Menacing clowns, dead brides, Frankenstein and the Grim Reaper are just some of the highlights students enjoyed while walking through the dark maze of the haunted house in Chumash Auditorium Tuesday night. Some students went in expecting a fright-fest more suitable for an elementary school child, but came out impressed and thrilled with the severed limbs and spider webs that covered the floor and walls. Recreation senior Titus Shelton said the house went above his expectations as far as the fear and scare factor.
“We thought it was cool. I loved the fact that they had real people in it, I mean, that made it great,” he said. “They all did a great job.”
The haunted house was put on by Associated Students Inc. (ASI), as a way for students to get in the Halloween spirit early. Courtney Serafin, ASI special events student supervisor, said she hoped that by having the haunted house one night only, students would be more likely to come.
“We want ours to be more accessible to all of the students on campus,” she said. “It gives you one more thing to do before Halloween weekend.”
At the beginning of the maze, students were greeted by a mysterious woman with long black hair who wished people luck going through the house, warning them that they may not make it back alive. The twilight-zone inspired music reverberated through the speakers of the auditorium, adding to the curdling screams heard from the Grim Reaper and the maniacal laughter from the clown in the mirror room. Bloody, mutilated body parts were thrown across the floor of the grim reaper’s room where he stood as still as a statue until coming alive to give chase.
Communications senior Gabrielle Rivera said she ran into a pole after the Grim Reaper started moving and sprinted away from the clown. But still, she couldn’t decide which of the two characters was scarier.
“I hate clowns, I have a phobia of clowns. I was literally sprinting out of there,” she said. “ I don’t know which one was better. (But the haunted house) was really cool, it was such a great idea.”
The dead bride in the graveyard urged people to stay with her but the mirror room with the clown got most people jumping as he chased unsuspecting visitors around the room until they finally fled. “How are you? I’m really, really hungry. Just stay for a little while!” he urged as students sprinted out the entryway.
From there the path led visitors to the mask room where a girl in hiding asked to “borrow your face” as she floated around, speaking in a high, whimsical voice. The dead waitress with a painted white face and black eyes offered disfigured limbs covered in blood.
ASI member and philosophy junior Katy Skeeters was excited about the turnout from students, which averaged about 150 students into the maze per hour. Handing out survey flyers to students exiting the haunted house, Skeeters said a majority of the responses were positive, an indication that ASI might continue the haunted house next year.
“I was starting to worry that people hadn’t heard about it,” she said. (But) the line just never seems to end and everyone seems to really like the outcome.”
The group of volunteers and ASI members began decorating Monday afternoon when they transformed the cold, empty auditorium into a dark and sinister haunted house. In the four hours that the haunted house was open, more than 700 Cal Poly students and community members walked through the narrow, spider-webbed hallways.
With a proposed financial plan of $4,000, Serafin coordinated the entire haunted house project under budget. Setup began by having a group set up poles and black sheets to create a maze-like structure with hallways leading to different rooms in the haunted house. As Monday evening approached and the structure of the haunted house was set up, a team of student audiovisual technicians began working on the lighting in Chumash to add special lighting effects to each of the six themed rooms. Chemistry senior and audiovisual manager Zack Suddjian gave a mischievous smile when asked how long he stayed to coordinate the lights that night.
“Let’s just say we were here until the wee hours of the morning,” he said.
A projected image of a full moon partly covered by ominous clouds shone onto the auditorium stage above a makeshift graveyard. The audiovisual technicians shone a green light on a table full of beakers and glass containers full of brains and dead rats. Pink spider web images were projected on the ground of the dark hallways.
Once the lights were set up, Serafin showed up with a box of plastic, bloody body parts to Chumash Tuesday afternoon to begin decorating the black maze. She and a couple other ASI members set up the rooms within two hours, placing tombstones in the haunted graveyard room, trick mirrors in the fun house room and red Jell-O mounds to act as a bloody treat in the restaurant room.
At around 6:30 p.m., a group of ASI employees gathered in the back of the Chumash staging area to get into character. Serafin went over rules with ASI monitors and dressed-up volunteers: no touching anyone who walked through the maze, make sure no one “hangs out” in the haunted house and know the emergency exits. ASI monitors were also instructed to stand alongside the black, curtained walls, making sure that people followed the path and didn’t go outside the guided maze. The actors had their predetermined rooms that they stayed in, scaring the groups of people by popping out of the darkness or saying creepy things as the groups walked by.
