Pennhurst Asylum Haunted House

[Gertie2u]

I think perhaps I would need to speak with the people holding the haunted house there, and to experience the thing before I could really say what I think about this. I know this may be an unpopular statement, but I can see how a thing like this could perhaps go either way depending upon the intent and the way it was handled. I hope that you will hear me out on this.

I myself have two daughters. We have been blessed that both are intelligent, caring girls with very little experience of illness. Perhaps things are different elsewhere, but where we live they've had little experience with people who are challenged mentally or physically. Our local schools have set up their programs for these people such that there is very little day-to-day contact with most of them for children such as mine. Additionally, my children have been blessed to have had very little experience of negative treatment, and especially of anything anywhere near what was done to those poor people. I don't think they have any real way of grasping anything like the true plight of the people in that place.

People have found ways to express the horror and stark realities of the concentration camps of WWII via the Holocaust museums and the museums at remaining concentration camp facilities. I have been to several of them, and I would certainly describe them as true houses of horror. I would also describe them as a much-needed expression of the true horror of what was done for many of our young people. Without something like those, they will never wrap their heads around what happened. I do think it would also be possible to simply put so much scare into what is done to teach people about the true situation at both the concentration camps and this institution so that it would be a complete turn off or terrify people so much they loose sight of the humanity of the thing.

I think if this haunted house holds on to the humanity of the people who were at that institution and draw the kids in by billing it as a haunted house, then that would be fine. If they are failing to be respectful of the people who lived and worked in that institution, then it is a disservice to the people and to the community. I do wonder, though, is this simply what is having to be done in order to pay the bills to keep from destroying the building?

[jkljkl]

There is so much political correctness these days. It does not matter what people do, anymore, someone - somewhere will object to it.