The Yard Sale Of Hell House Mind Control Theatre ✓

Is it ethical? No. Is it legal? Probably not in three states. Is it worth the $40 ticket price?

I spent $12.50 on a used toaster that only toasts bread into the shape of Rorschach blots. I spent $3 on a cassette tape labeled “Subliminal Affirmations for Mall Employees.” I spent nothing on the memory I traded away, which I no longer recall, but which left a bruise on my sternum that spells out

I do not know how they got that information. I am choosing not to investigate. the yard sale of hell house mind control theatre

But The Yard Sale is different. It’s their alleged “final transmission.”

By the fifth room (the “Rec Room of Broken Compulsions”), you realize the show is a genius inversion of haunted house logic. Traditional hell houses scare you with sin and damnation. Hell House Mind Control Theatre scares you with the banality of operational conditioning. There’s a folding table covered in rotary phones. When you pick one up, a pre-recorded voice whispers your mother’s maiden name. Another phone whispers a secret you told a therapist in 2016. Is it ethical

Hell House Mind Control Theatre —a legendary, semi-mythical performance collective that emerged from the rust belt noise scene of the late ‘90s—has spent two decades producing what they call “salvation-through-terror immersive rituals.” Their previous shows ( The Electrobaptism of Ronnie DeShawn , Your Neighbor’s Teeth Are Not Your Teeth ) were infamous for their use of actual hypnotists, flickering data-slide projectors, and actors recruited from defunct church haunted houses.

Go with friends. Go alone if you want to feel truly seen. Leave your phone in the car—it will try to autocorrect your sentences to the Lord’s Prayer. Probably not in three states

For twelve minutes, nothing happens. Then a teenage actor in a Boy Scout uniform walks through the dark, handing out index cards. My card said: “You are not the first version of yourself to attend this show. The previous you bought a snow globe. Do not buy the snow globe.”

The last booth is labeled A man who may or may not be the actual creator of the show—gray beard, stained cardigan, eyes like two dead stars—asks you one question: “What memory are you willing to trade for peace?”