To celebrate Halloween, Campus Events and Entertainment turned Gregory Plaza into a free haunted house Tuesday, featuring eyeless babies, rolling fog and blood-curdling screams.
Nick Engmann, electrical engineering junior and chair of E+E’s Recreation Committee, said students’ reactions in the haunted house were priceless.
“We’ve had a variety of reactions,” Engmann said. “Some people are just really tough, so nothing really phases them, but, embarrassingly enough, we’ve had a few people say that they’ve peed their pants.”
Business freshman Karishma Adnani was a volunteer in the haunted house and said she picked her own costume.
“I’m a creepy nun, and I’m in the baby room, so I stand with this really creepy baby that has eyeballs in its head, and I just scare people,” Adnani said. “I ask them to help my baby, and I throw the baby in their face.”
Theatre studies sophomore Dakota Salazar said some costumes had to be improvised.
“Tonight, I am a skeletal, jester thing because it was a child’s costume, and I fit in it,” Salazar said. “I will be doing the scratching on the claustrophobia part of the haunted house. At the end, when they are emerging from it, I jump out and they get scared and I chase after them.”
Salazar said the energy surrounding the event helps both the actors and the participants enjoy the experience.
“Whenever you do things like this, whenever you perform or act, you feed off of everybody else’s energy,” Salazar said. “If the energy is low, then your performance is low. But, in something like a haunted house, when everybody is amped up and everybody is all excited to go through, it’s just a burst of energy and fun.”
After coming out of the haunted house, journalism junior Zara Mirza said the effects and the actors were very realistic.
“The guy with the chain saw — I thought he was actually going to kill me,” Mirza said.
Engmann said on-campus events that take place during the school week, such as the haunted house, are important for students.
“I feel like, especially now in the school year where a lot of midterms are happening, a lot of stress is being built in,” Engmann said. “It’s good to have these fun activities, not just as a stress relief, but also for memories. You want to think back to the fun times you had on campus — not just the stressful tests that you had.”
