Looking At Properties, Part Six

The sixth property was the last property we looked at with a realtor that day (we did go back to 'our' bar and look at it again, and YES I will share pictures of that in my next post!), and BOY was it a doozy. It was BY FAR the largest place we saw, and yet I didn't take nearly as many pictures of it as I did of other places because it was, quite honestly, completely overwhelming. We could easily have spent half a day looking at JUST this property. I'm going to switch things up a bit with this post and give you the property details at the end of the post, and am just going to do my best to lay out this property much as I experienced it.

This one was also in Savanna, close to the last two we looked at, and it was listed at around $180,000 (I BELIEVE; the price on the listing has changed considerably now (MUCH lower), but that is where it was when we looked at it). We almost didn't put it on our list because it didn't really fit what we were looking for... the property listing said something about four storefronts downstairs with apartments upstairs. I lobbied to put it on our viewing list though because it sounded interesting... it spanned several addresses, which meant it was several building together, and two of the storefronts were empty; the listing said something about knocking out a wall and making them into a restaurant so I thought 'eh, what the hell, let's check it out'. Boy oh boy. I'm still not sure how I feel about that decision! People say "it never hurts to look", but let me tell you my brain aches every time I think about this place, lol.

So we met the current owner of the building, who pulled out a GIANT keyring and proceeded to take us on a tour of the place. We started in one of the empty storefronts; it had previously been a restaurant. We spent a decent amount of time looking at it, not realizing how very MUCH we still had to look at. 

This and the next few pictures are the first storefront we saw.

I took quite a few pictures in here.

I had no idea my camera was going to be basically useless here, lol.

This was some outbuilding that housed a boiler or something they no longer use. She suggested it could be storage or could be removed to make more parking or something.

We're looking around and the lady is telling us about the previous owner and the other storefronts and we come to realize that there are actually SIX storefronts, not four... this building spans an entire city block. Wow. FOUR of the six are rented. Two of them are rented to restaurants, the other two are a cute thrift store and an antiques shop. We went into all the storefronts and were a tad overwhelmed already, but mostly I was seeing dollar signs... except for the fact that it wouldn't make sense to open a restaurant in our building that already houses two restaurants. Hmmm. But the possibilities...

The next few pictures were of one of the restaurants in the place.

Then we went upstairs. It was pretty dingy and dirty, but people were living there. It was pretty busy, actually. We saw several people coming in and out and I started thinking "exactly how many apartments are up here, anyway??" The lady is knocking on doors and asking people if we can see their ROOMS. The first few we looked at were just that, ROOMS. One or two small rooms together, with a bathroom. She's telling us about how she gives each of her tenants a mini fridge and microwave and I'm thinking "what the hell IS this place, like a boarding house? People LIVE like this? WHAT?" I was utterly confused. She also showed us an actual apartment. And THEN she took us UPSTAIRS.

LOTS of creeeeepy hallways.

Plastic over the fire escape. Apparently this is OK with the fire dept. As long as people can tear through it, you can cover that shit up. Whatever.

Yeah, there was a third floor to this madness. More of the same; mostly rooms with one or two apartments. Dingy and run down. The section we saw covered probably the space above, oh, two of the storefronts below.

And THEN, she took us through ANOTHER door into the section of the building that needs so much repair she simply shut it down and just flat out doesn't USE IT. Those two floors covered the top of the other four storefronts. Second and third stories of room after room after room after room. Most of them filled with junk, with falling ceilings and dirty dingy rugs. The layout reminded me of a closed-down version of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining... she just kept opening doors and sometimes there would be a room, sometimes an apartment, sometimes a giant closet, sometimes... a whole other hallway. It went on and on and ON. It went back way further than I thought too; this place was just HUGE.

Blogger decided not to let me organize my pictures very well in this post. The layout is a MESS. Much like this property!

At some point she mentioned that it had been a hotel and suddenly the rented 'rooms' made total sense to me. The listing said something about the place having hotel STATUS but by the time we looked at it I had forgotten that, so I was utterly confused for a while.

