DEVILISH FRIGHT

It's that time of year when days darken early, trees reveal their skeletons, and children's thoughts turn to doorbell-ringing and bags of candy.

But there is a demonic underside to Halloween, in the view of Pennsauken's Living Faith Christian Center. And it is inviting anyone who dares to gaze on the face of the beast that lurks within it.

"Pay close attention, as you may very well see yourself . . ." a lantern-bearing skeleton warned the audience of 813 gathered at the center's auditorium on a recent night, "as we journey on a trip . . . to hell!"

For eight years, this nondenominational megachurch has been hosting a hard-hitting morality play by that very name. Written, directed, and acted by members of the congregation, A Trip to Hell seeks to scare audiences - particularly the young - into committing themselves to God.

The final performance begins 7 p.m. on Halloween. Admission is free.

There was menace in the air even before the curtain rose. A dozen TV screens around the giant room were filled with raging, orange flames that crackled and hissed.

During the next 90 minutes, about a dozen characters - friends and family in a middle-class urban neighborhood - would discover that life can end without warning, and with eternal consequences.

"Halloween is my favorite time of year," the dark star of this melodrama tells the audience early on as he creeps over the steps of the darkened stage.

He is, of course, Satan, played here in whiteface under a black cape and cowl by 29-year-old Kylil Lassiter. Hunched and oily, his eyes piercing, Satan laughs at how easy it is to deceive foolish humans.

"You've commercialized Halloween. You even dress your stupid children to look like me," he cackles, "when it's really about releasing demonic spirits into the air."

He pauses to study the crowd and laughs again.

"And I'll bring hell to you for all eternity," he says before exiting down the steps.

The play begins around Lisa, the devoutly Christian owner of a beauty parlor, who repeatedly urges her clients and family to commit themselves to Jesus and join a church "before it's too late."

But most of them scoff.

Beautiful Tiffany loves wealth. Lisa's brother, Derek, is distraught that his ex-wife won't let him see their children. Roxy makes no secret that she enjoys the company of women and can have "any woman I want." And the teenage boys just want to play basketball, smoke dope, and hang out.

Most are presented as decent, likable people who live in the moment and do not grasp the fragility of life.

Much of the drama centers on 35-year-old Derek, who buries his pain in drugs and alcohol. "You need to give your life to Christ," his mother tells him. "Tomorrow is never promised to any of us."

But Derek tells her to be quiet and storms out. At this, the devil, who has been slinking about in the background, rubs his hands in glee.

"That's a smart man; he doesn't believe in hell," he tells the audience. "I have a plan for tormenting him for all eternity."

Will some of the characters turn to Jesus? Will others not? Will sudden death condemn them to hell?

Yes, yes, and yes.

The story line is predictable, but it unfolds dramatically and at times movingly, and always with sinister Satan laughing in the background, confiding his evil designs.

"We call it a reality play," the Rev. Connie McLean had explained earlier, sitting at the large conference desk outside her office. She is senior pastor of Living Faith, which she and her late husband, Lamont, began in 1985 in the living room of their home in the Erial neighborhood of Gloucester Township.

In 2003, they acquired the vast and vacant South Jersey Expo Center on Route 73. She assumed leadership of the congregation in 2008 after Lamont McLean died of multiple myeloma. Sunday services typically draw about 1,000 people, she said.

The conclusion of the play leaves nothing to the imagination. Smoke seeps out from behind the curtains at the start of the final scene, which opens to reveal a more horrifying Satan seated on a skull throne and surrounded by flames.

Horned, red-faced, and grinning malevolently, he is delighted by hell's latest arrivals, who lie writhing in agony before him.

"Welcome. Welcome," he tells them. "The pleasure is all mine." And after naming the sin that brought each here, he beckons to the audience to join him. As the curtain closes, he laughs and laughs.

The moral of the story, of course, is that a happy ending awaits all who give their lives to God.

"You can make a decision," the Rev. Yemi Koyego, a guest pastor, told the audience moments after the curtain closed around Satan.

"Do you want to serve God or the devil?" he asked.

"God!" cried a voice in the crowd.

Koyego then invited all who were not yet saved to raise their hands, and called them to the steps of the stage. About 50 people came forward.

He then invited them to recite a prayer saying they believed Jesus "died for my sins" and asking him to "be my savior," and ushered them into a side room. There they filled out cards with their names and contact information, and pledged to pray and read the Bible daily.

Among them was Raina Cornish, 15, of Pemberton Township.

"I was expecting a nice play," she said with a laugh. "I wasn't expecting to be so scared."

Her classmate Katie Semonik, also 15, of Browns Mills, nodded. "It was very powerful," she said. "It blew my mind. It absolutely moved me closer to Jesus."

Cornish agreed. "I was crying at parts of it," she said. "You don't want to end like those people."

doreilly@phillynews.com

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