Cedar Hill, Texas, 9.30pm – a gaggle of 20 teenagers shuffle in tear-stained horror through a dark, claustrophobic trailer. Led by a tour guide dressed as the Devil, they watch wild-eyed as their peers act out, among other scenes, a Columbine-style classroom massacre, date rape, abortion, suicide, child molestation and a drink-driving accident. By the end of it, they are visibly shaken; many curl up on the grass to cry. It’s not quite the Hallowe’en treat they’d been expecting.

Every weekend evening in the six weeks leading up to Hallowe’en, the Trinity Church orders in the requisite buckets of theatrical blood and prepares for America’s biggest “hell house”. The audience, most of whom are between the ages of 10 and 18, have paid $10 (£6) each to experience the vignettes, each constructed around a hellfire-and-damnation theme with a far-right Christian message.

Like medieval morality plays (which grew out of the mystery play tradition specifically because religious writers sought a more directly didactic and disciplining type of drama), the aim of the show is simple: to scare its audience into the arms of God. And, over the past 15 years, it’s proved surprisingly successful: last year, visitors to the Trinity Church hell house numbered more than 10,000. It is now estimated that some 3,000 hell houses are presented by American evangelical churches every year, with “How to Put on Your Own Hell House” manuals, costing some $300 (£180), exported to Canada the Philippines and South America.

Fear and loathing

Their growth is not without opposition. Gay rights groups, who take umbrage at scenes showing homosexuals going to Hell – a favourite theme in hell houses – have been particularly vocal. “Scaring children about sexuality, giving them inaccurate and harmful information, violates the responsibility of parents and religious leaders,” says the Rev Debra Haffner, former CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, and a spokesperson for gay rights. But, perhaps more significantly, hell houses have also attracted criticism from fellow evangelical Christian groups.

Justin Thacker, head of theology at the Evangelical Alliance in Britain, shudders at the thought that hell houses might cross the Atlantic. “I have never visited one, but from what I have gathered they are not the way I would want to present Christianity,” he says. “They deliberately try to use fear to promote Christianity, but that is not the kind of Christianity I know and love – and I don’t think that is what Jesus’s message was. I don’t believe you can scare people into having an authentic relationship with God. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Those who organise hell houses are unrepentant. “Yes, it’s radical, but our goal is to reach people,” counters Pastor Keenan Roberts, who, although insisting that the movement must have been God’s idea in order for it to have become so successful, is largely credited with being the first to host a hell house, 18 years ago at his church in Roswell, New Mexico.

“What we’re doing is presenting real-life issues – abortion, homosexuality. These are sinful choices that have damaging consequences. But through Jesus, we can save people and get them to a place of safety,” he explains from his new posting at the New Destiny Christian Center in Thornton, Colorado. Is he concerned about scaring impressionable teenagers and children? “People criticise us – I’ve heard people call it child abuse and brainwashing. But that is not looking at it from the proper perspective of what outreach does. We recommend it for children aged 12 and up. That’s what we feel is appropriate. Millions and millions of people have been to a hell house because they want to. No one’s forcing them to see it. They want to go.”

Hell on earth

As the sun sets behind Trinity Church in Dallas, that certainly seems to be the case.

By 7pm, a long queue of several hundred eager youngsters are waiting for admittance. Given the festive atmosphere, the youthfulness of the crowd and the excited texting on their mobiles, it could be a Jonas Brothers concert. This hell house advises parents to accompany children under 12, but there are no specific laws governing this.

Most in the crowd seem to belong to church groups, but there are individuals, too. Housewife Terri Hines, has driven her three daughters, Kaylie, 16, Elizabeth, 13, and Madison, 11, for 3 hours from their home in Paris, Texas, in the hope that scaring them will keep them both safe and virginal. “The girls need to be prepared. I want them to realise how horrible abortion can be,” she whispers. “They hear and see so much at such a young age now; they need to know there are consequences for bad decisions.”

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