Tikkabik

So last night Bonnie and I snuck out for a few hours with my mother watching the kids, and took our daughter's friend's mom as well -- we went to a couple of haunted houses. I've had a long love affair with haunted houses, ever since I was a kid. In fact, I even worked in one one year -- a fund-raiser for a Unitarian church we were briefly associated with. But two of our kids are still kind of young for this sort of thing, and the third blew his chance to come with us when he exhibited some really poor behavior choices earlier in the day. So it was parents' night out.

If Spooky World was still around, you can bet we'd have gone to Gilette Stadium. Alas, that is closed for good.

The first one was Harvest of Horrors, put on at the nearby Tony Andrews Farm in Falmouth, Mass. It was cute -- a two-part event that was part stage show, part haunted house. The haunted house portion was very cleverly set up -- paced so it felt like only your group was in the house, and divided into a number of different rooms. The ending was very clever -- it felt like you were back where you started, only you weren't.

That didn't quite whet our appetite. We decided to take a drive up to Fall River, Mass., about 45 minutes away, to do another one called the Factory of Terror. We've seen billboards for this for years, but haven't found the time to do it, and all of us agreed afterwards that it kicked ass. The pacing was a bit faster and the lines were a bit bigger, so unfortunately we were a bit crowded with the group in front of us, but they had dozens of actors hiding in dark places or behind trap doors, lots of creepy exhibits and frightening sound effects, strobe lights galore, and tons of fog machines -- in short, everything you want in a haunted house. If you're in southeastern Mass. or you want to go for a drive, it's totally worthwhile.

At some point this week, Bonnie and I hope to make it up to Foxboro -- apparently the Jaycees put on a great haunted boy scout camp that's worth checking out.

We decided to pass on the Barnstable High School's annual haunted house -- this year they're putting on a Lord of the Rings theme that, by their own admission, isn't as scary as years past. And after visiting the traveling LotR exhibition at the Museum of Science in Boston, we're a bit burnt out on Tolkien at the moment.