An ode to haunted house rides
We make our way across the feria. Pushing through the pools of people collecting at the edges of the fairground attractions, I feel excited and impatient for what’s to come. Everything is loud and lovely. A cacophony of sound and smells descend, and this usually designated carpark is transformed into an illuminous mass I suspect you may be able to see from space. Raffle tickets crinkle under foot as the tombola blares out his wares and treasures and urges you to step right up.
I love the feria. I have been coming here since I was a child. It is at once nostalgic and familiar. Nothing really changes here, save the stuffed toy prizes from the latest film release or trend hanging above the games. This feria is the same feria I have moved through for as long as I have called Spain home. As someone who oscillates and evolves almost constantly, this consistency is sacred.
But I’m not only here for the cheap sangria or stomach churning rides that instil fear not for their nature, but for the fact they are assembled and reassembled every couple of weeks. No. I’m here for the haunted house. For its corniness and cheap scares and rickety railway. It’s incongruous. Almost offensive to the senses and it makes no apologies. I’ve always had a small, strange soft spot for fairground haunted houses and horror rides. It began, as most loves do, in childhood. I can’t trace the exact moment, but I’ve always been fascinated by death and the decaying. The finite and the doomed. It crops up in my writing over and over.
We’re getting close now and I am already captivated by the ghoulish faces guarding the entrance. There’s something in the art work — because it is art work. Diligently created, both surreal and uncanny while undeniably cheap. But there’s love here. Someone put their heart into the paint. You can see it. Feel it. You just need to look close enough.
As we queue up, I can also spy the strange and overly sexualised portraits that litter its walls and the ripped-off, spray painted monsters that snarl over corpses. Glowing eyes and bad animatronics. A hand clasping a knife that threatens the crowd over and over. Another hand reaching out from a grave. A scantily clad vampire leering in the moonlight. There is a piece here I could write about the entanglement of death and sensuality that plays out on these…