On this podcast, we explore fantastical thinking, moral panics, conspiracy theories, and urban legends, examine the forces that shape our culture, and tell the stories that create the realities we share and sometimes the realities

we don't.

I'm your ghost, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American Hiscaria.

You're going to get married alive, you know, 12 feet on your ground.

I don't think anyone knows what they're in for if they go here. And it's a good experience. I mean, if you can handle it.

Here you will be subjected to constant torture and a everlasting vein.

I can't let it do.

Ah!

Oh, no! I've been going.

I've been going to haunted house attractions for as long as I can remember.

In fact, one of the earliest memories that I have is a hand popping out from under a table,

grabbing at my tiny leg as I held on to my plastic McDonald's sponsored Halloween

trick-or-treat bucket. I remember the thrill of rattling through jerky carnival dark rides

with animatronic skeletons cackling out their doomy warnings. I remember waiting in line in the 90s for radio station

haunts that blasted out advertisements between the hottest alternative rock songs, the lines

full of teenagers trying to look tough. Still, every year, I travel out to the cornfields of local farms,

the haunts hidden on the outskirts of their lots, booming in the distance, beyond the quaint

pumpkin patches and the country store full of benign Halloween decorations and jars full of pickled vegetables. My family still has a tradition

of going out to the Shriners Charity Haunt, spread in several buildings across a golf course,

with teenagers and dedicated civil servants giving us everything from alien encounters to problematic redneck

psychopaths to major clown encounters, complete with 3D glasses. I always take time to appreciate

the sets, from the most rinky dink to the highest budget immersions of major theme park walkthroughs.

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