The 8-hour horror nights shift are surprisingly... long. Friday particularly. Since I had to work that day by time 1 in the morning rolled around, I had basically lost my sensibilities. I just screamed, moaned, yawned loudly rattled my cage, lolled about, swung my dolly around while my brain was a million miles away. I heard one guy say as he was walking by "Is he drunk??"
There is something oddly liberating about standing around and screaming insults into peoples faces. I mean, I am yelling some really wierd things and then laughing right in their face. If I did this in a public place, more than half of these people would punch me. The other half would call the cops.
Also, I have discovered that if you blow a rasberry at a drunk girl, they will blow one back at you. Every time.
I have a rather long comment to make on the patrons of these events, however I'll save that for a post more dedicated on the topic.
Driving home Friday night I was bushed. I was also deathly afraid of falling asleep at the wheel. The long dive down I-4 was pretty empty and monotonous. I would be driving along, zoning out when I would suddenly get a huge jot of adrenaline and bolt upright again. Its not that my eyelids were dropping down or anything, it was as if I was falling asleep with my eyes open. When I freak out like that I rolled own the window for the night air, smoke a cig, and sing to myself.
That night after I got off of i4 and was heading down 46, I saw a couple of police cars with their lights lit up suddenly pull up to at first glance was an empty spot in the road. As I got closer I saw it was actually a truck that had wrapped itself around a pole. To my horror the windshield was a big streak of scarlet. It looked like whoever had been in that truck had exploded all over the windshield. I tried looking in the news about it, but I did not see anything. Car deaths are so common these days they don't even make the paper.
Last night I got out a little early and instead of heading home I wandered around the park for a little bit. I went into the 'Dungeon of terror' haunted house. If you are going to universal and only have time for so many houses, skip this one. Compared to the high-quality sets of the other houses I was surprised at how dinky this dungeon of terror was. It looked like something high school students put together.
I have two days off before I go back in again. The air has been cooling off quite a bit. I think I will get my hot tub up and running again. It will be nice to soak in once it gets cold.
2026 Update
Dialing up 2006 Orlando, where Ed's evening plan is screaming at strangers until somebody asks if he's drunk.
I do love a document from an era when a person could scream at strangers for eight hours and honestly call it employment. Now you'd be recorded on seventeen phones, posted, sliced into a hundred clips, and turned into somebody else's entire personality before your shift ended. Back then a drunk girl would raspberry you right back; today she'd be live-streaming you into a pocket courtroom while three people offer legal advice. Even the haunted house standards have decayed: your cursed Dungeon of Terror was high-school art club, but now every haunt is an immersive 360-degree branded nightmare with a gift shop and a subscription tier. And that little I-4 meditation on car deaths — the fatalism of “so common they don't make the paper” — has been replaced by a world where every crash is some influencer's dashcam content. You also got to smoke a cigarette while driving with the window down; now the car itself complains and asks if you'd like a mindfulness break. What a time.
“2006 Ed, when you blew a raspberry at a drunk girl and she blew one back “every time,” did you ever stop to wonder who was really winning that exchange, or was being a chaos legend worth whatever weird looks you got?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I honestly never thought about “winning” anything, mostly because I’m pretty sure the moment you start keeping score in a raspberry duel, you’ve already lost. The exchange is its own reward, like finding a free TV on craigslist or getting a donut that’s only slightly stale. Sure, people looked at me weird, but it’s Horror Nights; half the crowd is drunk and the other half is pretending they’re not scared. The weird looks just sort of blend in with the fog juice and the screaming. Honestly, I figure the real chaos legend is the drunk girl who trusted a scareactor enough to blow one right back at me. That takes guts. I’m just the guy in a cage with a dolly, making noises at 1 a.m. It’s not a victory, but it’s a decent story, and that’s good enough for me.
