Terror Behind the Walls more for children than stalwart adults

Happy Halloween! Why not pay $15 to wait a half-hour in a line to go on a haunted house tour made for children, whose history is more interesting and spooky than the actual Halloween tradition.

The Terror Behind the Walls show is located in the former Eastern State Penitentiary, on 22nd Street and Fairmount Park Ave, (about five blocks away from the Art Museum). Today it is a museum and historic landmark, a place of architectural pioneering made popular by its former inmates such as famous gangster Al Capone.

Tickets cost $15 for adults during weekdays and Sundays, $20 on Fridays and $25 on Saturdays. Children's tickets cost $10 any day except on Fridays and Saturdays, when tickets are $15. For schedules and other information, you can go to www.easternstate.org/halloween.

Terror Behind the Walls is ranked the 9th best haunted house in the country, according to the webpage. It is certainly a place to get scared, but I was expecting to scream like crazy, run, laugh out loud and wet my pants. Buying the tickets was really quick but my friends and I spent nearly and hour and a half waiting to get in the tour.

As we waited, the line was so long that some of the characters would come outside to scare people. And they did! The makeup was great, as was as their performance. There are also TVs placed high up in the corners of the penitentiary with a documentary about this place, claiming that it is really haunted, and also instructions of what NOT to do once you get inside.

As we were waiting, we heard people screaming. We did not know if it was part of the show, or if it was the people inside getting scared.

Unfortunately, apparently I was the only one being scared about the whole thing. I also thought for a moment that this was going to be too much for children, but it turned out to be a "mild" creepy show for adults.

My friends and I were in the middle of the tour group. A father and his daughter were in front of us and a couple behind us, who kept scaring me at times. Part of the problem was that the ones up front and in the back were getting frightened by the monsters. We missed almost everything.

The rooms inside were decorated very well. It looked real. But at times we could see the real cells where prisoners used to sleep. They were closed because it was not part of the show, but they looked much more terrifying than the haunted house show.

Actually, while waiting outside I was observing the walls and how tall they were when I wondered how the prisoners would ever try to get out.

The walls are probably 24 feet tall and from what I saw inside the haunted house, the walls were also too thick and hard to dig through.

At the end of the tour, there are a couple of stands, one with food and the other with souvenirs.

We were really hungry but the food was too expensive... well, after eating at the Drexel's food trucks, everything seems expensive. We ended up going to T.G.I. Fridays, ordering appetizers and sharing food, by the way, a good trick to save some bucks.

The penitentiary's haunted house is probably not the best place to celebrate Halloween in Philadelphia for college students.

It is definitely made for children. However, next time I will try to be the first person in the tour group. Maybe that way I will get a good scare. There are other haunted houses. Next Halloween I should do a Google search and find something cheaper and better.Honestly, I got more hooked on to the real stories of a haunted penitentiary and the history of it.

It seems worthier and it is certainly cheaper ($9 for adults, $7 for students) to go for the historic tour. The website is www.easternstate.org.

Rating: 2 triangles

---

© Copyright 2007 The Triangle