Contributed by Doug Kabourek.
In October of 1986, two years after the successful "The Temple of Doom," Grace Presbyterian Church created "The House of No Return" in a vacant farmhouse at 1270 E. Pierce Street (Where Gorilla Wash is now). It was promoted with the humorously self-confident OR self-deprecating suggestion that it was indeed "a house that no one returned to." I played various roles at this haunt and, unlike with the "Temple of Doom," I can remember most every room.
The guided tour started by entering the kitchen from the backyard. The kitchen mostly served as a place for the guide to lay out the rules as patrons feasted their eyes on an array of bloody body parts in the sink and a severed head sitting in the oven.
From the kitchen, it was up to the second floor and the first scare room. The square bedroom was divided diagonally down the center by two plywood walls about 3 foot high. This effectively made a channel in the middle of the room that the guests would fill up. What they didn't (or probably actually did) know is that as many kids as possible were crouched down behind the walls on either side. Reflective aluminum foil covered the walls of the room, and there was a strobe light waiting! The most memorable guide had a speech that went something like this: "Well, you bought your tickets to get in... and here is where we punch 'em!" With this, the strobe light would flip on and the kids - in various costumes - would stand up and scream! Grace rebooted this design two years later with a room that had the kids hiding in sliding door closets on either side of Jason from Friday the 13th, who stood in the center of the room and turned around wearing a glow-in-the-dark hockey mask and raising a glowing machete before the kids popped out!
To come down after that excitement, guests were led into a dark maze constructed in the next bedroom. It was already built when I first came to help, and I remember being super impressed. They had actual lumber to work with! 2x4s!! The walls themselves were cardboard, but it worked. A great thing about this farmhouse was it had two bedrooms that shared one of those closets that connect - so it's kind of a hallway between the two rooms, only with closet doors. The maze connected to the next room through one of these closets.
Coming out of the closet into the next room was a grave scene. It had a big tombstone and grave featuring... real dirt! I tried to perform Friday the 13th Part VI "coming back to life" Jason with my Mall of the Bluffs Thingsville Jason hockey mask. I must have looked ridiculous. This little 12-year-old Jason getting up from his grave only to rise to the height of 5' 5"... maybe. I did actually hear a guest quip to his girlfriend about my height as they walked away. Well, we do what we can.
The next room was the crowning jewel of this haunt - The Mutilation Room. This was your basic torture chamber, complete with a couple victims in various painful situations and a future victim waiting in a big cage. (Being a future victim waiting in the big cage was the best place to watch the scene that was about to take place!) After the guests had been led into the room, the closet door would blast open and out would come the Chainsaw Man! He would go right for the group and send them all into a pile on the floor every time! Then he would go for his victims. There was a cheap gag of a person hanging from shackles on the wall with only bones left for their legs (see newspaper photo), and the Chainsaw Man would go for those legs as the victim cried out in pain! Chainsaw Man was actually Jeff, our Grace youth group leader. He took pride in his job and had it down pat. He even found two pieces of bone that fit together well like they were a single piece and would place those on a table before every group so he could "saw" through them with his chainsaw, which of course didn't have the chain. But it looked like he was actually cutting through the bone! And when I say bone, I do mean REAL bone. See, this room didn't have rubber body parts. No, it was real! All the bone and meat effects were courtesy of a butcher shop. Which means that meat was in that room - rotting - all October long! The smell of that plus the chainsaw fumes was the scariest thing in the entire haunted house. In fact, it may still haunt me to this day.
After the Mutilation Room folks were led downstairs to the living room. This room featured a reboot of the mourning monks in front of a coffin, which was in the "Temple of Doom" two years prior. This time it worked better because the guide would lead the guests between the monks and the coffin, and the mourners would then stand up and walk toward the coffin. This pushed the guests awkwardly toward the coffin where Dracula was patiently waiting to pop out! Or maybe someone else. I never worked on this floor so can't say for sure. One of the things I love about these old haunts was how there were no rules. A clown could have popped out of the coffin. Or Ronald Reagan!
The exit was out the front door, onto the porch. But there was one last scare on the way. The front of a big train was painted on the back of the open front door - complete with a bright headlight. That entire piece lit up and a train horn rattled your teeth as you passed through! Lucky for you, you survived Grace Presbyterian's "House of No Return."
I remember we had a very fun afterparty when the haunt was done. I brought a super-giant Pepsi slushy from the convenience store that was across the street back then (next to Pizza Hut), and some girl told me I should "watch my figure." I also remember hearing Huey Lewis and The News' Hip to Be Square at least three times on the radio during that party. It was a great time and a great haunted house. Full of memories I can never forget. For me, this was "The House of Many Returns."
