I haven’t been to this year’s “treatment” yet, but I know from last year that this isn’t your grandparents’ amusement park haunted house – unless Grandpa was Boris Karloff. For one thing, Black Lake Haunted Asylum comes with a “history”: As a consequence of gruesome experiments and procedures performed by its psychopathic chief of staff, Dr. Hubert West, the Black Lake Medical Asylum and Research Facility was the scene of horrific incidents of cruelty and violence culminating in a riot and fire that destroyed the main structure and several outbuildings. While bodies of upwards of 125 patients and staff were found in the smoldering ruins, and another 64 succumbed after being taken to area hospitals, Sheriff Ronald Smith estimated the death toll at more than 200 and possibly as high as 300. That figure does not include Black Lake Asylum’s most notorious inmate, an oddly fetching cannibal named Kristen Starkey; she had been the perfectly happy and well-adjusted daughter of the asylum caretaker before becoming the object of twisted Dr. West’s special attentions and medical ministrations, including electro-shock, with disastrous results. The fate or whereabouts of “Crazy Kristen” – who makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mister Rogers – remain unknown, but each year there are numerous sightings of her at the Freighthouse Square event, and she may actually be running for representative in the 26th Legislative District this November. (Be sure to use a blue or black pen, fill in the blanks completely and mail your ballot in early!)

That’s the story in a “nutshell,” so to speak; you can read the contemporary newspaper accounts on the asylum Web site. If you’re the jumpy sort, I recommend bringing a mentally stable friend to clutch – or at least a change of underwear – and enjoy this year’s tour, which features another slew of enthusiastic actor-participants, haunt makeup by The Voyeur Dead Girls (www.voyeurdead.com) and AMAZING custom props by professional designer/fabricator Ben Isitt (www.BensArtWorks.com), whose résumé includes work on the films “Jurassic Park” and “Army of Darkness” and on the “E.T” ride at Universal Studios.

The asylum tour is conducted in groups of four to six “patients,” lasts 15 to 20 minutes – less if you’re a fast runner – and is not recommended for children under 13. Admission is $13 but tickets are limited: Get them online at www.HauntedHouseTacoma.com. Freighthouse Square is located at 2501 East “D” St., Tacoma. For directions, visit www.freighthousesquare.com.

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Images courtesy Black Lake Haunted Asylum

Freddy Krueger, get a day job! The REAL nightmare isn’t on Elm Street but on East “D” Street in Tacoma, where the Black Lake Haunted Asylum will scare the giblets out of “patients” three more evenings of this week, through Sat., Oct. 31 (Halloween).

I voluntarily “committed” myself to the Asylum last night, and glad that I had used the toilet earlier, or it would have made for an unpleasant ride home. Of course, I won’t – CAN’T – recount all the high-voltage horror I endured (loving every second of it), but suffice to say that the last time I saw so many crazy people with their mouths open, it was around the buffet at my bar mitzvah.

Now in its second year, the Black Lake Haunted Asylum isn’t your garden-variety amusement-park haunted house: It’s a heightened state of mind – so long as you don’t lose it during the Asylum “tour,” which takes place in the cellar of Tacoma’s century-old Freighthouse Square (a place I wouldn’t want to stroll alone even in the daytime). Again, you can pump me full of Sodium Pentothal and I won’t tell you what I saw – why spoil the fun? – but it’s an experience you’ll be eagerly telling your coworkers, classmates and/or analyst about for days.

Part “Mystery at the Wax Museum,” part Off Broadway play and all Halloween FUN, the Asylum is a collaborative effort of master sculptor/prop fabricator Ben Isitt (www.bensartworks.com) and professional haunted-house creator Clark (so behind-the-scenes that he preferred not to tell me his last name). I didn’t have a chance to meet with Ben, but Clark is a beefy, goodhearted ex-Marine who you’d want on your side if you ever DO wind up in an enclosed space with a lot of homicidal maniacs.