Words and pictures cannot really give you the magnitude of this place. It was... quite frankly, it was amazing. A very special place for a very special buyer. It needs a TON of work, but the work could be done in sections too; fix up one building's worth and rent them out while you work on the next section. There is so much raw potential in this place it just boggles my mind. Part of me is totally in love with it. Who doesn't want to buy a giant creepy old partially abandoned hotel and live the crazy life in it?? OK, maybe most people don't, but *I* do! This place could be Raven's Grin 2, it's that crazy. Or if I was ready to open my haunted bed and breakfast, this place would be PERFECT.

Unfortunately, it doesn't fit our current goal at all. As I mentioned, it doesn't really make sense to open a restaurant in a building that already has two restaurants as tenants. And we're nowhere near ready to aim for the haunted B&B. And we couldn't open a restaurant and run it AND try to renovate and run this place without major headaches. I like a good project, but this is a PROJECT. 

Still, I think the reason that it hurts my head every time I think about it is because it captured part of my heart and I wish SO MUCH that we had more money and could buy both this place AND the other bar and run both at the same time. We would need enough money to afford us the luxury of time and lots of staff though, because this place needs SO MUCH work. It's just... it was truly amazing. Opportunity galore. It's just not the right time for us to tackle something like this and it KILLS ME.

After we left, OJ said something about the pool. "WHAT pool?!" I exclaimed. 

"She said there was a pool! In the basement!" 

"SHUT UP. You're totally lying."

"No way! I swear she said there's a pool in there somewhere! They don't use it because they had problems with pipes freezing, but I swear to god there's a pool somewhere in that building."

The place was so huge we MISSED the POOL.

So. I noticed when I pulled up the listing for this place to drop the description into this post that the price for the place has dropped by about a hundred grand. It's now listed at $84,999. THAT KILLS ME EVEN MORE. It says it has 14,420 square feet but I'm pretty sure that's a lie. I think it's way bigger than that, heh.

The listing reads: "LOCATED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DOWNTOWN AREA, MISSISSIPPI RIVER, STATE PARK & BIKE PATH, HOTEL STATUS, 2 APARTMENTS--22 ROOMS SECOND & THIRD FLOORS ALL VACANT NEEDING MAJOR REPAIRS. 4 STORE FRONTS-3 WITH TERRAZZO FLOORS CURRENTLY RENTED-2 RESTAURANTS, ENDLESS POSSIBLITIES FOR THIS PROPERTY WITH PARTIAL VIEW OF MISSISSIPPI RIVER ON NORTH END OF 2ND & 3RD FLOORS-CO OP ARTISTS, BIRD WATCHERS, BOAT/CANOE ENTHUSIASTS, BICYCLISTS (GREAT RIVER BIKE PATH) & SO ON."

Anyone want to buy this place AND the other bar for us? We need a patient mega-investor! I can do great things with these places, I assure you. I just need enough money to get the properties and to have a little TIME to put some TLC into them. But I have such great plans...

(Yeah. I don't think we're getting this one. But good god do I want it. But if I could only pick ONE, it would be the bar.)

Grin And Scare It

One of the places that has inspired me over the years

Let's go back, oh, 12 years or so into the past. I was a fresh-faced kid in college, living in an apartment with good friends, remembering the good times I'd had haunting our house around Halloween with my dad when I was growing up, and dreaming of the day when I would have some yard space of my own to carry on the tradition. I was also, as many young people seem to be, completely enamored with the internet.

As such, I found myself frequently searching up Halloween and home haunt related web sites. At some point in there, I discovered a little gem known as the Halloween-L e-mail list.

I joined, and was a member for several years; I made some fun friends, learned a lot, and gleaned TONS of inspiration from these fabulous folks. It was a great time.

