Protester Isaac Thompson, left, engages in a heated discussion with Potter's House's Gary Brock, right, over the scenes depicted in the Potter's Haunted House on Halloween night.

Marcus Larson/News-Register

By DAVID BATES and KATIE ARMES
Of the News-Register

Two kinds of scary - fake and real - collided Friday night in downtown McMinnville, because of a church-sponsored event that drew protesters charging that Potter's House deceptively used Halloween as an opportunity for fire and brimstone evangelism.

A haunted house that opened Thursday on Third Street, just west of the railroad tracks, treated visitors to a 20-minute horror show featuring graphic depictions of suicide, abuse, alcoholism and abortion.

One part featured an enraged husband killing his wife. Another featured gruesome photographs of aborted fetuses.

The series of skits culminated with a bloodied man being dragged off to Hell by demons. One of the hosts then took to the stage and addressed the audience that by that point was stunned into silence.

"Tonight we brought these dramatic scenes before you to enrich the reality that sin is real," he said. "Tonight, your decision to make, you can receive Jesus Christ or you can reject him. And the Bible says that the wages of sin is death."

Following the performance attended by a News-Register reporter, a few raised their hands, indicating they wished to have their sins forgiven - although it appeared that some were already church members.

This brand of evangelizing is a hallmark of Potter's House, a fundamentalist Pentecostal church founded in 1970 by Wayman Mitchell in Prescott, Ariz. Another such event was held this Halloween in Albuquerque, N.M., where it was also met with protests.

Earlier this year, Potter's House pulled off a similar stunt during the Alien Daze celebration downtown - advertising an event that appealed to those who came to celebrate UFOs and extraterrestrial life, only to have the audience discover they'd basically walked into church.

Religion, however, was not what patrons expected when they visited Thursday.

"We went down there because it was advertised as a haunted house," said Julie Weiler. "We thought, 'Oh, this will be cool!'" After discovering what was going on inside, she termed it "false advertising."

"They say it's a haunted house," she said. "It's not a haunted house."

Weiler's 18-year-old daughter, Chemeketa Community College student Cortney Barnes, said she went in knowing what was in store and still found the production offensive. She said she objected when a prop of a dead fetus was brought out.

"I said, 'This is wrong,'" she recalled. That, she said, drew this response from a church organizer: "There will be no opinions or comments in my house, so shut up!"

Barnes noted, "He actually said, 'Shut up!'"

The skits played out before audiences of 15 to 20 mostly young people, whom church organizers say were warned in advance about graphic depictions of violence.

The room rotated between skits, revealing new sets behind curtains. In one skit, performed in a living room set, a young man discovered he'd lost his job.

As he struggled with thoughts of suicide, a demon-like creature growled that he had failed his family, making his life a waste. But an angelic woman urged him to turn to God.

As the cacophony reached its peak, the man placed a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, releasing a flash of light and blast of sound.

As the audience sat stunned, the room rotated and the curtain opened on a hospital room. A teenage girl who just had an abortion sat by a bloodied sheet, crying, with her boyfriend at her side. While a projector flashed slides of teenagers playing with toddlers, intermixed with slides of the same teenagers sitting alone depressed, the girl lamented her decision.

"I had tried to change my mind at the very last minute, before it was too late," she said. "But the nurse looked at me and told me it was too late. Why didn't I stand up to her?"

The slides then showed bloody, dismembered fetuses at various stages of development.

The woman reached into a bowl next to the bed and pulled out a prop representing a dead child. The skit ended with the couple wiping their bloody hands on their clothes.

"I see this as a form of sex education that they're inflicting on my child without my permission," said protester Joe Mahan. "The school does sex ed, and it gets permission first so we can opt out if we want to. But I never had an option of opting out here."

Mahan was one of several protesters gathering in front of the building Friday night.

The mood outside was tense. Tempers flared occasionally as protesters and church volunteers argued loudly. And the crowd spilled out into the street at times.

Potter House organizer John Foley defended the event to a television news reporter from Portland. "Compared to what's on TV right now," he said, "this is child's play."

Church volunteer Joan Gash said the skits had a confrontational aspect, but dealt with issues "that people need to deal with." She said, "We believe there's a heaven and a hell, and we're trying to do our best to make people aware that you need to ask Jesus to come into your heart, that sin cannot enter into heaven."

Protester Dave White agreed that he didn't object to the message of the skits. As a pro-life Christian and Republican, he actually agrees with it for the most part, he said.

But he objected to the method, saying that children entering a haunted house on Halloween expect to be "chased around by Frankenstein and Dracula," not be subject to sermonizing.

"It saddens me that with the skepticism and cynicism with which young people look at the Christian church these days, this is simply going to add to it," White said. "I don't want my church represented this way."

Others echoed the same refrain.

"They're luring kids into this thinking it's a haunted house which it's not," said Vonda Abbey. "It has a message, and the message I don't disagree with. But I disagree with how they're getting kids in there."

Some protesters handed out fliers declaring, "KIDS! This is not a real haunted house!" Others carried signs bearing the same message.

Gash defended the church's approach.

"I don't think they were misled," she said. "People enter into haunted houses with the desire to be frightened, but we didn't do it for that reason, to frighten people - except maybe to show them the issues in their own heart."