There are a number of would-be Wayside attractions that are strange in name alone. Mystery sites tend to be the worst offenders and I am a perpetual victim, not because I find the tricks particularly difficult to situate in my knowledge of physics and perspective, but because each site tends to throw its own bent on the why of the mystery. I’ve been to a place that claimed and alien ship had touched down on the spot and changed the very nature of the ground it briefly rested upon. I’ve been to any number of places that claim to be burial grounds- of local celebrities, of native peoples, and of family members. More modern sites will sometimes skew a little sci-fi, offering a technobabble monologue for the strangeness that almost, but doesn’t quite, actually explain anything. 

Most of all, I like these places because they are safe. Each is a known quantity and I can let my guard down and enjoy the bored teenage workers and the gaudy, aging sets, and the dramatic reactions of children and adults who lose themselves more fully to whatever flavor of mystery is on the menu. 

‘The Living Statuary’ is not a mystery area. It isn’t advertised as such. It attempts no explanation as to its name nor purpose. Even the guide is tight-lipped:

‘Signs at the gate indicate that ‘The Living Statuary’ opens well after sunrise and closes before twilight. Like a public park, there is no particular enforcement of the hours and unlike a public park, there is very little understanding as to what threatens an afterhours visitor.’

Unfortunately, I arrive at sunset and because ‘The Living Statuary’ is far from just about anything else, I determine it would be a massive waste of time to not enter and, without thinking about it too hard, acknowledge that I’m willing to put my life on the line to avoid such a waste. I do pack my ‘danger bag’ which, over the years, has come to include several flashlights, extra water, a secondhand and often-wrong GPS system, a whistle, and a handgun I retrieved from the top of a pillar that has not been cleaned or fired since coming under my ownership but nevertheless signifies to certain dangerous persons that I might mean business. 

I look at the handgun, thrown loosely in the bag with the other items, and wonder if I actually do mean business. 

Probably not.

The statues cast long shadows in the fading sun, their arrangement in such precise rows that the pattern is dizzying. They are eerie, the way any statue is in the dark, but none sport the red flags of immediate danger, such as holding weapons or leaking fluid or posing in such a way that suggests they were once people, turned to stone against their will. I turn away once and turn back again, checking the statues against the careful mental photograph I hold in my head. None seem to have moved. 

That’s that.

I pass through ‘The Living Statuary’ unbothered and, finding it goes on much further than I expected, determine to make it to the end and back, at least. The rows are straight enough that I can still spy the dull brown of the camper behind me and, though we have entered twilight, truly, now, the light isn’t such that it’s hard to navigate. By the time I reach the end and turn around, I’m beginning to think that ‘The Statuary’ may even be a pleasant destination. I quiet the part of me that worries this may be some magic worked on me, that the ground itself may be convincing me to stay and accept peace and become a statue myself. It does raise the question, though. 

Why is this as pleasant as it is?

The answer, I quickly realize, is heat. It’s a crisp autumn night and the wind, when it touches my face, is cold. But, in an open jacket and flannel beneath, I’m warm and comfortable. I’m warmed by the statues which, as I move my hand toward the nearest, a woman in a half-kneel, as though looking at a child, give off the heat of a living human.

I don’t touch the woman and I try to remember whether I’ve touched any of the statues. It seems impossible that I haven’t brushed up against them. Even less possible to make it to the camper without doing so again. Somewhere nearby, someone starts to cry. A voice only. 

I run. 

The voices come at once, either triggered by my clumsy retreat or by the final dying of the daylight. Gleeful cheers. Bursts of anger. Weeping. The statues begin to project the sounds of a crowd and their heat becomes sweltering. By the time I make it to the camper, the door is nearly too hot too handle. I wrench it open anyway and hope the heat hasn’t made it into the engine. I’m not sure the camper has ever driven outside autumn. I’m not sure how it reacts to warmth. 

The camper starts on the third try, a dramatic habit is has even in the best of times. I accelerate and leave ‘The Living Statuary’ to bake under the moonlight. 

-traveler

‘The Fake Tree Arboretum’ has been an entry in the guide for a while. I know this because I’ve done some of the little research I tend to do before I visit a place and when I search the notes on my phone, there is evidence of my attempting to work it into the travel over the years. It hasn’t quite come together for a variety of reasons. Mostly I just miss it- it’s on a stretch of highway that hasn’t proven particularly useful in my bouncing commute. It gets pushed to the back burner. A few times I was snowed out or otherwise distracted by some personal disaster. If it had happened a few more times, I’d make the argument that the fates were keeping me from ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum,’ but this time, there’s every reason to think I’ll make it. 

But now the entry is changed. 