One of the things I learned about, in my time on the list, was a haunted house that was open year-round. Called the Raven's Grin Inn, it was said to be amazing! Unique! Totally bizarre! Scary, but not like what you're used to! Off the wall! Rumors of secret passageways, pranks and scares, and huge slides that dropped you several stories within the house flew rampant across the board. Supposedly the guy that ran the place lived inside the house too. And best of all (for me), it was IN ILLINOIS. Some of the listers went out to visit the place after Transworld (the big Halloween convention / trade show in Rosemont, IL) one year, got a tour and a behind-the-scenes of the place too, and came back raving about it. It sounded amazing and yet completely indescribable: just one of those things you need to experience on your own.

Unfortunately, while it WAS in Illinois, the place was three hours away from me. I always wanted to head out there but could never get anyone willing to make the trip with me, and even though it SOUNDED right up my alley, I wasn't sure I wanted to just meander out there all by my lonesome. And so it remained on my "gosh, I'd really like to see this place one day" list.

As it happened, I did not make it out to Raven's Grin until the year 2008. I went with my two good friends Melly and Sarah, and not only did we visit the place, we ended up working there for the night AND befriending the owners. It's a rare place that holds up to over a decade of anticipation, but Raven's Grin did. It was everything that it had been rumored to be AND MORE.

Here's bits from a write-up I did shortly after that first visit, along with some pictures:

Between Oregon and Mount Carroll (home of the Raven's Grin Inn), there is a whole lot of nothing. We had printed out directions from the RGI website (http://www.hauntedravensgrin.com/), based on landmarks, as Sarah and Melly got hopelessly lost in cornfields the last time. We also had Sarah's GPS with us. The Garmin was optimistic about its route, so we decided to stick to the theme of the day (grand adventure!) and give it a chance to get us there.

We spent about 40 minutes traversing cornfields in mostly pitch black areas. At times, the Garmin would direct us that a turn was 200 feet away and we couldn't even see the road it was telling us to turn on! But the roads would always appear at the last second. It was a bit surreal. 

Eventually we made it to Mount Carroll and stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom, since we didn't know if there would be one available to the public at RGI. Sarah announced that this area looked familiar to her. We made a couple more turns and she points and says 'there it is!'

I look and I see...nothing.

"Where?"

"Right there!" she says, and points once more at...nothing.

Finally I am able to make out a faint dark blue light in the darkness. "That blue light?" I ask. She confirms. It doesn't appear that there is any road to get TO the blue light, but she has me turn anyway, and all of a sudden there we are! The huge old house looms out of the darkness at us. The parking lot has a decent number of cars, so we sort of make our own space next to one of them and get out.

The house, at first glance, is part art, part abandoned junk heap. In the darkness, it's hard to take in most of the details, and there are a LOT of details to take in. There are several large tour groups milling around outside, and I am just ridiculously excited to be here. 

Melly got out to smoke, and Sarah began searching frantically for the $20 she had to get in to Raven's Grin.

Sarah searching frantically for her money

While they were both occupied, I headed over to get the tickets, since it looked like a number of people were waiting already, and we thought it might be awhile.

I walk up to the ticket window and a lady peers out at me. I greet her and inquire into getting a tour. She tells me that it'll probably be about an hour from now and goes on to say that they're a little disorganized tonight because the 3 people she has on standby to work the house aren't answering their phones, so they're shorthanded tonight. I say "well, there's three of us! If we can get a free tour, and you can tell us what you want us to do, we'll help out!"

Melly and Sarah have walked up behind me at this point, just in time to hear this exchange.

The lady looks at us for a second, then says "ok."

We look at each other...excited...suspicious (is she pulling our legs?)...and a bit trepidatious (what kind of place IS this, exactly, where someone can walk up off the street and the employees can just give them random jobs for the night?). "Really?" we ask her. "Sure!" she says. "Just walk over by that gate, and give me a second."

I turn to Melly and Sarah. "I just volunteered us to work here in exchange for a free tour, do you guys care?"

um. Stupid question. Of COURSE not!

