With Fall across the South comes the beginning of a peculiar, and I dare say abominable, phenomenon known as “Hell Houses” (aka Judgment Houses.)
While the origins of Hell House can be traced all the way back to Jerry Falwell in the 1970s, they have unfortunately taken on a whole life of their own as Churches across the country seek to “scare the hell” out of participants (mostly teenagers) through the depiction of “sinful” acts like same-sex marriage, gambling, abortion, extramarital sex, partying, the use of controlled substances and teen suicide in contrast with the consequence of being tormented in Hell for these acts after dying in “unbelief.”
These productions usually occur in short acts where participants are led through various scenes that ultimately culminate in depictions of both Heaven and Hell. The production is typically followed immediately up with a time of prayer in which participants are pressured to “accept Jesus” as their lord and savior against the backdrop of just having witnessed vivid scenes of death and hellish torment. It is not by coincidence that these hell houses coincide with the season of Halloween. Although Halloween has been celebrated by European Christians (and subsequently American Christians) since the Middle Ages, there has been an ever-growing culture shift since the 1960s that sought to reframe Halloween as both “unchristian” and “demonic” in nature.
This shift is a rather recent development within the Christian imagination and with this development came a slew of Christian Halloween alternatives. Hell houses, one such development, are an attempt to create an alternative to conventional haunted houses, but what goes on in these hell houses is more dangerous and “demonic” than anything experienced in a traditional haunted house.
Every year around this time, I, a pastor of over a decade, feel the all too familiar sting of guilt. In my young pastoral naivete, I thought that loading up our church van and carrying a group of teenagers to experience a hell house seemed like a perfectly good idea. My assumptions could not have been more wrong, and while the stories of harm caused to many of those students are not mine to tell, and I feel the pangs of regret at this time every year. I grieve for those who I know will attend these productions and be traumatized, rather than transformed.
Flannery O’Conner once said, “By and large… While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted” and the reality of hell houses in so many of our communities could not make her point anymore clear. In our efforts to ward off the “worldly” ghouls and ghosts of Halloween, the church has unleashed a force of harm in our communities.
In our “Christ-haunted” culture we have forgotten that it is the “kindness of God” that produces repentance (Romans 2:4), and that, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18.) In the end, all our attempts to exorcise the “demonic spirits” of Halloween from our midst have merely become the cornerstone for factories manufacturing “the spirit of fear” (2 Timothy 1:7), and with that, I think it’s high time we all say, “To hell with hell houses!”
Ryan Cagle is co-organizer of Jubilee House Community.
