Haunted Trails and Such

Well haunted trails has happened. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, it's a annual fund-raiser put on by the AOM department to help students pay for a five-week externship in China at the end of their third year. The haunted trail runs through a series of set scenes including "Insane Asylum," "Creepy Clowns," "Sweeney Todd," and "Graveyard." In between the scenes are scary props and, most importantly, trail-haunters whose job is to jump out and frighten people, or sneak up behind them, or whisper creepy things from the shadows--basically anything they think will scare people. They just aren't allowed to touch anyone and, of course, the patrons are not allowed to touch the performers. Apparently the second group that went through got so freaked out that they had to be escourted out one of the emergency exits. So yeah, very scary stuff.

I was a trail-haunter and was thus able to spend a very rewarding evening as a human jack-in-the-box. After a bit of experimentation I found that the best way to scare people was to crouch down in the bushes just off the trail and then scurry out on all fours making hissing noises and swiping at people's legs with my big scary hand. I could tell I was doing a good job when people started swearing at me. One of the pictures is of me in costume. I was mistaken at least twice for Freddy Krueger, whose picture I have also included for the sake of comparison. I can see how people would get confused seeing as how the costumes are so very similar; what with the hat, the red-striped shirt, the burned face and the razor-glove. Sigh.

Which reminds me. So we're in TCM Fundamentals class and the teacher mentions a classic TCM medical text which was written around 400 BC. Up shoots a classmate's hand. The question: "Was that when China became Communist?" Yes, yes it was. The Communist Manifesto was written just a few years before that. In runes. On bark. Sigh.