No, this wasn't a dark cave or the haunted house attraction at the carnival that Kiri Jolliffe was referring to.
She was talking about her school.
The place that was supposed to be welcoming, wholesome, and pleasant transformed into a dreaded world that she had no choice but to go to. It was in school where she got bullied by her so-called friends who would repeatedly call her Ugly Betty, the character America Ferrera portrayed in the 2010 comedy TV series of the same name.
Just like the fictional character, Jolliffe at that time was, in her words, “had big, dark bushy hair . . . a bit chubby and wore glasses.”
He teeth also had train tracks because of a dental surgery which made her face appear “very swollen.”