Halloween, just past, is an American institution, with its kid-friendly ‘Trick or Treat’ tradition, in a way beyond what we experience in England.
Some churches respond to what children’s books call ‘my favourite holiday’ by putting on alternative Halloween events, a Harvest Festival for instance, with sweets and games, where children dress up as they would at Halloween. Other churches, apparently, stage ‘Hell Houses’. These are similar to Haunted Houses but depict with frightening intensity the woes of sins like drugs or alcohol or extra-marital sex and the terminal destination with Lucifer.
Regular feature
The first such Hell House may be the responsibility of Pat Robertson in the late 1970s, though similar events began in several regions during that period. More recently, Pastor Keenan Roberts started a well-known Hell House in Arvada, Colorado, in 1995. He is now the Senior Pastor of Destiny Church of the Assemblies of God, and a Hell House is performed there each October. They have become regular fixtures on church calendars in some parts of America.
