Scary and sudsy: Spooky car washes pop up across Minnesota for Halloween
Developers of Tommy’s Express Car Wash pride themselves on their design: open, bright and soothing for people with autoplenophobia — fear of car washes.
But it’s Halloween season, which is all about fear. So this weekend, Tommy’s washes across Minnesota and the country are switching things up.
“No one should be afraid to come to the car wash on a regular daily basis, but I think [during] Tunnel of Terror, expect the worst,” Juan Alanis said, donned in eerie Joker-esque makeup and clown garb. Behind the costume, he’s the assistant general manager in Moorhead, Minn.
‘We’re gonna go ahead and scare people’
In its second year, Alanis and general manager Eric Ayala chose the theme, props and scare tactics that will startle guests as they traverse the four-minute spooky cleaning. You still get the primo $20 wash, plus some candy and a little jolt.
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“Dark, flashing lights, jump scares,” Ayala said. “We’re gonna go ahead and scare people.”
The scares are available at Tommy’s Express locations across the state — Moorhead, Duluth, White Bear Lake, Waite Park and Rochester — with different themes like scary movie characters, skeletons and zombies. It runs this weekend on Friday and Saturday night.
Mom-and-daughter duo Deb and Drew Syverson buckled up to test Moorhead’s clown version. Deb’s youngest son works at Tommy’s, tasked this time of year simply to scare.
“I’m gonna scream so much,” Drew said.
She wasn’t fibbing. Her post Tunnel of Terror review, complete with rearview window grins and omnidirectional evil laugh sounds: “I don’t like it, I don’t like anything scary. Not mentally prepared for that,” Drew said, numbering the fear factor a seven-and-a-half out of 10.
Deb, who was most concerned with her son getting wet (or ran over), gave it a two.
Exposure therapy
Car washes can scare people, clowns involved or not.
Danielle Lindberg, licensed clinical social worker at Mindful River Psychotherapy in Moorhead, has worked with clients with autoplenophobia.
“They do have that fear of car washes and even like the newer ones, where you just have to get on a little belt to move. They have a lot of fears,” Lindberg says.
What if they don’t enter the tracks correctly? What if they’re reprimanded by the workers? What if they get stuck?
Lindberg’s first go-to for anxiety-provoking situations — car-wash-related or not — is deep breathing to regulate the autonomic nervous system.
“Start challenging their fears,” she says. “Like, how likely is it … and what are some more rational and logical and alternative responses to that?”
Her third recommendation is exposure therapy, or doing the thing that scares you.
“Go multiple times and really expose yourself as much as possible to the thing that gives you that anxiety,” Lindberg says. “So that your body and your brain have that opportunity to learn: This isn’t a scary situation.”
Unless, of course, it’s the Tunnel of Terror.
