Activists want haunted houses to skip asylums, 'psycho' killers

^I see your point as well, don't get me wrong. But I think the average person can see that not all people with mental illnesses are psychos running around in straight jackets doped up on lithium, just like black cats are NOT bad luck and Wiccans do not fly around on broomsticks casting spells on people. If trying to rid the stigma of some people's outlook on mental illness what's next? Remove the black cat and witch decorations because it deplicts a negative picture of them? Soon there will be no Halloween at all because someone might be offended of something, especially if they decide to dress up as a witch or wear a straight jacket.

I guess not all people are intelligent enough to realize fact from fantasy.

A family member of mine has manic depression and gets help for it. I mentioned this story to her and she doesn't find anything offensive by it. She would avoid something like the "psycho ward" attraction at PKI just because she wouldn't feel comfortable with it. That's totally understandable, but she doesn't see the hurt in Halloween fun. She would not be offended if a kid dressed up looking like Hannibal would show up at her door on Halloween.

Like I said, I can see your point but it's still leaning towards PC in my opinion. I mean, how many times have you heard someone say that it's considered "offending" to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Haunukah" when you should just say "Happy Holidays?" You hear more about these things everyday.

-Tina

*** This post was edited by coasterqueenTRN 10/31/2006 8:12:53 AM ***

Too true, Tina. We had this discussion on PKICentral about a week ago and it looked pretty much like this thread. I brought up the whole PC thing, but I also understand where both sides are coming from. I think the asylums should stay. Ususally, the asylums depicted are from older asylums which much resembled what these attractions are looking like now. These days, I don't think there are any asylums which look anything like these haunted attractions. So, I guess now movies that involve any kind of psychotic people or asylums are to be done away with too?

There is a major difference between what is depicted in these haunted houses and what is depicted in movies. Movies often portray high-functioning sociopaths, where as haunted houses focus more on the subjects of electroshock therapy, the back and forth rocking motion which is mainly caused by anti-psychotic medications used for schizophrenia, or individuals in straight jackets. The subjects that are focused on are very real for psychiatric patients (yes, electroshock therapy is still used).

And no there are not many more asylums like those depicted in haunted attractions, they were closed in the 80s and all of the patients were sent out into the communities. But the activities and motions focused on in these attractions are still practiced in hospitals across the country.

I think this is very different from political correctness. It seems more along the lines of fashioning a haunted house after a concentration camp. Well no, I don't believe that; I'm just trying to illustrate how heinous your 'witch and black cat' comparisson is :)

And once again, it isn't so much what the average person thinks of the mentally ill; it has more to do with the mentally ill individual's precieved notion of what others think of them (that was hard to word so I don't know if it makes any sense.)

I passed the article to my Diagnosis, intervention, and psychopharmacology professor. I'll post back if he had anything else to add.

First off A psycotic person isn't going to visit in the first place, Second, It don't make anyone feel any less about people with ISSUES.

They are all over PKI's advertising for Fear Fest on this.

I honestly think this is the last we will see of Fear Fest.

Chuck, who thinks there may be something else but not Fear Fest.

Since when are Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers functioning sociopaths? News to me.

I'm pretty sure they're supernatural. I was talking more about the bad guys in saw and hostile and, you know, 'realish' movies.

In Western New York here, there is a haunted house called "Jigsaw" they specifically cannot use the name "saw" due to the movie rights. But the entire maze is themed after the movie the rooms you stumble into all have clues and the only way you can continue on is to figure out the clue and oh yeah in each room someone was killed or had been killed off. It was a great idea for a haunted houses however it was really short.

Ok, mike, I give ya that. I really don't have an answer as I can see both sides.

So, did you ever get an answer from your diagnosis, intervention, and psychopharmacology professor?

This is just absurd!!! Every year I set up a large haunted attraction in my front yard for Halloween and have even done theming of the "assylum" attractions in order to get scares out of people. If a lobbying group could get haunted houses to stop adding these attractions for the fear that the general public will look at the mentally challenged "in a bad light", what's to say if someone who has a mental disorder is walking down my street is "offended" that they can't get me to take everything down on my own property? The stereotypical "psycho\killer assylums" are scary to most people of the general public because of preexisting prejudices, not because a haunted house put these ideas or images in their minds. These attractions all play on the general public's major fears for the appropriate times in history. What scared people 50 years ago (Dracula, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, etc.) doesn't scare most of the GP today. Just as most people in the 80's were terrified of Freddy and Jason but a lot of people laugh it off today. If we went to a haunted attraction 50 years ago and there was a "clown house" attraction, it probably wouldn't have scared as many as it does today because a good majority of people these days have some sort of phobia of clowns. This is just another example of people that have too much time on their hands trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives.