Friday, Oct. 30 & Saturday, Oct. 31, 6–10 p.m., $20
The Car Wash Lodge, Morrisville
At the entrance of The Car Wash Lodge in Morrisville, North Carolina, I almost turned my car around and sped the other way. I’ve never gotten a real car wash, but that wasn’t the problem. The issue at hand was that several teenagers—actually, what appeared to be the better part of a high school football team—were waiting outside the place, dressed as clowns, ghouls, and monsters. And they were being paid to scare me.
For all intents and purposes, Halloween is canceled this year. Trick-or-treating? Forget it. Themed parties? Doubly forget it. Haunted houses? Indoor group activities are out, leaving you to social distance solo with ghosts—definitely forget it.
Enter the quickly growing phenomenon of “haunted car wash,” which feels CDC-safe (you stay in your car; the haunters are outside and masked) but scary. In other words, as the billing for dozens of kindred haunted car washes state, “good, clean fun.” Proceeds at The Car Wash Lodge’s version go to Children’s Flight of Hope, a Morrisville-based nonprofit that helps with air-transportation costs for children in need of specialized medical care. So it’s for a good cause, too. Two time slots offer two levels of terror: a “Friendly Forest Hunt” runs from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., followed by the “Tunnel of Terror” for the stout of heart.
I am faint of heart; nevertheless, I turned my wheel into the Haunted Car Wash. Almost immediately, four ghouls surrounded my car and began banging on the windows. Having had very little social interaction the past six months, I was almost tempted to open the windows and chat, but teenagers are scary—with or without costumes—and they were very committed to the bit. When I did get the courage to unroll the window at the admission station, a monster named Cameron broke character to affirm that the gig was good.
“Yeah, it’s, cool,” he said of the two-weekend-long haunted makeover. “We’re just here all day, and then suddenly it’s this.”
At that, a tall Brontë child gone wrong screamed and dragged her nails down the car window and we were off into the Tunnel of Terror. I’ve never been to a car wash, so driving onto the floss-thin wheel partition only to cede control of the vehicle was terrifying.
“Put the car in neutral,” directed the calm carwash guru, the only person not in costume—maybe the football coach. I put it in D3. He was kind: “No, the other neutral.”
Nothing feels fine right now, and the Morrisville car wash did not ease election jitters or fears about the future. But for a few moments, ensconced in the soapy jaws of the Tunnel of Terror with several Chuckies banging on the window, things felt appropriately scary—the good kind, in which the brief thrill of anxiety is quickly surpassed by relief.
And I do mean quickly: the whole thing was over in less than 10 minutes, and then my car was clean.
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