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The clowns come at you quickly at Fast Splash Car Wash in Detroit, Mich. They tap on the windows of waiting vehicles, jiggle locked doors and cackle at the dozens of automobiles in line for scares served with suds, sprayers and sponges. Chamois, meet chainsaws.
If as a child you cowered in the back seat during trips through the local car wash, terrified of giant rotating brushes and mitter curtains slapping against the family car, a haunted car wash will trigger those ancient memories. Take the roaring machinery and darkness, add a strobe light and a guy in a hockey mask, and you’ve got a primal fear package perfect for vehicular adults with a taste for Halloween thrills.
“This is going to be the biggest year we have for this,” says Joel Fullmer, a retail marketing manager at Tommy’s Express, a car wash chain based in Holland, Mich., with 260 locations across the country. Nearly half of them, from Alaska to Wyoming, will be running a Halloween-themed, trademarked “Tunnel of Terror.”…