Chick Tract Review: Happy Halloween

Jack Chick sez: It was supposed to be a fun Halloween, visiting a “Haunted House” for a great scare. But when an accident claims a boy’s life, his friends learn there is a real hell waiting for all those who die without Jesus.

For his next Halloween tale, Jack Chick takes a break from the usual conspiracy of witches and druids. Instead, he offers up a parable to demonstrate that God, not good works, will get you into Heaven. Jack is obsessed with this particular trope, and is apparently convinced that Hell is full of good people, while Heaven is packed with dickweeds who skated through the Pearly Gates on a technicality.

I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Halloween. But, hey. Whatever.

It’s Halloween night, and three friends have gathered in front of the local spook house. Bobby, with his delicate, feminine features and Adolph Hitler haircut, is the protagonist of our little morality play. His buddy Timmy is a brash and smirking young tough who looks quite street in his zigzag sweater. Filling out the trio is a bespectacled whiny nerd who never gets a name. However, he wears glasses and sort of looks like Harry Potter, so I’ll call him Harry.

Timmy wants to go into the haunted house, but Harry is reluctant because his mom said not to. Timmy calls him a chicken and, unable to resist the seductive pull of peer pressure, Harry acquiesces.

And oh, what a haunted house. There’s a giant spider, and a witch, and a trap door that dumps the three kids into a tableau of Hell. And when Faux Satan informs them that they’ll be spending ETERNITY there, they gasp audibly and flee.

Make no mistake about it, the boys are terrified. In fact, Timmy is so shaken by the harrowing ordeal brought to him by the local March of Dimes that he runs blindly into the street and gets run down, despite the reflective stripes on his sleeve.

Because he “died in [his] sins,” poor Timmy finds himself consigned to Hell, which looks a lot like the fake Hell from the Haunted House. Satan, who apparently has ample time to meet and greet each new arrival personally, even taunts Timmy with the same speech about how he’ll be there for ETERNITY! And yeah, I imagine burning in Hell is pretty bad. But burning in Hell while wearing a sweater? That’s got to SUCK!

Meanwhile, Bobby and Harry are pretty distraught over the grisly death of their friend. And who could blame them? Fortunately, Harry’s mom is Mrs. Baxter, the Sunday school teacher. The boys turn to her in their grief, and Mrs. Baxter comforts them by assuring them that Timmy is roasting in Hell.

You see, Mrs. Baxter tried to lead Timmy to Christ, but he wasn’t having any of it. He called her a fanatic and he laughed at her, so I guess he deserved what happened to him. Mrs. Baxter explains that Timmy quit Sunday school because he was more concerned with impressing his worldly friends, such as the local chapter of NAMBLA…

Because of that bad decision, Mrs. Baxter says, Timmy was sent to Hell forever! And it doesn’t matter that Timmy was a good kid, because that whole belief that good people go to Heaven and evil people go to Hell is “a lie straight from the devil.” We’ve all sinned, which means we’re all bound for Hell. But God loved us so much that he decided to create a little loophole. Basically, all you have to do is pick the right religion out of the 4,000,000,000,000 possible choices, and you’ll get into Heaven with all of the rapists and murderers.

By this point, poor Bobby’s mascara is running. He asks one last time if there’s any hope for his good friend Timmy, and Mrs. Baxter tells him no. Timmy screwed up and must now spend eternity burning in Hell. Case closed.

Well, that’s all Bobby has to hear. He drops to his knees and asks Jesus into his heart. And even though his best friend is currently being torn to shreds by demonic maggots with the faces of Ann Coulter, Bobby doesn’t seem to mind. He feels safe because he knows he’ll go to Heaven when he dies. So fuck Timmy.

And Happy Halloween!