The Nightmare

This past Friday I had the opportunity to go to The Nightmare in Marshfield, WI. My CA on 2nd Floor Breese, Mike Chastain brought up to the idea of traveling for this event. Utilizing the resources available to us on campus we were able to get the travel for the event covered as well as the majority of the admission cost for the 10 of us that went to the event.

The Nightmare is meant to graphically depict the most common ways that teenagers and young adults die. It is something like a haunted house, but it isn't meant to scare you like a haunted house scares you. It is meant to make you think and portray these things so graphically that it forces you to think about it. The Nightmare ends with a depiction of the crucifixion of Christ as well as some information about the church that put the event on.

The following thoughts and reflections represent my thoughts on the event and are not meant to slight Mike as he spent a lot of time and energy putting this event together. With no further ado:

• This was a well-coordinated event. The line was managed well and the flow of the actual Nightmare was well done. There was excellent timing, excellent acting and some excellent work done in making everything seem real.
  
• We had to travel 2 hours each way and wait outside for the event for 2.5 hours. With The Nightmare only being about 20-25 minutes, it didn't seem to me to be quite worth it. Of course, it was practically free.
• No matter how you slice, the events depicted inside The Nightmare could still be perceived as fake. This may sound funny for someone who can easily suspend reality and enjoy fantasy and science fiction books and movies. However, when the goals is to show real odern events, that is a different story. They tried hard, but I could not make the jump.
• The security at the event tried to be all serious and take all of the fun out of us before we went into the event. Not a fan, in fact some of us were threatened with not being to go through the event. Ok, I'll take my $8 back. Yeesh.
• The Christian message in all of this all quite obvious, especially at the end. The crucifixion scene was definitely the most intense of all that I saw.
  

There was a website you could go to after the event to see what this was all about.