Community-theatre friends ran a haunted house with something I found genuinely creepy.
You walked into the room and a woman was facing away from you, sobbing relentlessly. Just weeping - no sudden turn to the room, no change of lighting, no speaking - just crying.
Then the guide spoke and opened a door and revealed she was crying because her daughter was possessed. BLAM - tension gone.
If the weeping, wailing woman had been left as is it would have been context-free creepy - a horrible blank slate for our (un)consciousnesses to fretfully wander.
THAT is the sort of “haunted house” I’d like to work on - abstract, context-free. It would be awful (and nothing remotely like those “EXTREME” haunted house cesspools).
Well, in my head it would be terrifying. In reality it could well be much like so many small-town theater productions.