Also integral to the “treatment” in this basement Bedlam are the dozens of volunteers – Clark said at least 36 participate in each show, many of them students at the Tacoma School of the Arts – whose talents make the Asylum come alive, in a manner of speaking. So there’s no need to dread suddenly finding yourself alone in the dark amid lab specimens and experiments gone awry: THEY are always there … although, as Clark casually assured me, “they’re all crazy!”

And before you go, I advise ratcheting up the shock value of your tour by visiting the Asylum Web site at www.blacklakeasylum.com and reading about the institution’s “history” – which seemed so real that I went through four pages of Google search results before I convincing myself that the twisted Dr. West and Crazy Kristen (who scared the pants off me, to the disgust of other visitors) were figments of the Asylum organizers’ twisted imaginations. I think.

Incidentally, being of an inquiring mind, I couldn’t help asking Clark if anyone had suggested that the Asylum is, well, making light of a sensitive subject. (Actually, I asked him if anyone flat-out complained that satirizing a mental institution is in lousy taste.) Yeah, Clark replied, someone asked why he couldn’t stick to standard haunted-house fare: murderous ghosts, butchered corpses, ghouls and zombies with bad personal hygiene and even worse table manners – good, wholesome stuff like that. “Serial murderers are OK, but not an asylum? It’s ENTERTAINMENT,” he pointed out.

Entertainment it is indeed – and you have only three days left to enjoy it. Remaining show times are Thurs., Oct. 29, from 7 to 11 p.m. and Fri. and Sat., Oct. 30 and 31, from 7 p.m. to midnight: Check www.blacklakeasylum.com for details. Admission is $13 per “patient” ($1 off the price of one ticket at the door with military ID). Freighthouse Square is located at 2501 East “D” St., Tacoma. Visit www.freighthousesquare.com for more information and directions.

NOTE: The Black Lake Haunted Asylum actively supports My Sister’s Pantry (www.mysisterspantry.com), a Tacoma food bank that serves hot meals and distributes groceries and clothing to the poor and the homeless. Visitors to the Asylum are encouraged to bring a nonperishable food item for My Sister’s Pantry for which they’ll get $1 off the ticket price at the door.

Images provided by Terry Carpenter of Lugh Waterman Surreal Photography

I freely admit: I’m a horror addict. Growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, I devoured (sometimes literally) horror comic books, like the classic Creepy and Eerie magazines (especially the ones with those iconic Frank Frazetta covers), and the horror-film “fanzine” Famous Monsters of Filmland. I loved the plastic Aurora models of the Wolf Man, Dracula, the Frankenstein monster and other Hollywood bogeymen. And I was deeply influenced – some say screwed up – by hundreds of movies aired on TV in the New York area on shows like “Chiller Theater,” “Creature Features” and “Million Dollar Movie.”

The last is significant: “Million Dollar Movie” (on WOR, channel 9), which didn’t run just horror flicks, actually showed the same film every weeknight for five days straight. Imagine the effect on my impressionable young mind from watching the original 1959 version of “House on Haunted Hill” five times in a row! (I used to go around quoting Elisha Cook Jr.’s ominous closing line, “They’re coming for ME now … and then they’ll come for YOU …” which freaked out a few of my women grade-school teachers.)

Imagine, too, when “House on Haunted Hill” was remade in 1999 and set, not in a manipulative millionaire’s weird faux Mayan/art deco fortress, but in a disused asylum with a nasty history. True, the remake gets a little silly toward the end, but the set design is passing nightmarish: dark, clammy cells, grisly lab specimens, pseudo-scientific antique medical equipment and sadistic restraining devices … (It’s even more unsettling when you figure that the screenwriters didn’t just imagine that stuff: A lot of asylums in the bad old days of unregulated medicine probably weren’t much different from the Bedlam depicted in the movie.)