‘The Wayside’s decay is not frozen, reader. Those teetering monuments, those failing businesses, those rotting floorboards- they are symptoms of the end of a place and, like distant relatives, we who visit the Wayside arrive in time to make our peace and leave before death occurs. It is easy to become detached on the Wayside, but consider that detachment is a symptom like the others. Consider that you may already be claimed by death, and flee. 

And as you flee, consider visiting ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum,’ which was once a thriving Wayside attraction but has since shuttered its doors and had its shuttered doors kicked open. ‘The Abandoned Fake Tree Arboretum’ carries on like a corpse and we, still distant relatives, now arrive just in time to say a few words at its funeral.’

Sometimes it feels like the guide may be passing judgement on me. Should I have come to ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum’ earlier? And would the money I spent there have kept it afloat? That seems doubtful. Is it wrong to visit the corpse? If the author thought so, maybe he wouldn’t have kept the entry. 

Still, it doesn’t feel good, taking up space in the parking lot and looking out over a dream someone once had- a dream of displaying fake trees. Old forum discussions indicate that ‘The Fake Tree Arboretum’ was the holiday stop for a while, that they would do up the whole forest in lights and hire a santa and make cocoa. It’s a long way from any city, but people would make the trek. Some wax nostalgic about a haunted Halloween forest they did as a one-off that didn’t sell quite so well. Some say that was the beginning of the end. 

‘The Abandoned Fake Tree Arboretum’ is situated in one of those warehouse buildings, roughly the shape and size of a Home Depot. A previous visitor has done me the favor of breaking the glass doors at the front and I step through to find the place largely taken over by spiders, by what is, perhaps, the largest spider colony on earth. The webs are strewn between the brittle plastic branches of the trees, so clotted in some places as to appear completely white. Cloudlike. The spiders themselves rest on the webs, still in the way a thing can be still but ready to pounce. I get the distinct sense that they know I am here. I get the simultaneous sense that they are not particularly afraid. 

I take the long way around the trees, afraid that attempting the forest itself will end in broken webs. The spiders twitch as a I walk by and their tiny eyes glow in my flashlight. This constellation of lights draws my attention to the center of the warehouse, where a massive display tree stands, now a white monolith quivering with caught insects. The droning makes my head hurt and I don’t recognize that it’s getting louder until the windows- those remaining in their frames- begin to shake.

I wake up outside the camper an hour later. A web has been drawn across the frame of the door leading to ‘The Abandoned Fake Tree Arboretum.’ The spiders have claimed it, and I imagine it will soon fade from the Wayside entirely.

-traveler

As a rule, I tend not to engage in any of the interactive costume-wearing portions of the attractions I visit. This comes across as being a bit of a spoil-sport somehow, and despite my travelling mostly alone all these years, there is a tendency for other visitors to sense my hesitation and to take it as an opportunity to offer to hold my phone and take my picture or otherwise call me out on my perceived unwillingness to dress up for a photo-op. 

The thing is: travelers are dirty. Grime is unavoidable on the road and I say this as a usually-filthy person myself. I sweat, sometimes, my back sticking to the driver’s seat of the camper when the sun shines through the windshield and heats up the cab. I drop crumbs on myself and spill drinks and sometimes wear the same shirt for a day or two on end. I rarely change my pants. I wear the same shoes every day- their reeking inners plugged up by my feet.

I do change my socks. 

My point, in all this, is that I wouldn’t want to wear a costume after somebody like me has worn it. There are parasites out there. And communicable skin diseases. Bad vibes, even- they could permeate the clothes and make for a rough day. I avoid costumes where I can but, as I pull into the parking lot of ‘Dress Like Me,’ I get the distinct sense I won’t get out of it this time.

‘The general consensus on ‘Dress Like Me’ is that it is one man’s fetish put on display in such honest terms that there is something almost wholesome about it. The owner, Freddie Lawson, does not agree. He claims that there is nothing sexual about his business, has chosen, instead, to think about it as a sort of art project. This, he explains to interviewers who are dressed in his clothes- they must be in order to secure the interview. Lawson does not speak to women who aren’t dressed like him and rarely speaks to men unless they do the same. He’s quick to end any interview that suggests there is a deviance in this hobby of his. Sometimes he posts rambling political tirades online. Reading them, you wouldn’t think he’d be so hung up on clothes. 

Lawson doesn’t have much in terms of style. This is not to say his clothes are out of fashion, though some certainly are. It’s just that his wardrobe is, at once, eclectic and run-of-the-mill. The wildest items he owns tend to be t-shirts from dive bars and old shirts featuring the patterns of yesteryear. His weirdness leans vintage, which makes it a little hip, even, but not any more interesting than one might find at the local thrift store. If one were to dress as Lawson for the day, the costume would be unlikely to raise the eyebrows of the general public, which brings us back to the question: why?

We know, of course. We just want Lawson to admit it.’