Ridiculously excited, feeling like we're all in high school again, we wait by the large wrought iron gate. A few moments later, the lady (who introduces herself as Jessica) ushers us in, thanks us, and asks us what our time limit for the night us. We all agree that we pretty much don't have one, and she can feel free to use our services as needed. She thanks us and begins ushering us past a number of doors. This side garden area is a tangle of plants, darkness, and various detritus. Peering through the window into the kitchen gives me a glimpse of strange oddities that my brain doesn't really make sense of. We meet Zombie, a large, scrappy black stray tomcat that hangs out by the house, waiting for dinner. 

She ushers us into a door towards the back of the house, where we appear to be in a basement, but I think it was the first floor. The inside of the house is a mystery of pathways, trails, rooms, slides, stairs, doors, windows, ramps, and god knows what else...so most of the time, I had no sense of where I actually WAS. We walked through some of the behind the scenes areas, where she positioned each of us at our various 'scare' points, told us when we'd be able to tell a group was coming through, let us know that we could switch jobs between groups if we wanted. During our instructions, a somewhat disheveled looking man wandered by. "Jim," she says, "these girls are going to be helping us out tonight." He looks at us blankly for a moment and walks off. "Oh, he doesn't care," she says, waving her hand dismissively. We look at each other, excited. A glimpse of the infamous Jim Warfield, tour guide extraordinaire and owner of the Raven's Grin! And he could care less that three strangers are wandering around in his home with absolutely no idea what they're doing there!

Jessica left us to return to her job. We had a great time that night, scaring the patrons and talking about our experiences working haunted houses in the past. (I was particularly glad to have been stationed at the bottom of the first slide, as it gave me a better idea of what I was in for when it came time to ride the terrifying Bed Slide I'd heard so much about...and wasn't entirely sure I was going to be able to talk myself into doing.) 

I felt so at home there...all the decorations, and really everything in the house, has a very 'homemade' feel to it. The best way I can describe it is like a giant version of my dad's yearly halloween yard haunt. If someone gave my dad a big old house and said 'here, do whatever you want with it' and gave him 21 years to do it...this is the sort of thing my dad would come up with. 

About an hour and a half in, Jessica came in to relieve us for a 'smoke break'. We went outside for a bit, got a few things from the car; Melly had a cigarette, I pet Zombie some more. We talked to Jessica for a few minutes...'so, how long have you worked here? Are you related to Jim?"

"I married him," she says.

OH mah gawd! We were hired by Mrs. Raven's Grin!

She met him on a tour about six years ago, and the rest, as they say, is history. They've been married for four years.

Shortly thereafter, it was back to our stations. Groups continued to filter through, and periodically Jim would appear in the back staging area, looking as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. "Here they come!" he'd whisper in eager anticipation. We had no idea where he came from or where he disappeared to when he left us. 

The door by Sarah's station had a speaker in it that would, when irritated in just the right way (by moving the door, breathing on it, or even just looking at it funny), begin to speak in a child's voice, "Mommy? Mommy? Is that you? I'm so scared, Mommy. Please come and get me, I'm scared. I'll be good, I promise!" After the 200th or so repetition, we all went a little mad.

Sometime between 11 and midnight, Jessica returned to relieve us of our duties. She ushered us up to the bathroom (where we encountered Louse, the other guy leading tour groups through the house, and the last group), then to the front room of the house to wait for our tour.

The front room, like most of the other rooms, is jammed full of seemingly random props. Masks and movie posters and skeletons and homemade beasts and old clothing and a piano and dust and old furniture and god knows what else.

We spent a half hour or so chatting with Jessica and meeting the animals of Raven's Grin. She kept coming out with cat after cat after cat. We were introduced to the famous Mr. Tuxedo, who is well into his golden years at the ripe age of 17. After a bit, Jim joined us as well. It was great talking to them about the house and their experiences there. The door to their living area (yes, they live in the house; four small rooms, I believe they said) is just off the front room, so we asked if they'd ever had any mishaps with people wandering in on them.

