Starting in what looks like a cut scene from Tales from the Crypt, Kansas City’s oldest haunted house, The Edge of Hell, spirals you on a twisted, startling, dark, and short trip to the netherworld and back.
After standing like a sheep in line for about twenty minutes, I was finally at the front door. It wasn’t too bad, though I’ve been down here on weekends closer to Halloween and the line stretches for blocks.
The tickets are $20 each, and if you buy them in advance, you can skip the line and head straight for entrance. You also have the chance to purchase a $33 ticket that gets you into The Beast, another KC haunted house, as well, saving you $7 in the process.
Some of the rooms were predictable, and some were genuinely creepy. The back-alley ambiance of the whole place seemed to weigh over any real sense of fright or danger, other than maybe getting hassled by a bum.
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My impression upon leaving the Edge of Hell was of contentment, but the feeling that there could have been more was ever-present. My experience was only about 30 minutes long, and for the same money I could have gone to three scary movies.
Comments on the haunted house were the usual teenage drunken slurs about how "I wasn’t scared" and just how "awesome" it was. The occasional "WAHOOO!" is to be expected.
Kansas City is blessed to have some of the best haunted houses in the country. With the Edge of Hell constantly topping that list, I’d say go check it out. At the very least, it’s a twenty-dollar, five-story slide...but hey, who can beat that?
Just don’t bother with The Beast. Unless, that is, you like wandering around a dark room for an hour and not being allowed to use your cell phone to help see your way out.
Copyright 2006 Metropolitan Community College