Coltty extras. We're truly so excited that we get to do this and to finally meet some of you culties. So for ticket info and to get your tickets, head to our website, soundslikeacult.com or our Instagram at soundslikeacultpod. I am so jazzed to tell our listeners about our sponsor of the week, ZockDock. I have always been a little bit skittish around doctors and so making appointments is just never something I want to do, especially if it's difficult. But I remember a few years ago, I had a sore throat from hell. It was not going to go away. I needed antibiotics. And I remember finding ZockDock and using it to find a doctor and book an appointment. And it was, I don't want to sound

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There are actually Hell House trailers that you can find on YouTube put on by various churches. They are hilarious and horrifying. It looks like one of those ads from like the early 2000s that would play in between dating shows on MTV, you know, that we're like smoking kills, but it's like getting abortion kills. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Those like anti-drug campaigns, like your brain will turn to a fried egg that never worked and just made children want to do drugs even more. That's what this is. There's this amazing early 90s anti-drug campaign. That was just a song that went drugs, drugs, drugs, which are good, which are bad, drugs, drugs, drugs. And it was like so catchy, but it just made kids want to walk around the house singing drugs, drugs, drugs.

Wait, I don't remember it because I'm a literal toddler in age, but I've never heard that before. And also, why does it say which are good, which are bad? Like I would be like, oh, I guess I have to try them all. No, no, no. This is how it really went. Sorry. I forgot to finish the refrain. Drugs, drugs, drugs, which are good, which are bad, drugs, drugs, drugs. Ask your mom, ask your dad. I would be like, I'm not asking anyone. I'm going to do them all myself. What if your mom smokes weed all day? Yeah. Mom, which are good, which are bad? Mom, which are good, weed, good, heroin, bad, cocaine, sometimes good. As a mom, I'm going to be like, this drug is to live your life, this drug is to watch your back, and this drug is to get the

fuck out. Yeah. Hopefully by the time we have kids, all drugs will be legal. Or we can move to like Phoenix where they are. Is that where? Oh, no, Oregon. Wait, Phoenix is in Oregon, right? Oh, wait, sorry. Even the people who run these hellhouses, who put them on the ministers and church higher ups will admit that the number one sentiment that they want to reach people is that sin destroys and Jesus saves. There was a minister named Kenan Roberts, who has put on hellhouses for over 10 years, who's claimed that by the time people reach the heaven room, a lot of these hellhouses will end in a final skit, which is the heaven room. A fourth of visitors have decided to either join the faith or renew their commitment to it. So it's really a recruitment and conversion

tactic as well. That's a big number. I mean, 25% of people who go through this like random haunted house are like, okay, I'm going to become a strict religious person again. Well, at least that's what this minister is claiming. It's like how the church of Scientology says that they have 10 million members worldwide, but it's really like 10,000. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. They always exaggerate their numbers because of the bandwagon effect, you know? Totally. It's like comedians who like have to hype themselves up and they're like nobody and they're like, yeah, you've seen me all over town. And it's like all over town is like the coffee shop down the street, their own backyard. Yeah. Me when I started comedy. That's the thing. It's

like delusion is fine as long as you can admit to it and are not trying to scare people into believing in heaven and hell. And you have like a work tactic associated to it. Oh God. And these hellhouse producers, they have a work tactic. Boy, do they work hard. I wonder what kind of fake blood they have. You know what I mean? Like, is it cherry? Like, are they not allowed? I don't eat candy. And a Mormon hellhouse. Mormons wouldn't put on a hellhouse. I feel like evangelicals are more fun than Mormons. Who's more problematic? Mormons or evangelicals? I feel like evangelicals because they have more political power and Mormons are perceived as a joke. But they are rising in power. Utah. I mean, George W. Bush was an evangelical Christian. They've been in the

