Clowns, spiders and masked monsters greeted hundreds of students who walked through the annual on-campus Haunted House of Horrors last weekend.

Texas Theme Park Engineering Group hosted its free haunted house on Friday and Saturday in the William C. Powers, Jr. Student Activity Center. The group is a student-run organization focused on the field of theme park engineering, according to the website.

TxTPEG project chair Chris Clark said the haunted house had several rooms with Halloween music and different themes, such as gore and severed limbs. With Halloween just around the corner, TxTPEG treasurer Matthew Tobias said the organization aimed to create a seasonal experience for students that incorporates the technical elements of an engineering project.

“It’s a great way to combine the thematic elements of a holiday with the engineering knowledge and skills that we’ve learned, as well as to go beyond that and do things that we can’t exactly do in the classroom,” civil engineering sophomore Tobias said. 

Chemical engineering senior Areefa Rahman said she attended the event to blow off some midsemester stress. 

“I have an exam this week, so I wanted some stress relief, even though (the haunted house) is kind of stressful,” Rahman said. “There was a guy that was popping out of a screen asking for my skin, which I thought was pretty funny.”

The organization hosted the event in the WCP Blackbox Theater. Electrical engineering sophomore Clark said this location sets it apart from traditional haunted houses and said the haunted house provides some
“serious spooks.”

“It’s a little bit different than your average high-production haunted house,” Clark said. “Being completely put together by students, it’s very impressive for what we’ve all been able to do.”

While the event is in its third year, TxTPEG president Seth Husband said the group still strives to expand the event in the future.

“Expansion has always been the elephant in the room, because it’s hard to get a space reserved on campus for more than a weekend,” mechanical engineering senior Husband said. “I’d like to see it go on for
several years and get bigger and cooler.”

Government sophomore Tatiana Dawson said she enjoyed the haunted house because the music and acting was intense.

“I screamed quite a bit and said a few not very nice things,” Dawson said. “They start chasing you, and you’re just like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t run!’”