I was traumatized by a wax museum when I was 10. Seriously. It was at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. To be fair, my parents may not have realized what was in store for us. Once inside it may have been impossible to back out again.
The was a "house of horrors." I wonder if it said that on the sign. If so, my folks should've been shot.
Picture a 10-year-old living at a time when you weren't even allowed to say "damn" on TV. If you saw blood on TV it was a Very Big Deal. Slasher movies didn't exist; the most blood I'd seen at one time before this was when the kid next to me in school jabbed a scissors through his finger and hit an artery. In that case, I was more impressed that the female teacher rushed him into the BOYS' bathroom than the fact that the whole row of kids ahead of me got sprayed with blood.
The museum consisted of wax figures posed in replicas of real-life murder scenes. And, yeah--they looked REAL. People chopped-up bodies, beaten to pulps, hung, shot, stabbed, macheted, tortured, sliced-and-diced--you name it, I saw it. I wandered throught in awetruck terror, staring at the scenes and reading the terrible stories behind them. I was "fine" once I walked back out into the blazing sunshine, although my day was totally ruined.
And then night fell.
I didn't sleep for days. I thought about it for weeks and months and yes, seriously, years! Looking back, I should've been in therapy! I was obsessed with death and murder and dismemberment and torture.
Eventually I got over it and yet here I am, decades later, still remembering my horror and disbelief at the unwelcome knowledge that yes, people do these terrible things to one another!
Now I'm a true crime buff. *shrug* Go figure. If I'm ever arrested for a crime and the police see my reading material, I'll be convicted for sure.
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