how'd you get so desperate? how'd you stay alive?

[15:14] Marloo Redd (marlooredd): you can't have your meat candy til you've had your gummy broccoli

But MOOooommm...



So LEVEL is open, and remember when I mentioned the "Baphomet" Lapel Chain and Signet Ring from /Vae Victis\? That I wasn't sure if the event was open or not?

Well, it still is, and here's the booth, and it's still marked L$425.



Also, I ran into Arkivet at Shop 'n Hop! Her gift is the Crystalline Horns in Candycorn. Free for anyone who wanders by!

Meanwhile...hmmm.



The "Famous" Spook House, it says.



So I'm at Jenia's Very Spooky Haunted Halloween Land...I am already unimpressed.



And there's Jenia...and she's on moderate land.

Wearing that.



Well, let's get this over with.



This little guy was pretty neat, but he reminds me uncomfortably of the Coraline ghost children.



I jumped into the next car, not realizing someone else had done the same thing, and before I could jump out again, we were off. Well, let's make the best of it...and apparently 'the best' includes game rips. These are two iterations of Alice from Alice: Madness Returns.



And this lass is from Resident Evil, I believe, where a lot of the mesh zombies on the grid come from.

I may have to take back something said earlier about the maker of this particular dark ride: namely, I thought the game rips were annoying, but pervasive enough on the grid some people may just not know what they mean. But going through this ride, seeing the same exact infringing properties--could it be that the maker included those game rips in the sales package??

If so, there's extremely disheartening.

Two out of five skulls, and that only because Jenia says if she's on the parcel, then every rider gets five Linden, and on Halloween, she's raising it to ten Lindens. So...a small amount of free Lindens if she's there, at least.

If nothing else, Jenia did look lovely in that outfit...it just wasn't designed for moderate sims.

you smile and laugh at me, but you don't see a thing

One more for the night. The description says:

"Welcome to the Haunted Woods for adults. Midnight and mouse look is advised. Enjoy all we have to offer that includes Zombies, Horror, Haunted House, Haunting, RLV Trap, Forest, Animesh, Clown, Scary, Demon, Gang Bang, Werewolf, Ghosts, and sex."

I am prepared to be thoroughly unimpressed.

And I am:

[22:43] Second Life: Only members of a certain group can visit this area.

I'm not joining your group just to see your haunt, my dude. Moving on.

Wait, there's a notecard. It has a landmark. Okay, let's try there.



Touch for weapons? Nope, I was right the first time. NOW moving on.



You know what? I've covered this before, but I have to go through some half-decent haunt this week, so...here we are again, at the Haunted Catacombs at Universal Temple.



Not much has changed, but I'm amused that the kraken decided to ride for a bit with me.



I have zero idea if Grimworx is even on the grid these days, but this is one of their original haunts. Pretty much just a transparent flat image, with flexi from the bottom up, not top down as most pieces use. They have this amusing little wobble to them, and they're still cool to see.



Arachnophobe alert, for any haunts that feature active spider content. I had a couple shots closer, but I think this is all I need to show. There's not a lot of spider bits, but there's enough.



And then...everything went up in flames.



After that, several haunts, and then a slightly darker patch of tunnel with snakes. The use of full bright on some of the props is starting to slightly jar, I will admit. And the snakes were so dark in the water, with my environment settings, I felt I should bump up the brightness. It's darker in the catacombs.



The only real glitch happened at the very end of the ride--when this chainsaw clown suddenly popped out of the wall and sawed through me. And kept sawing through me. Over and over again while I wondered if this was just a really long end sequence or if something had gone wrong.

Finally, I got out on my own and swam to the stairs, shaking my head, and went up only gouting a slight bit of blood from the chainsaw cuts.

All in all, this is nearly G-rated at this point, and exactly the level of relaxing, comfortable haunt I needed. Tempted to give five out of five skulls for that alone, but--that end sequence does them in. There are people who would hit that and--perhaps even justifably--freak out.

So it's four out of five skulls, but that's still pretty good. If you've never gone, you should go at least once to appreciate what early SL had to do for haunts.