For some, a haunted house themed around the murder cases of Richard Trenton Chase is merely a form of adrenaline-pumping Halloween entertainment. For others, however, it’s a haunting reminder of the horror they faced in the late 1970s. It’s a reenactment and reminder of the devastating loss of their loved one.
Scream Park California is a Halloween theme park based in Sacramento and referred to as “the best of the west” by Forbes. The park hosts three intensely graphic haunted houses, which include “Asylum,” a house inspired by the disturbing 1960s mental institution of Sacramento and “Bad Acid Trip.” “The Mind of a Killer,” the most popular attraction at the park this year, was inspired by the serial killings of Richard Trenton Chase.
In the late 1970s, Chase became a prominent figure in the Sacramento crime scene. He was known to some as the “Vampire of Sacramento” and was convicted of six total murders in just one month by 1979. He was a schizophrenic, a chronic drug abuser and was most famously known to drink his victims’ blood and cannibalize their remains. Spooky, right?
“It’s horrifying that everybody else somehow is making some kind of situation, money, whatever you want to call it, off of other people’s grief,” David Wallin said in an interview with Fox 15 News.
36 years ago on Jan. 23, Chase had broken into Wallin’s home and brutally killed his wife, Theresa, and her unborn baby. She was three months pregnant at the time. He shot her three times, then proceeded to rape and mutilate her corpse; this horrific crime is used as one of the “attractions” in the Scream Park haunted house.
“It was horrifying, and the worst part of it is I was the one who got home after a terrible day at work and found her, something I live with everyday,” Wallin said.
It boils down to the age-old debate over what’s acceptable in the horror entertainment industry and what is altogether tasteless. Hollywood was relieved of the oppressive Hays Code law in 1968 and suddenly free to depict sex and violence in any way, but even without said restrictions, isn’t there still an unspoken line not to be crossed? One can argue that the general appeal in horror movies and entertainment is to experience, in safety, the emotions associated with danger. But what happens when one’s fake, temporary fear is another’s everyday reality?
“There’s something fascinating about the legacy a serial killer leaves behind,” said junior English major Jade Foster. “We, as a society, know that what serial killers do is among the most horrific and unimaginable acts against nature and yet we are enamored with them… It goes against our very nature to survive and yet we still try to reenact their heinous crimes for entertainment.”
This is desensitized entertainment. This is the marketing of one person’s loss—a person who’s still very much alive—for the profit of another. It’s using something incredibly devastating and disturbing that actually happened to an innocent victim and warping it into a ten-minute stroll through a haunted house, for a few good screams here and there. I suggest dodging the insensitive bullet and coming up with something that hasn’t already happened—to not offend the surviving loved ones of the victims. If you’re going to be tasteless, then at least try to be creative.
Jackie Braje can be reached at jacquelyn.braje@theminaretonline.com