'Not really,' Jim said. 'Most of the time things work out pretty well. I can tell you that one time, I was home by myself, in bed in my underwear, napping, when I woke up to the sound of voices. I got up and walked in here to find a man and his wife just standing in the front room, pointing at different props and talking. And there I am, in my underwear...which say "Home of the Whopper" on the front."

We laugh, and then I say "this is going to sound kind of strange, but my dad has those underwear!"

(It's true, he does.)

Jim leans towards me and says "this is going to sound kind of strange, but I'M your dad!"

Eventually we got around to starting the tour. They ushered us outside to wait by the front door, so we could have the full experience. We stood out there for a few moments, until we heard a disembodied voice command us to 'get away from the door!'. We step back, and a moment later the door begins to creak, clank...and lower straight down, like a drawbridge! 

It hits the ground, and Jim charges out, dressed safari-style, with a stuffed cheetah draped over his shoulders, pointing a large gun at us. He ushers us into the house, and back into the front room (that we had just vacated), which is now dark save for the TV screen in front of us. We sit on the couch across from it and spend 5-10 minutes watching...a man, wearing a rainbow clown wig, laughing maniacally and wrapping himself in toilet paper. 

Thus begins one's tour at Raven's Grin.

Eventually Jim comes in, sans safari gear, and begins to regale us with stories about the inn itself and various props in the room. The lights stay off, and Jim is armed with only a flashlight, which he shines directly on his face (from the chin up), spooky-story style. Periodically he switches it off and then suddenly appears standing right next to you, to give you a startle and a laugh. 

And here is where it all comes together for me. I have, up to this point, greatly enjoyed my time in the Inn, in the presence of these lovely people and their delightfully eccentric home. I have an overdeveloped sense of the whimsical and the absurd, so I find it delightful, but I recognize that if a 'normal' person were to wander through the home, most people would just be wondering what was UP with the crazy people that lived here. The house shines on its own, but it is really just a backdrop...the true star of the show is Jim Warfield, with his amazing personality, sense of humor, and perfect sense of the theatric. While we were working earlier, we could hear different parts of the tour throughout the night. He tailors each presentation to the audience, and can take a group of any age through the house. He must have 50 different spiels memorized for different areas, and he does this year round, several times a day...and has been doing it for 21 years. Yet every time, with every group, it sounds fresh. Every time, he changes things up just the slightest bit, adding or taking away or interacting with the group. Even after having sat with us for half an hour, talking to us like 'normal' people, he was able to jump straight into touring and entertaining us as if we had never seen him before. It was fantastic. And he was giving us the baudy, adult tour...which had us absolutely in stitches. 

The tour of Raven's Grin is something that words will never do justice to. It's impossible to describe and absolutely necessary to experience. Highlights include:

*Jim almost chopping Sarah's finger off with a pair of garden shears, to which I am amazed that people (myself included, mind you) will pay someone to let them into their house, terrorize them, generally act completely insane, and still allow them to take your finger and put it into a set of garden shears. I NEED a job like Jim's. ;)

*the awesome changing pictures on the walls...I've never seen pictures that morph as well as these

*twisting, turning, and winding our way through the house and having NO idea where I was most of the time

*climbing through the back of a Hearse, implanted into one of the house walls (INSIDE the house, somehow), into a coffin-shaped hallway

*the fantastic, huge, arched stone wine cellar (where the REAL haunting is supposed to happen)

*the terrifyingly exhilerating Bad Dream Bed Slide. Which, yes, I went on.

I will take a moment to describe the slide, for it is full of awesome. You start in a bedroom at the top of the house...on the floor is a bed, twin-sized...surrounded by several disclaimers and warnings on the wall. (Such as "two people have broken their legs on this slide!") If you choose to go on the slide, Jim puts a burlap sack on the bed, then a pad for your butt (a new addition, which Sarah and Melly note make the ride MUCH smoother). You lay on the sack, wrap your feet in the bottom pouch, and put your arms through a padded ring. Jim gathers the sack around you and you hold it together around your body. Then he pulls a lever and the bed lifts straight up! And you rocket to your doom down the inky black pit that appears below you, straight into the darkness of the wine cellar.