Mad doctors and maniacs aside, it’s the demons inside our own heads that we “normal” folks love to feed when the night of pumpkin heads rolls around. So it’s with perverse delight that I can report that the Black Lake Haunted Asylum is unbolting its doors for the second Halloween season, from Sat., Oct. 10, to Sat., Oct. 31. Constructed in the basement of Tacoma’s historic Freighthouse Square – a place I’d be loath to spend the night alone, whatever time of year – the Asylum promises to be a hell of a lot more than just your typical un-scary amusement-park haunted house: Featuring the work of extraordinarily talented and equally twisted local artist Ben Isitt (www.bensartworks.com) and an all-new production team of extremely creative professional psychopaths, the Asylum is a huge, 12,000-square-foot interpretation of “a medical research facility gone horribly wrong” (according to the press release) and carries a PG-13 rating. (Parents: This may be your chance to scare your preteen away from drugs!)

The Asylum is also more than a seasonal spine-tingler: It’s a community-service event where the “patients” (i.e., the visitors) are encouraged to bring a non-perishable food donation to benefit My Sister’s Pantry Food Bank in Tacoma (www.mysisterspantry.org), which will get them a buck off the price of admission.

There are other strange things afoot at Freighthouse Square while the Black Lake Haunted Asylum is loosening some bowels: 

• “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” enhanced with live performances. On Fri., Oct. 16, and Fri., Oct. 23, at 8 p.m. sharp, the Blue Mouseketeers of Tacoma will perform LIVE during showings of the cult favorite “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which will be screened in its entirety. Prop bags for moviegoers are $1. Learn about the shows at www.tacomarockyhorror.net. Learn more about the Blue Mouseketeers’ home, The Blue Mouse Theatre in Tacoma’s historic Proctor District: Visit www.bluemousetheatre.com.
• Funky Monkey live broadcast. On Fri., Oct. 23, from 7 to 9 p.m., Funky Monkey (104.9 FM) will broadcast live from Freighthouse Square. Funky Monkey will also be giving away free pairs of tickets to the Asylum on their Web site from Oct. 8 to 17 and have an on-air ticket giveaway from Oct. 19 to 23, with one lucky winner winning the grand prize: An eerie evening for four that includes a chauffeured hearse ride for the evening; a complimentary meal for four at one of Tacoma’s best restaurants; two pairs of tickets to the Asylum and to another haunted house; promotional merchandise; and more. Get the scary details at www.funkymonkey1049.fm.
• Third Annual Pacific Northwest Hearse Rally. Herman Munster would love the Rain City Hearse Club, whose members will show off their classic hearses outside Freighthouse Square on Sat., Oct. 24, from 7 p.m. to midnight. Learn more at www.hauntedhearse.com or www.raincityhearse.org.

The 2009 Black Lake Haunted Asylum at Freighthouse Square is open from 7 p.m. to midnight on 15 evenings between Oct. 10 and Oct. 31: Visit the asylum Web site at www.blacklakeasylum.com for the schedule. Admission is $13 per “patient” ($1 off the price of one ticket at the door with military ID). Tickets can be purchased at the The Giving Place in Freighthouse Square, online through Web site or at the door (cash only; an ATM will be available). Get a $1 discount per ticket by purchasing in advance (Oct. 1–9) at The Giving Place (also cash only).

Freighthouse Square is located at 2501 East “D” St., Tacoma. Visit www.freighthousesquare.com for more information and directions.

And by the way: Black Lake Haunted Asylum is partnering with Pierce County Little Caesars locations to offer customers the Haunted Family Combo Pack (two large Hot-n-Ready pizzas, an order of Crazy Bread and a two-liter Pepsi product) for just $14.50 and get a voucher to get $8 off a four-pack of tickets to the Asylum (offer good while supplies last; cannot be combined with any other promotion). Visit www.pizzapizzanw.com for store locations.

Visit Black Lake Asylum for show times: www.blacklakeasylum.com