We have unique, fantasy, creepy and cute Halloween items. From ghosts, evil trees, jack o lanterns and creepy dolls, to cute pumpkins, scarecrows, mushrooms and landscaping decor. Creations for every home, garden or haunted house.Scary or Fairy..You decide !After all, it's been a while since I went to Bentham Manor.
Doesn't seem like they've got the haunt up yet, and I'm trying to save Arranmore for October, so...Everwinter it is!
From the notecard given to every avatar at the port-in point:
"Everwinter Is fictional but Inspired By The Abandoned Amusement Park In The Real World City Of Pripyat, it is only my vision and not an accurate representation of pripyat or the chernobyl disaster."Therein is given a brief history of Chernobyl and Pripyat, including the amusement park built close to the city center, that was due to open five days after Chernobyl melted down. The only time it has been officially open to the public, then or now, was to briefly host refugees fleeing from the devastation, because they were a good gathering point for many people, while cars, trucks and buses were assembled to take them away.
This is not a "jump scare" type of haunt. This is deeper. This is the haunting of history, the weight of tragedy, homage used to unnerve over outright terrify. Ms. Bentham's tribute, if such a word is appropriate, to lost Pripyat exists as a moment in time--her interpretation, to be sure, but matching enough of the photographs to stand in for the actual terrain.
Everywhere one goes, the only sound is howling wind, occasional whispers that are difficult to make out (I believe by design), the creaking of damaged trees, and--here and there--the ominous ticking of a Geiger counter.
I will likely never see Pripyat with my own eyes. I have been to the Chernobyl museum in SL, I have seen photographs, and I have watched a great many documentaries about the tragedy. I am haunted by many things, and Pripyat is one of them--both because we nearly had an equal moment of devastation with Three Mile Island, the plant with the exact same design as Chernobyl's, and because of the Elephant's Foot still lurking in the heart of the sarcophagus, toxically radiant and dire. It will remain too toxic to be close to for thousands of years; all we have are blurry images taken before the radiation of the waste melted the cameras into scrap.
The image in the article linked above, and in this one, was one of the last times a human stood next to the mass to take a picture. The camera was on a tripod and was not moving, yet there is blur and film damage. The human in question--who may or may not be alive at this point--suffered cataracts and a variety of problems including organ failures from the minute or less it took him to set up the shot and then leave.
Sixty seconds or less for the intense radiation to eat through skin, muscle and bone. We are become death. And when we poison one place, the entire world feels it sooner or later. The sonorous ringing of Chernobyl's warning can still be heard today, if one knows how to listen. Everwinter is one of those places to listen.
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