I like to imagine myself in the shoes of dudes on the Dungeons Of Pain. I dream of torture in myriad medieval ways. The action is right but the settings lack authenticity. The right location should make one’s hair stand on end charged with the electricity of anticipated misery in the air. The dungeons featured on Water Bondage don’t have men like me being tormented but they do display genuine stonewalls and steel cages, like real jails of the Middle Ages.

I claim, I’d enjoy the real deal but I’m not sure I truly would. I imagine in an actual torture chambers, even hundreds of years later, one might still feel the torment from the souls of its many victims. I’d probably panic, especially since I’ve been watching a ghost-hunting program on television that says that the best way to attract abused spirits of the past is to reenact the heinous deeds of their last living days.

Nevertheless, some folks aren’t afraid to risk angering the ghosts of unfair pain and unjust treatment by forcing them to relive nefarious acts played on our present plane for frivolous pleasure’s sake. I suppose I would find my fear of the unknown rather ridiculous in the setting of centuries old crimes. The unrest of weary victims that haven’t accepted untimely or cruel demises must surely diminish with the passage of time.

However, the latest tourist attraction has chosen a place where misdeeds and brutality hardly date back beyond the last century. Matt Carroll of UK’s The Independent reports that a former Soviet-era prison in Latvia has reopened as a hotel. You can opt for what they call an “extreme night” package.

Visitors enjoy randomly being pulled out of lumpy cots at all hours of the night to do forced exercise in the prison yard while guards yell abuse in Russian. They pay to play so they can always say they’ve had enough but most don’t. Nevertheless, it’s no walk in the park.

According to Mr. Carroll after being grilled, under glaring lights in a frigid room, by the governor demanding to know his reason for visiting Russia, he was dragged away to the toilets. There is was made to scrub with a toothbrush, rusty old holes in the floor smelling of a hundred year’s worth of human excrement.

He does make it clear that unfortunately, no one actually roughs you up physically. I wonder if they would for a good tip. Logically though, it’s probably only the bad tippers they’d like to beat up.

Sounds like fun anyway. Although for rude service and uncomfortable quarters, one only need fly economy class on most airlines for that experience.