Church to move into former haunted house
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IDAHO FALLS — Chainsaws. Clowns. Shrieks of terror.
All this and more used to fill the rooms of Planet Doom. Now, the rooms will be cleared out of terror attractions and replaced with Bibles, pastors and voices of worship.
In what may be a stroke of divine irony, the building, which used to be Dr. Slaughter’s for almost 20 years and Planet Doom for the past six, will be home to OutWest Bible Church.
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The First Street building has been run by the Bonneville County D.A.R.E. program, using haunted house attractions to raise money for the program itself. D.A.R.E. has now leased the building to the nomadic cowboy church, which has been looking for a home since its beginnings in January 2021.
OutWest Bible Church, formerly Westernsprings Ministry, was spearheaded by Pastor Scotty Brown, whose eastern Idaho roots run deep. Brown has been involved in the community for the better part of 20 years, either rodeoing, coaching wrestling, basketball, and football or pastoring.
He believes it’s his passion and, more truthfully, his purpose to reach the rural cowboy community in eastern Idaho with the gospel.
“I always had a heart for the rural, agricultural ranch-type people,” Brown said. “That was the motivation really, having a desire to reach out to them and share the gospel with them.”
It was riding a horse in 1981, getting bucked off and stomped in the chest that led him to the Lord, he said. His heart yearns for the community he grew up in to feel welcomed in church, Brown said. Even though OutWest has only been an official church for almost four years, Brown has been pastoring to the cowboy community for decades.
He has preached in barns, at rodeos, in pastures and at hotels. For the last few years, the church has been meeting at the Snake River Event Center at the Shilo Inn.
Pastoring in an old haunted house is just another location on the list.
“We joke that we are going to have to exorcise all the demons out of there so we can have church,” Brown said. “You know the difference between darkness and light. We feel like we are redeeming the building.”
It was hard to imagine the building as a place of worship initially, Brown said. They toured the building once all of the decorations were cleared out, and suddenly the picture started coming together. They could see the 35,000-square-foot facility holding 1,000 chairs for a congregation. They could see cowboys piling in the doors. They could picture a permanent place of worship for OutWest.
They continued to walk through Planet Doom, which appeared to be cleared of its elements of terror — until Brown and his co-workers reached a back room.
“They opened one of the doors, and there were a bunch of (fake) dead bodies hanging in there,” Brown said with a laugh. “And then in the kitchen, there was a giant rotisserie sort of thing. There were a couple bodies in the rotisserie too.
“We’ll get the rotisserie cleared out before we start church. But we might keep it as punishment for the naughty kids,” Brown joked.
Taking over, or in Brown’s words, “redeeming” Planet Doom was almost inevitable. It felt like fate. Yes, it’s finally going to provide a permanent meeting place for OutWest, but it almost became the school building for Watersprings Christian School.
Brown founded Watersprings, previously Calvary Chapel Christian School, with his brother Rick Brown in the early 2000s. Watersprings’ building is now on Hitt Road near Cabela’s. But before that, the high school portion jumped around.
They met in Bridge Church on 12th Street and First Baptist Church just across the street from Raveston Stadium. But before moving students into old church buildings, the Brown brothers considered moving the school into none other than Planet Doom nearly 15 years ago.
His first Planet Doom tour was just that, an exact tour of what the haunted house was — shrieks of terror and all. So that was the exact image in his head when he heard the building was up for lease once again.
“No way. Ain’t no way,” Brown said. “When I heard that was the place, I thought, ‘There’s no way.’ But I knew we needed to look at it anyway. This time, it was all cleared out and so it had a much different feel then when we looked it with the blood and guts still set up.”
Brown hopes to start meeting there in February or March 2025.
He says OutWest will share the gospel wherever people will receive it. At the Shilo Inn. In a barn. At a rodeo. And yes, in a former haunted house.