And that was just their version of Halloween

Mira Mesa is one of those places in San Diego that got sort of, out of control. Back in the World War II era the US Navy used to use it as an auxiliary landing field known as Hourglass Field. They also used the surrounding area as a bombing range while the US Army used it as a test area. Around the 1950s it became the residential area supporting the Naval Air Station at Miramar, home of the USN Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) until 1996. In the 1960s, due to it's perfect location between two major highways and its proximity to downtown San Diego, Mira Mesa experienced an uncontrolled housing boom and became an example of unplanned urban sprawl along the highway leading into downtown. It was so poorly planned that it was deficient of the municipal and county infrastructure needed to support its thousands of new residents. In 1971 it was responsible for launching the political career of at least one Republican politician when he ran on a campaign of "No more Mira Mesas!"

I've been to Mira Mesa. (You don't need to know why.)

So has TBogg. I think we'd agree that the lack of schools in Mira Mesa back in the 1960/70s might have had something to do with this:

They expected to see the kind of stuff normally associated with a haunted house: skeletons, ghosts, chain saw-wielding zombies, that kind of thing.

Instead, some teenagers said the images inside the building on Carroll Road in Mira Mesa gave them the shock of their lives: a video of aborted fetuses, an image of a bloody Jesus on a cross, a scene in which an actor portrays a suicidal man clutching a shotgun as the devil urges him to kill himself.

“Then they had (the teenagers) pray and wash their sins,” said Ananda Brisco of Scripps Ranch, whose 14-year-old son went into the building with three of his friends expecting to enjoy a typical Halloween scare.

“We were shocked. . . . I had other people's children with me, and I subjected them to this without their parents' permission. We just thought this was going to be a regular haunted house.”

The haunted house – admission was free and a sign outside advertised “Blood Rain” – turned out to be a production of The Potter's House, an international church that has made news over the years for its graphic, religious-themed Halloween events around the country.

The pastor of the church's San Diego branch, Joe Rice, said the production was meant to “present the gospel of Jesus Christ in a venue other than a church service.” The haunted house was intended as a commentary on the evils of abortion, pornography and school violence, Rice said.

He noted that the free tickets – which were handed out at movie theaters, stores and other public places – warned of graphic content, as did signs in front. Nobody younger than 13 was allowed in.

“Some people will say it's false advertising,” Rice said. “I don't think so because to me it is a haunted house. Freddy Krueger isn't going to walk in with an ax. But that's fairy tale. This is more real. This is a real haunted house to me.”

Still, Brisco and others complained that the true nature of the production wasn't made clear in advance.

“I did not expect that,” said Eunice Apon, 17, a senior at Scripps Ranch High School, adding that she probably wouldn't have gone in had she known what was inside.

“There's one point where this guy looking at porn goes to hell, and I don't believe people who look at porn should go to hell.”

One helluva Halloween. On the other hand, just down the road from Rice's Halloween religious gore-fest, the lions at the San Diego Zoo were demonstrating how they deal with pumpkin-headed, bible-thumping, radicals.

And, since the Halloween version of Bishop T.D. Jakes' ministry is, well, a little different, I wouldn't even want to guess what their Fire House involves. (Pass the CO2 extinguisher, thanks.)