A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES
A Roadside Attraction
My sister and her husband have owned a farmhouse on Prince Edward Island for so long that the locals are no longer suspicious of these Montrealers. My own visits to Canada’s smallest province commenced about twenty-five years ago when they were already well established. How the years rush on by. Memory tracking is as challenging as maths. I’ve stayed with them for a summer week five, maybe six, possibly four, times.
There is a haunted mansion in the nearby town of Kensington, on Victoria Street. Ann and I have driven past it more times than I can count because a little farther on, about the length of a Canadian football field (including endzones), is Frosty Treat, an ice cream stand. Ann enjoys a chocolate-dipped soft serve. Me, I’m more of a “Jack and Diane” type, tube steak boogie.
The Haunted Mansion has intrigued me for years. It’s an immense Tudor style structure, three storeys. The entry sign features a life-sized green ghoul, a hunchbacked, tuxedoed butler. I love carny kitsch. And thanks to a strike by Air Canada’s flight attendants, we had the time to investigate. The bonus for our hosts was that we vacated the front porch, making our selves scarce for a few hours.
This roadside attraction, elaborate as it appears, will never be mistaken for a Disneyfied land or world. Its dark, meandering halls, including an ersatz Jack the Ripper, Victorian London street in the dungeon, are peopled with fibreglass and papier mache (the ‘e’ needs an accent, but I don’t know how to do that) monsters, villains and Lizzie Borden in a wardrobe. Corny animated special effects, scratchy recorded screams and threats, sudden blasts of compressed air: early twentieth century funhouse mechanics. Ann and I felt our way through the corridors and rooms. We were petrified because much of the flooring was unintentionally untrue and my partner in thrills was wearing sandals and I’ve got arthritis in my right big toe (high school football) that sometimes sets my skin aflame.
The attraction’s backstory is that a certain Englishman, one Dr Jack, built the mansion as an inn for travellers. They checked in. They checked out without ever leaving. Spooky.
Laughable jumps and frights, at discounted seniors’ admissions. As Ann and I crept around, I couldn’t help wondering about the availability of replacement parts. Record pressing plants experience the same problem. Same with venerable and elegant printing presses manufactured in a different era. Vintage cars, bicycles and motorcycles, Kenmore household appliances. Friction wears down metal, rubber, plastic. Anything that rubs. I hope the Haunted House’s enjoys jury-rigging its machinery as much as Ann and I enjoyed holding hands and giggling inside its walls.
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