Haunted House closes mental institution theme

[rashore]

Quote

Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, Calif. will have one less attraction at its annual Halloween event this year after mental health advocates complained about a virtual reality attraction.

Fear VR was a new haunted house ride at Knott’s Scary Farm event featuring a storyline about a possessed patient running around a mental institution. Park visitors were strapped into chairs and moved through the attraction wearing VR headsets. 

The hospital-themed attraction, which opened Thursday Sept. 22, was originally named Fear VR 5150, numbers for the official state code used to authorize the detention of a person who may be suffering from a mental disorder that causes an individual to be considered a danger to others or himself or herself.

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2016/09/29/knotts-berry-farm-closes-controversial-mental-institution-themed-haunted-house.html

Second article about this: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/09/29/virtual-reality-haunted-house-shut-down-after-sjws-brand-it-hurtful-to-mentally-ill/

 

I thought this one interesting to share. Mental illness and places associated with the holding and treatment of the mentally ill have long terrified people, and have been a serious part of haunting lore for a long time. There's good reason behind why there are so many haunted asylums and like properties. We, as humans, have a deep rooted fear of medical situation/institutions in general. In the U.S. at least there is the dark and grim history of how mental illness has been classified, handled and treated, so that's an extra deep fear. And it's irrevocably linked with medical asylums, like for TB, where a lot of people were ill and died. And then these places are abandoned, and that always increases the haunt factor. That's why these themes are used so heavily in the amusement haunt industry. Because the psychological conditioning for the scare is prevalent almost universally. And because medical/mental scares are usually fairly easy to set up and pull off.

I'm a bit disappointed that Knott's pulled the attraction- the whole point of a haunt is to mess with your sensibilities. It's insensitive to almost all sensitive things- mental illness and medical butchery, murders and their victims, anyone buried in a graveyard, people of the cloth.... and a lot of other things too.

[SHaYap]

Emotions are to a certain extent energy, and that energy may possibly be transferable through various ways and means ... some are able to detect these energies ... empathetic individuals is but a small example ... there are some beliefs that material objects can store or is also able to be influenced by these energies ... an example would be picking up and holding an object belonging to a loved one and knowing ... I used to play a little game with my friends where I place objects on a table and have their other half pick out what is and what is not ... the most impressive occasion was when a woman picked up not only one but all (three out of the six) and rated them from the most to the least ... yeah the couple claims to be telepathic to each others thoughts as well ... and they are still happily married now for almost 18 years or so ... no children though which to me may be an indication of the state of the world as it is now rather than the state of their relationship, but that's not the point.

One of the things I find wanting with the standards demanded of ' telepathy ' when the situation arises where evidence or proof is demanded ... its Charles Xavier of the X Men or it ain't real .. problem is Charles Xavier ain't real in the first place  ~

~

[rashore]

Um, did you mean to post that in this topic third_eye, or in a different topic about telepathy?

[SHaYap]

1 minute ago, rashore said:

Um, did you mean to post that in this topic third_eye, or in a different topic about telepathy?

Sorry ... I was derailed by my own thoughts on emotion and energies having an effect on the surrounding environment  ...

~

[aquatus1]

Cultural sensitivity is a curious thing.  I personally won't really mind the removal of the mental asylum theme, but I didn't really consider it offensive.  After all, most of the displays were so far removed from the more mundane aspects of mental illness that they didn't really have much more than a superficial connection to the actual medical issue.

However, the horrors of the mental asylum theme are grounded in reality, and that can mean two things: like slavery, it could be a reminder of an era that people don't want used as entertainment; or, like witch hunts and medieval torture, it could still be considered acceptable (inasfar as such things go).