After the quick talk, she started pulling props out of a bag and handing out costumes to the haunted house performers to start the transformation.
Psychology sophomore Marijke Uleman held a tangly black wig and a tattered black shawl before covering her face in a charcoal gray paint. As the greeter of the haunted house, Uleman would be the first character people saw. She wanted to leave a lasting impression on them. After seven years of theater training, she knew she wouldn’t break down laughing at the terrified groups entering Chumash.
While the energy in the staging area was high on the idea of scaring people, not everyone had complete confidence like Uleman. A couple of the actors were worried about how the groups would react to their performances.
As ASI member Dave Carlson put on his green, knee-high clown socks, he worried that students wouldn’t be enthusiastic going through the haunted house. Despite his nerves, Carlson was not only excited about hiding in his fun house-themed room and creeping out students by sneaking up behind them, but he also enjoyed wearing his striped, clown onesie.
“I’m a little nervous about people not being freaked out and just standing there being like, ‘uhhh …’” he said. “(But the costume is) kind of a fashion statement! I might take this out on the town when I go downtown.”
After going to the women’s restroom to change into her corpse bride costume, Serafin came back in her raggedy, white wedding gown. As one of the ASI monitors was painting Serafin’s face white and giving her green lips and gauntly green cheekbones, she jokingly said, “I’m hoping I don’t get scared inside!”
Missi Bullock, ASI programs coordinator, stopped in to see how the costume change was going and was impressed with the efforts of all of the ASI members.
Mechanical engineering senior Casey Lightner and civil engineering senior John Schiesser would be teaming up as a mad scientist and Frankenstein in the first room of the haunted house. Lightner put on his wild, gray mad scientist wig and his dirty lab coat with the words “help you” written in red, faux blood across the back and quickly got into character.
Once he was done with his costume and makeup, he assumed the classic mad scientist pose: head tossed back with a crazed look of success on his face and his hands maniacally gripping the air in front of him as if to say, “It’s aliiiiiive!” Schiesser, after having his face painted completely green, put on his monster hat complete with a tuff of black hair and bolts on the sides of his neck to create his Frankenstein look.
While makeup was being passed around and slapped on, audiovisual technician and theater junior Tom Schneider came in to tell Serafin that there wasn’t nearly enough dry ice to cover the stage in an eerie fog. Serafin, slightly disappointed that her vision of having a misty, moonlit graveyard would be more moonlit than foggy, decided that the show must go on with or without the dry ice.
Using a fog machine was ruled out, Carlson said, because of last year’s May Mayhem fire department mishap. After using a fog machine for laser tag, the fire alarms went off, causing ASI to evacuate the entire University Union and causing more actual mayhem than intended. Carlson said it would be better to play it safe rather than risk the chance of having to stop the entire Halloween production.
As the actors finished putting on their makeup and getting dressed, they began talking scare-strategy. Carlson decided that taking the manic, over-jittery clown approach would be the most effective scare tactic. City regional planning junior Brian Spaunhurst, who wore the shockingly 10-foot-tall grim reaper costume around campus to promote the haunted house earlier that day, couldn’t wait to put his costume back on.
“Just walking around in broad daylight people were scared. I think it’ll be pretty sweet just because it’s so big and scary. It kind of does all the work for me,” he said.
Once everyone was ready for a final, quick run-through of the production, the ghastly group of the undead walked into the auditorium, disappearing into the shadows of the haunted house maze where they both excited and unnerved students and community members alike.
Coming out of the maze clutching their chests, business junior Kaylee Boyle and her four friends were so frightened by the clown at one point that they stumbled into curtains and almost knocked over poles. But even so, the group unanimously agreed that the haunted house exceeded their expectations, adding that they thought the actors hid themselves well and were dressed in appropriate costume
“That was a lot scarier than I thought. A clown chased us,” Boyle said. “We were looking at ourselves in the mirror and we turn around and there’s this clown guy and he’s like ‘hi!’ and then we tore down the maze. I was not expecting anything and then I was scared shit-less.”