“Well a fine welcome to you, young man.” Lawson is older than I’d imagined, likely in his late seventies. He’s built like an old farmer gone soft and he walks with a frailness that he doesn’t seem entirely used to. He’s the sort of man that slaps a stranger on the back when he greets them. He meets me in the parking lot, “Just you, eh? That makes it easy. And you’re round about the right size. Come on in and we’ll see what we’ve got for you.”

The ‘Dress Like Me’ experience costs five dollars. The payment is comforting, somehow, placing this in the sterile realm of business transactions rather than whatever else it might be construed as. Less comforting is that there is no ticket- that Lawson simply tosses the bill loose on a table in his excitement to get me to the bedroom.

“Had some people in to do up the closet.” Lawson takes the stairs slowly. “Everything hanging and in order now. Kneeling over those old plastic boxes were aggravating my knees and everything came out creased. Now you and me get to enjoy it all hung and ironed.”

He opens the door with a flourish and, indeed, I see that he’s got several closets and that each is packed tight with clothes hanging on reinforced bars. In the center of it all is one of those full-length, multi-angle mirror situations one tends to see in stores.

There’s a camera and he sees me see it. “No worries about that one. Just some security.” Lawson walks over and produces a small piece of paper with a strip of painter’s tape already adhered to the upper side. He uses this to block the camera.

“You’re not worried about me?” I ask. They may be the first words I’ve spoken to him, and they produce a belly laugh. 

“Let’s get you dressed.”

-traveler

‘Rarer, now, but not entirely gone are the deep South’s ‘Play-dough Separating Machines,’ largely placed in gas stations and in the foyers of highway diners. These machines stand about the height of a man and feature a simple set of illustrated instructions, indicating that a user might dump their rolled up balls of mixed-color play-dough into the cavernous mouth of the machine, place a number of little tubs equal to the number of colors represented in the ’return’ area at the bottom, and then work the crank until all of the play-dough has been processed. In a properly functioning machine, the amalgamation will be separated into the sum of its parts and a small drawer off to the side will fill with hair and dust and whatever else non-play-dough may have happened to have been mashed into the clump prior to separation. 

These machines, which have no electronic components, have been the source of a great deal of head-scratching by interested engineers. Several have been taken apart in an attempt to understand their technology but, in all cases, this has resulted in the destruction of the machine. Once disassembled, nobody seems quite sure how to fit the things back together. The consensus is that they shouldn’t work. 

But they do.

‘Play-dough Separating Machines’ have recently lost some respectability for being associated with a network of militias that won’t quite admit to being white-supremacist, but which freely suggest there might be a great deal more harmony and progress if human races did not mix. It’s unclear whether these machines originated with the racists, or if they’ve been adopted as a convenient mascot in retrospect.

Well-intentioned backlash has led to the destruction of several ‘Play-dough Separating Machines.’ Seek them out now before they’re gone for good.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

When the first shovelful of dirt hits the surface above me, I wonder if I wasn’t wrong in springing for the glass coffin option at ‘The Graveyard Capsule Hotel.’ My instinct was that the glass would provide some relief from the oppressive claustrophobia of the situation, at least at the outset, but a traditionally opaque coffin would have given me the opportunity to pretend that something else- anything else, really- was happening. With the dim light allotted to my “room,” which, to be fair, is bigger than a coffin should be, I pick up the check-in information and attempt to focus on the information presented there. It reminds me, in words that are infuriating in their calm, that the concierge will be using only enough dirt to provide even coverage and that I won’t be a full six-feet deep. 

It also suggests ringing the front office a full 30 minutes before needing to use the restroom. The coffin door can be opened at any time, it reminds me, but I’m on the line for sheets that may be muddied by dirt that hasn’t been properly cleared away before exit.

A rock thuds down on the plexiglass above me and I click off the light to find myself in the pitch dark of under-earth. I recommit to my plan to just fall asleep and get it over with.

Glad I’m not wearing a suit. 

‘Travelers are advised against ‘The Graveyard Capsule Hotel,’ which bills itself as a pop-up mortality experience. ‘The Experience’ appears suddenly in different parts of the country, always leaving before inquiries about public land usage can be made, and there have been at least three confirmed instances of ‘accidental abandonment,’ meaning that three people were forgotten in the ground past their normal check-out time and, for one reason or another, were unable to immediately free themselves. 

“We think of that as part of ‘The Experience,’ you know,’ said Peter Dahl, owner and operator of ‘The Graveyard Capsule Hotel.’ Not everyone who dies gets flowers on their grave.”

When sleep proves difficult I order a mug of ‘sleepytime’ tea from the room-service line, without really considering the logistics. There is something chemical about the brew, I note, and then I wake up nearly a full day later, well-rested and wet with spilled tea. A note pinned to my pillow suggests the money for the tea has been withdrawn from my wallet.

Not bad, from a service perspective.

-traveler