It was something else. And I can't wait to do it again!

We've since been out there with numerous groups, including: friends, my parents, and even my kids (ages 3 and 6 at the time of their visit), and every single person has always had a blast, every time we've gone. Jim and Jessica Warfield, the owners (who do indeed live inside the house), are fantastic people.

My dad, 3 year old daughter, 6 year old son, and my husband posing by the Raven's Grin wagon.

As I've mentioned before, visiting the House On The Rock opened the doors in my mind for Spookytown; it was visiting the Raven's Grin Inn that showed me that real people CAN do this sort of thing, CAN live the dream and have a blast doing it.

Yes, my three year old is ringing the doorbell. Because the adults wouldn't!

It is also the Raven's Grin Inn that we are hoping to move near and open the bar (and maybe other businesses in the future). It just seems like the perfect pairing.

If you're able to make it out to Mount Carroll before Spirits opens, I highly recommend you check them out. Of course I KNOW you're all planning on coming out to Spirits after it's up and running, so I know you'll get there eventually, but believe me... Raven's Grin is worth more than one visit. You won't be disappointed.

For more information, visit their website at http://www.hauntedravensgrin.com

Just a reminder to please click here to vote for our bar to win a grant from Mom Central! You can vote once daily now through April 15th. It would mean a lot to us. Thank you very much!

Thank You

Since we have started talking about this endeavor, we have met with nothing but support and enthusiasm from pretty much everyone we have talked to. I can't express how much that warms my heart, knowing that there are so many people out there supporting our dream, rooting for us, and encouraging us.

One of the things that I am most excited about is the fact that people seem to be really EXCITED about this idea. Excited, interested, eager to visit. It seems to be something that the horror community as a whole would really enjoy, which is of course what I want. It's something *I* would enjoy, being a horror maven myself, and while it seems only natural that others with similar interests would want to congregate in a place like the one I imagine... it's one thing to believe that people would be interested, and another thing to hear person after person tell us "hey, I love that idea! That's really cool."

you all warm my twisted little heart <3

So, thank you. Thank you to everyone who has been encouraging us. Thank you to everyone who has been voting for us in the grant contest. Thank you to everyone who has started following our journey. Thank you to everyone who wants to come visit us once we're established. Thank you to everyone who has been spreading the word to their family and friends.

And a very, very special thank you to BJ-C at the phenomenal horror blog Day Of The Woman for inviting me to write a little article about my dream in the hopes of drumming up interest (and, if we're lucky, contest votes) in the horror community. Her blog is fantastic, it's one of my favorites, and I was so thrilled when she asked me to email her with a description of Spirits / Spookytown. She's definitely getting an invite to the Grand Opening party! :)

just a reminder to please click here to vote for our bar to win a grant from Mom Central! You can vote once daily now through April 15th. It would mean a lot to us. Thank you very much!

Kittens! Inspired By... Kittens!

There will be no actual kittens in this post. What there WILL be is reminiscing about something that has provided me with endless inspiration over the past ten years. A place near and dear to my heart because it is so much more than a location, so much more than a tacky tourist trap on the side of the road (though I love those too, don't get me wrong); its very existence has been a life-changing experience for me. It is that bastion to creativity, that ode to dreams, that wonderful crazy machine that is... The House On The Rock.



If you've never been there, or possibly have never even heard of it, I know what you're thinking... 'a house on a rock? What the heck is that? How could that possibly inspire a lifetime of dreams?!' To which I would respond - words cannot possibly explain it. You just have to go there. You'll walk in and either you'll get it, or you won't. Those of you that get it will be the ones that eventually come and join me in Spookytown. Judging from the many people that flock to HOTR each year, I suspect many of you WILL 'get it'. Those of you that don't, well, not everyone is moved by the same things. That's how life goes. I still hope you'll visit us in Spookytown and have a little fun one day.

