The Haunted House Tour 4: French Revolution

Once we were all in, the door was quickly shut and our host did a rapid head count to be sure we had not lost more than the three we already knew about.

We took stock of the room we had entered. We were in a black painted section separated by a low red rope from a more colourful scene depicting a French revolution execution with costumed manikins in the roles of guards, executioner and female aristocratic victim. This, we were informed, was another illusion demonstration, with the guillotine being used on another guide costumed as a housemaid. He apologised that he was unable to demonstrate this; citing the lack of victim, because she had needed the day off to attend her mother who was ill. He said that they had planned to make up for the deficiency by chopping the head from the manikin.

To our surprise, another of the dwindling group of girls, volunteered to take the place of the missing staff member. She commented, "After all what the worst that could happen? Besides, they say troubles come in threes and we've already had three, so this must be totally safe, especially if they regularly do it on a staff member." It crossed my mind that we only had Barnes' word for this.

Barnes unhooked the rope and invited us to get a closer look at the threatening device. He then busied himself with lifting the stock and dragging the manikin from the bench behind the guillotine and lurching with it to prop it in a corner. During this task the manikin's head became detached and rolled and span for a short while until the wig fell off. The butler picked up the errant head and tucked under the skirts that the body wore. He also moved the executioner figure to the side, offering the opportunity to release the blade to one of the girl volunteer's two remaining friends.

It took surprisingly little time to recruit one of her friends to the role of executioner; people react to loosing friends in different ways, some will court danger, others will help them. There was a bit of a delay, when the volunteer insisted that she wanted to be dressed the part. She whipped off her dress and stood in her underwear until her friend and Barnes had removed the manikin from the fancy French aristocrat dress and the other girl from the group helped get her into it.

"So, Chloe, how would you like to experience this illusion? Facing the blade, or facing the basket?" offered Barnes. This was the first time I had heard the girl's name, but I guess it could have been mentioned when I wasn't paying attention.

"I think that watching the blade would be a bit intimidating and don't want to spoil things by screaming. So, I think facing down." Chloe's expression showed she was a lot less happy about volunteering than she had been at the outset. Her friend, Bella, also seemed less certain she wanted to be involved in the demonstration in an accident-prone haunted house, but this was judging from her stance, because we could not see her face under the executioners hood that she had borrowed from the manikin she was standing in for.

"Ok, what's going to happen is we cover Chloe's body with the sheet of fabric, once she is in place. Then when I give the word the blade and then her head will drop and I'll pick the fake head from the basket, which is your cue to take photos if you brought cameras, then there with be a brief pause while we pretend to reattach Chloe's head and we can move on to the next exhibit."

Barnes turned to Chloe saying, "Don't worry, about the head dropping thing; it's all part of the illusion; you don't have to do anything, except keep your nerve."

"Are you absolutely sure this is safe?" asked Chloe and then lay on her front on the bench behind the guillotine and inched forward to put her neck in the path of the blade.

"Of course, I am. Mrs Mills checks it each morning and says that so long as the stock remains the same way round it'll be safe. I never remove it from the guides and I've done this dozens of times with 'Martha the maid' and she is still about, to go and look after her mum."

Seeming marginally reassured, Chloe moved forward the final inches and lay down so that her neck was in the half circle in the lower part of the stock. Barnes seemed to be particularly careful about closing the top half over Chloe's neck and locking it into place. Between them Barnes and Bella settled a big sheet for cloth over Chloe's body, but from my position I could see her feet sticking out beyond the end of the cloth and the bench.

"Ok, Chloe, we'll do it on the count of three. So, don't be surprised if something happens on three. One, Two Three!" Barnes counted. On three Bella pulled the lever that released the rope that held the blade and the massive wooden weight on top suspended at the top of the frame. There was a grinding noise as the blade hurtled down onto Chloe's neck. As the weight was stopped by the stock there was a loud thump and Chloe's head appeared to topple into the basket below. With this thump came a scream from Bella as Barnes darted forward with unexpected speed to lift a head from the basket

Barnes lifted a head from the basket by its hair. The head looked remarkably like Chloe; I had been expecting a noticeably different head, because the one in the basket should have matched this 'Martha the Maid', we had been told about. Also unexpected was the sticky red fluid dripping from the neck of the head or the fact that this head blinked twice at us before closing its eyes and quivering its lip for a few seconds more before becoming still.

As we all came round to believing that the head in Barnes' hand was Chloe's severed head, instead of a fake one, there was a twitching behind the guillotine and a headless body tangled in a sheet drenched in blood toppled from the bench and rolled twice before coming to a halt with a couple of final twitches.

My mind must have been working overtime to realise that this dreadful scenario was inevitable from the moment that the poor dead Chloe had volunteered. Barnes had said the plan was to lop off the manikin's head so the guillotine must have been set up that morning to chop and not be safe. I almost felt sorry for Barnes, being responsible of Chloe's demise, because he had not thought it through or received the proper training to operate the guillotine safely if circumstances changed. He did look horrified and dropped the head into the basket, before grabbing the executioner's hoop from Bella's head and ushering us rather forcefully from the room to the next exhibit. I heard him muttering under his breath, but I could not discern what the words were.