NUEA STORYTELLERS - "SCARES" - Chamblee Smith - 9/9/19 1.

I love horror. I’m the person who reads scary stories to fall
asleep, who can debate the existence of ghosts with you for hours,
who knows the best way to stab someone with little screaming and
with minimal blood loss. I promise I’m not a psychopath.

Another thing I love is haunted houses – those stupid Halloween

recreations. From garages to Universal Horror Nights, to those
hard-to-believe-they’re-not-illegal extreme ones where they touch
and gag and waterboard you. My first haunted house memory is of
this brilliant dream I had in first grade about one. I held my
friends hostage for an entire week during recess where I forced
them to reenact it for me. It was not fun for them, because duh,
and it was not fun for me because they did an awful job.

My first real haunted house was in middle school. I only remember

this one room – big, white, full of office furniture, and
completely splattered in blood. You could only see flashes because
of the strobe light. And there was this guy in a white blood
splattered suit. But when our group of hyperventilating, giggling
girls went through, he stopped his whole thing and told us he was
bored out of his mind. He chatted with us for a while – just long
enough for me to fall in love – and then heard the next group and
whispered, “they can’t catch me, I’m not allowed to talk.” And we
were ushered into the next room, my blood splattered besuited man
snatched away from me too soon.

I actually got to live out my haunted house dreams in college,

when my stupid sorority teamed up with a stupid fraternity to put
on a haunted house. The theme of my second year was Carnival, and
I got my very own Insane Clown Posse. And as the leader, I
achieved ultimate haunted house status. There was this freshman
couple who went through and the girl was freaking out and clinging
onto his arm. But what she didn’t know was that her boyfriend had
actually wandered away and that she was not clinging onto his arm,
but rather mine. We walked like that for like ten seconds with me
staring at her until she turned to seek comfort in her boyfriend
only to find me. She screamed as I flew to cloud nine. I did it. I
won.

But this story is about another experience, one that wouldn’t

outwardly be considered a haunted house, but rather a failed
attempt at an elaborate reenactment that left me feeling very
haunted. In fifth grade, my mom had this friend who was like a
nurse, or affiliated with nurses somehow, and was in charge of
coordinating this big crisis reenactment to train nurses and
paramedics in crisis situations. She had recruited my mother and
us three siblings, my two best friends and her own daughter. Of
course, there were other people too. We would be reenacting a
suicide bombing in a public building. I was ecstatic.

We start the day off with make-up – bless my 7-year-old brother

who was given a compound fracture via fake blood and a broken
popsicle stick, who very said, “oh, I get it.
NUEA STORYTELLERS - "SCARES" - Chamblee Smith - 9/9/19 2.

I was eating a cherry popsicle when the bomb went off” – and
wristbands with an expiration date. My injuries wouldn’t kill me,
but one of my friends was given 30 minutes to live and her twin
was given an hour. My sister, who was three, was supposed to
already be dead and my mother was given the role of hysterical
grieving mother. My sister was traumatized. My mom was fake crying
and screaming that her daughter was dead, and my sister was real
crying and screaming that she wasn’t dead. Ethically questionable
on the part of this operation, but the suicide bomber was a 10-
year-old white girl strapped in a fake bomb vest, so I don’t think
ethics – or realism – were high priority. I had a skull fracture
which would cause confusion and an inability to take direction. I
was told I should wander off if they anyone left me alone.

We start, and 15 minutes pass before I’m found. The nurses lead me
to triage and tell me to sit and wait – and then they leave me.
Because I listen to instructions, I get up and wander off. But
they catch me, and tell me it’s important I stay seated. They
leave again, so I get up again. And now they’re frustrated I’m not
listening. And I become full on confused – I don’t know which set
of instructions I’m supposed to be following at this point. So I
ask the nurse, “one of my symptoms is inability to follow
instruction. They told me to wander off even if you tell me to
stay. But now I don’t know if you’re telling me to stay because
you’re pretending to be a nurse who would say that, or because you
actually need me to stay.” And she just looks at and repeats that
I need to stay. Which is wildly unhelpful. I think I ended up just
staying because I was so confused. And these nurses were awful.
Everyone with a ticking clock died, they didn’t find the bomber
for three hours, and when they did, the door was locked and they
gave up. I felt deeply unsettled – but I guess it didn’t matter,
because at the end of the day, everyone died at the hands of a 10-
year-old white girl in a suicide bomb vest.

So the moral of the story is, if you’re ever in a bomb explosion

in Knoxville, those nurses are gonna do jack shit for you. And I
also suppose the moral is that playing pretend is a slippery
slope. Because sometimes you start to believe it. But take
everything I say with a grain of salt. I’m the horror fan who made
a compromise with the demon in my closet and who researched
psychopaths by actually talking to them on the internet.