goddamn White House. Oh, that's scary. I didn't know that. Actually, these hellhouses are put on by youth groups, by the youth ministries that are associated with these different evangelical churches. The idea is to enlist children, to traumatize other children as a recruitment tactic to get them to join the army of God, the bright light, the good side, as opposed to the side of evil. That makes sense. I mean, it's like theater kids meets youth group Christianity and it creates Halloween. Meets Halloween and it's like a haunted house. And of course, it's so smart to enlist children to enlist more children. Exactly. Like that's how you get people in your cult because the people who are in it have to make it seem like it's fun and relatable. It's a joke, but it's

also scary. So hellhouses are actually a fairly new phenomenon. They have not been around for hundreds of years. They are a new religious movement that originated during what we all think to be one of the peak cult eras in the United States, the 1970s. They're first popularized by the pastor Jerry Falwell in the 1970s. Falwell was a fundamentalist preacher and the founder of the moral majority. His career trajectory went from Baptist preacher to electoral politics, and he was a driving character in creating the religious right as a political force. He was also the chancellor for Liberty University, where the first ever hellhouse took place. Wait, Liberty University, I went to a track meet there in high school and I feel like it was during the fall and a bunch

of students went to a hellhouse. But I didn't go because I was like, this is lame. That was the first time I heard that a university could be super religious. I was just a high school kid, so I was like, oh my god, any college is cool. I just want to go to college. And then my teammates were like, oh, you don't want to go here. It's super duper religious. Damn. This Jerry Falwell character really knew how to connect to the youth. He got around. I wonder if he's on TikTok. He's dead. We've just learned breaking news. Jerry Falwell is dead. And thank God he is dead because this motherfucker, classic cult leader tactic, he would have learned how to rebrand as a TikTok baddie. I feel like it would have become like camp and like ironic to go to one of these hellhouses,

but then people would have still like slowly been inducted. I feel like a lot of cult affiliations starts out as a joke. Everything I do starts out as a joke. I like people as a bit and then I'm like, wait, I'm in love with this person. This happened to me when I worked in the beauty industry all the time. I would go to like a reading of the Acacic Records as a bit and then I would come out being like, wait, I want to get my aura red. I feel like that's how everyone became obsessed with astrology. They were like, oh, this is like such a joke. And now people will not text their girlfriend while Mercury is in retrograde. Yeah. I think people will like dip a pinky toe in the waters, especially young people because they don't want to do anything earnestly. They

don't want to seem like a try hard. And then before you know it, the tactics are actually working on you. Well, vulnerability is hard. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it at all. Just join our call. It sounds like a cult pod on Instagram. You don't need vulnerability to like a post. You just need to tap twice and the heart will appear. It was 1972 when Jerry Falwell introduced the Liberty University backed Scaremare Hell House. In the 1970s, the Scaremare dramatized the issues that would define Jerry Falwell's evangelical ideology, the moral majority. Scaremare still exists. And this year, the Scaremare website reads, Scaremare presents funhouse rooms and scenes of death in order to confront people with the question, what happens after I die?

The marketing language there sounds almost secular. It sounds really interesting. It sounds like it could be this scientific question almost or a philosophical exploration. Super intriguing. I don't like the word Scaremare. That word alone kind of Scaremares me. It doesn't follow the rules of fine wordplay because really they should be playing on the word night. If they're going to create a portmanteau, but it's fine. The website also claims that since 1972, over 300,000 people have attended Scaremare. But as a note, a 2014 Washington Post article claimed this number and still in 2022, they're still saying that over 300,000 people have attended Scaremare. So someone is not keeping tabs. Okay. So it was like 300,001 at one point

ever in their life. And then they were like, yeah, that's our highest number. I think they're just fucking lying the way that like every pizza joint in New York City says like the best piece in New York City. Oh, so true. Although pizza, it is the best. All of it is the best. All pizza is good. But no, they're definitely lying. That's still kind of crazy in 2014 versus 2022. They're still giving the same statistic. Update your website. So like just the same people have been going to the house every single year. Yeah. It's like the same people who listen to our show every week. We love those people. We love you. That was when the Cult of Hell houses and the Cult of Capitalism really joined forces because the Assemblies of God minister, Kenan Roberts,