Approximately ten years ago, when I was a young doe of 23 or so, my dad's family decided to have a reunion at the Wisconsin Dells, a few hours north of us. I was living in Chicago proper at the time, single and having the time of my life. (Now I'm married with kids, living in the suburbs, and having an entirely DIFFERENT kind of time of my life!) My parents and I decided to drive up to the Dells together. A couple days before we left, my mom called me and said "hey, why don't we stop at The House On The Rock on our way to the Dells?"
"House On The Rock? What is that?" I asked, not knowing at the time that my life was about to change in a few short days.
"I don't really know! It's some house in Wisconsin that people come and visit. It's supposed to be really neat. It's sort of on our way; I thought it would be fun to stop in and see it."

I'm pretty much game for anything, so I shrugged and said sure. I figured it would probably be some small architectural sightseeing spot on the side of the road or something; we'd spend an hour or less looking at it, and be on our way.

WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WE WERE IN FOR. As we drove up the road towards HOTR, I had my nose buried in a book while my dad drove and my mom struggled to follow the directions she'd printed. After 20 minutes or so, she said "Oh! There it is!" I looked up to see... a long drive flanked by trees, with a sign proclaiming "The House On The Rock". No house anywhere in sight. We turned onto the drive and slowly made our way through what seemed to be a forest to nowhere. Shortly up the road, a peacock composed entirely of musical instruments beckoned to us; just beyond him was a giant flowerpot with huge dragonlike lizards climbing on it. That's when I first began to realize that this was going to be an experience like no other.

My mom and I, way back when, by one of the dragon-lizard flower pots.

What can I say about the house itself? As I mentioned above, it's nearly impossible to describe. Neil Gaiman featured the house in his bestselling book American Gods, and he has spoken on the subject and mentioned that he actually had to TONE DOWN the description of the place because it was too unbelievable otherwise.

Did I mention my husband and I spent Halloween 2010 at HOTR *with* Neil Gaiman, celebrating the Gathering Of American Gods? OH YES WE DID.

The house just goes on and on, from one room full of beautiful crazy contraptions to another to another; and just when you think it can't possibly astound you anymore, it changes direction and sideswipes you from an angle you didn't even see coming. We had no idea how HUGE the place was. My mother, father and I ended up having to RUN through the entire second half of the tour on that first trip because we had to get to the Dells for the reunion dinner. It was wonderful, amazing, and completely overwhelming.

what is this i don't even

The Mikado; a room-sized Asian music machine. I dressed as it for Halloween 2010.

THIS IS A BATHROOM

The world's largest carousel. Pictures cannot do it justice.

Near the end of your tour, the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse bid you adieu. SEE YOU SOON...

another 'what is this i don't even' moment. I didn't notice these little guys frolicking at the base of this tree until my fifth visit.

The Infinity Room. It just goes on and on and oh yeah, it's hanging up 300 feet above the forest, held up by... NOTHING BUT AIR.

My husband standing by my favorite music machine. It's an old-fashioned hearse that plays the Funeral March, followed by When The Saints Go Marching In.

We seem completely oblivious to the fact that THERE'S A GIANT SEA MONSTER BEHIND US OMG

Seriously. A giant sea monster. We're talking THREE STORIES TALL. *INSIDE* the building.

I *told* you I dressed as the Mikado for Halloween.

Since then I have been back there many times, and each time fills my soul with wonder and my brain with crazy pipe dreams. When I walk in I feel like I'm amongst my own people; I feel like I'm HOME.

On the Sun Deck, July 2006.

On the Sun Deck, September 2007

On the Sun Deck, May 2010

On the Sun Deck, Oct 2010

That first visit planted the seeds that eventually grew into my vision of Spookytown. Each subsequent visit serves to remind me that this is really what I'm meant to do with my life. I'm so excited to finally be working towards my dream.