Christian Haunts -- Innocence A Precious Thing, Let Kids Be Kids At Halloween

I read with surprise and a little disgust that some Christian groups are creating their own haunted houses in order to teach young people the evils of sin and temptation. ("Halloween is hell at haunted houses of Christian groups," Oct. 31).

The idea of these Christian groups is to counter the idea of Halloween as being a holiday and in their efforts, have taken a fun and innocuous night of "let's pretend" and turned it into a very graphic account of some of life's more bitter realities.

For example, "Hell House" in Marysville. Church volunteers re-create scenes of suicide, a teenager choosing abortion and the funeral of a victim of gang violence, and surprise, the narrator of these gruesome scenes is a demon! Whatever happened to the church teaching the love of God?

The church's youth pastor says "We don't need ghosts and goblins to scare people. We got hard-core reality."

I believe this so-called youth pastor needs to be educated about what it means to be a child. Most parents want their young children to have as much fun as they can without worries, because they will be adults in no time and, at that time, they can worry about life's realities!

When I was a youth, I did not worry about life's realities, I worried about the amount of candy I was going to get by trick-or-treating at my neighbors' houses. I had childhood innocence because I did not know about abortion, gang violence and suicide. Childhood innocence is a precious thing to have; when a child loses it, it is irreplaceable.

For a fee, a child can go to a Christian group's haunted house and learn about all of the bad things there are in life, because the church believes that in order to reach young people you must be on the cutting edge!

If you asked any child what they would like to do on Halloween, do you think they would like to go to a Christian group's haunted house and learn about abortion?

Not! Let kids be kids!

Bryan David Hong Seattle