made and started selling ready to go DIY Hill House kits. So the kits include a DVD of his production, a 300 page manual and a spooky soundtrack. And a lot of the messaging was over abortion, homosexuality, recreational drugs. Between 1996 and 2012, he sold over 1000 kits. And to contextualize it, this was the 1990s and early 2000s where there was a real cultural war over abortion and homosexuality and recreational drugs. Evangelicalism was really on the rise. And these kits were a political tool in that fight. The early 2000s was also when that documentary that I watched about Hell House is first premiered. So the documentaries called Hell House and it was directed by George Ratcliffe and it was a documentary about a Hell House

that was run by a church called Trinity Church who in 1999, as the Hell House production recreated the Columbine shooting only six months after it happened. But the production in the Hell House depicted the shooters as agents of Satan, which is like so disgusting. So essentially they made a Hell House production and in that production, they said that Columbine was because of Satan, but it was only six months after it had happened. Yeah, they were just capitalizing on that tragedy to push their mission, which is fucking vile. No wonder it stuck with you. The Hell Houses in general are traumatic because of the messaging that they're pushing out, but I feel like this one particularly was so gross and inconsiderate to capitalize on the murder of children and kind

of paint this picture that it was because of Satan. Think of all of the people who skirted cancellation because they were doing their shit in the 90s and early 2000s. I think about that all the time. Oh, I mean, hopefully not for long. Let's cancel them. Cancel Hell Houses. So there was really no limit to how fucked up these Hell Houses could get. There was a huge controversy because this Hell House that recreated Columbine had a scene where the attendees were made to believe that there was actual real active shooter among them. Imagine going into a haunted house and there being a shooter and like you probably will think that it's real. Yeah. Because we live in America. Yeah, literally. That is so terrifying. I think that's probably like as

dark as it gets is like, you know, having a Hell House where you're recreating an active shooting because like active shootings are a real trauma that children in America and adults in America have to live with. And it's something that can like cause PTSD in people. It takes all the joy away from the purity of a haunted house on Halloween. Amanda will not understand for that. So, Issa, out of the three cult categories, do you think Hell Houses are a live your life? A watcher back? Or a get the fuck out level cult? Right off the bat, I'm like, get the fuck out of those houses. Physically, emotionally, just there's no reason to go to these. There are regular haunted houses. They're fun. There's the lesbian killjoy haunted house. I wish they would

bring that back. Maybe they will. Going to universe. Holly, what is it? Haunted horror nights or whatever. It's so fun. You can get a pretzel after, but you're not gonna think that you're in a shooting. What Hell Houses do, which is what every destructive cult in history has done, is lie, recruit, and strip people away from their consent and their ability to dissent. Yeah, I mean, they are preoccupied with bringing in new members. They have overt systems of control and influence. They put you in this really vulnerable position where you're like questioning everything and on top of it, you're scared. Yeah, it is so wild to me that these Hell Houses are just such an elaborate evangelical conversion tactic. Yeah. Painted as like a fun October

activity for the kids. I know. There's nothing scarier than not giving us the right to abortion. That's scary. Truly. They flatten every issue that a teen might face. School shootings, sex, sexuality, they flatten it into a Jesus Satan binary. They're just like so fucking obsessed with Satan that they don't actually allow for any nuance, for any questioning, for any opportunity, for a child to be themselves. And for that reason, it has to be a get the fuck out, because there's a direct pipeline to a lifetime of evangelical religion and politics. Yeah, and the answer to all of those problems, which these teenagers can at the moment be convinced to be like very big and life changing for the worse, is Jesus. Like Jesus will solve all of

these problems, which aren't real problems because your sexuality shouldn't be a problem. It's the ultimate gaslighting. It's like if you aren't able to adhere to glory and heaven in Jesus, then there is something fundamentally wrong with you and you deserve to fucking burn in hell of AIDS and be covered in blood and screaming seizes. Sounds like it smells bad too. Okay, that's our show. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. Sounds like a cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Michael Dorfman is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Colb. Thank you to our intern slash production assistant,

Noemi Griffin. Subscribe to Sounds Like a Cult wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.