On Saturday night, three friends and I went to the Haunted Hayride at Griffith Park.  I hoped for some overpriced cheap thrills and instead found something far more terrifying: a Purgatory filled with lost souls searching, pleading, clawing for escape. It starts promisingly enough.  The smell of fresh hay hangs in the air, red and green lights cut through the manufactured fog, intricately carved jack-o-lanterns lay about.  Vendors dressed as zombies circulate through the crowd selling drinks, hot dogs, and candy.  I hop up and down, an excited five year old swept up in the carnie-goodness of it all.  My friends and I go to stand on line. The line is long. Very long. It stretches maybe two hundred meters up a hill.  It loops in on itself a few times.  Just to the side, several small sideshows have been set up to entertain the crowd.  They don’t seem particularly active.  Danny Elfman music pumps from speakers strategically placed around the line.  The fake fog hangs thick.  I’m still excited. A guy behind us is markedly sullen.  “How long is this line,” he gripes to his girlfriend.  Then he plunks himself on a bale of hay.  My friend leans over to me “What a jerk,” she says, “Why can’t he get in the spirit of this thing?”  I nod.  What a jerk. Ahead of us are three guys in their early twenties.  At some point, a costumed character comes up and shocks one of them.  The kid shrieks like a six year old girl.  He jumps up and covers his face with his hands.  I think he might be crying. We decide that we like these kids and will do everything in our power to ride with them.  Everything is more fun with shrieks and...