Bangs Bash '07

Before I left for Lyndsey's birthday party, Kyle had but one small request of me: Don't shoot yourself. Not his usual pre-party advice -- typically, most of his admonitions surround my ability to go from zero to hungover in 60 seconds flat -- but an appropriate reminder, nonetheless, given that I once told a college interviewer that the word best used to describe me was "clumsy." Still, I could not be stopped. I was goin' shootin'.

Let's get this out of the way: I am a hypocrite. I am no fan of guns, which I think are too easy to get in this country. But, hey, I -- and many others -- have been a big ball of stress the last few weeks, and blowing off some steam via target practice seemed like just the thing to do. So I set out for the party, late (of course), and worried that the quickly setting sun would put the kibosh on all of my plans.

Don't let Lyndsey fool you: Bangs is really far away. It took me more than an hour to make my way up to the Teters' Knox County homestead, driving north through Columbus' upper reaches and then east, through the strip malls of Sunbury and the quaint core of Centerburg. Finally, as dusk began to set in, I arrived.

There were already some partygoers set up in the field behind the Teter house, using a paper plate as target practice. I half-ran up to them, eager to take a shot before the sun went down. Lin, our gunman (so to speak) of the evening generously obliged, showing me the proper way to hold a shotgun, load it and fire it. Remember what I said earlier about guns? Lin is a shining example of a responsible gun owner. He didn't allow anyone to drink before shooting, and gave really great, thoughtful instruction to all of us. Thanks to help from my awesome teacher, I proved to be not a terrible shot, all things considered. I hit that paper plate target, and then the next morning, I managed to hit all of the targets (fire-singed beer cans from the night before).

As it turned out, the shooting didn't even end up being close to the most dangerous activity of the night. That particular honor went to our visit to the House of Nightmares.

The House of Nightmares, about a quarter-mile down the road from the Teters, is, I was told, a former poorhouse-cum-Christian college-cum-haunted house of the professional variety. The hulking Gothic-style building served as a haunted house as recently as Halloween 2006, before it was closed for structural reasons. Being the mature young men and women we are, me, Lin, Lyndsey, Brett and Nikki headed out in the wee hours of Saturday morning to check the place out. We quickly gained entry -- a back door was wide open -- and then walked in, past spray-painted murals and a kitchen redone to look like a murder scene, with red paint spattering the walls.

Brett was the adventurous one, and persuaded us to climb up first one set of stairs and then another, the piles of animal poo of indeterminate origins growing larger as we went. It didn't take long to determine what the source of the feces was. First a high-pitched squeal and then -- Bats! -- someone shouted, and I crouched to the ground, my increasing proximity to the poop be damned. Rabies avoided -- at least for the moment -- we continued on, ducking periodically to avoid the dive-bombing bats. Brett moved on ahead of us, guided by the light of his cell phone, eventually calling us to check out the scene he'd happened upon.

Peering through a doorway, he motioned us over. It quickly became clear what the building's structural issues were. Several of the floors had collapsed on each other, starting right at the threshold. There was a 50-foot drop from where we stood to the first floor, where the pile of rubble, broken beams and plaster, lay. Forget the guns, this was dangerous.

Lesser people would have turned around. Heck, smarter people would have turned around. Did we? Of course not. Brett eyed a ladder hanging from a trapdoor ceiling and continued upward, into the building's attic, and Lin and Lyndsey followed, with me reluctantly bringing up the rear and with Nikki watching from below. In the attic was yet another trapdoor ladder, which Brett quickly climbed, followed again by Lin and Lyndsey after he announced he'd made it to the roof. This time I stayed behind, hunching my shoulders to avoid the bats flying above.

Somehow, everyone managed to not topple off the roof, cave the building in or get us arrested, and we made our way back to the Teters' place, where we drank one last nerve-calming drink by the light of a bonfire and then curled up in our tents, the nylon protecting us from the cool summer night.

More pictures of the weekend's adventures are here and here.

(Above hoto stolen from Lin)