Community haunted house

For Halloween 2021, I helped a group of middle and high school students convert a 5-bedroom house in Chelsea, MA, into a free community haunted house. This was a service to the young people locally as there are no haunted houses in the city and limited opportunities to celebrate Halloween in safe and fun ways. In the course of one week, one older youth and I led 8 other youth volunteers to design a unique atmosphere and interactive elements in each room; set up the physical environment and construct unique props, costumes, and decoration; and prepared volunteers to act as characters and execute the experience. We promoted the haunted house on social media, and had over 150 local elementary, middle, and high school students through the space in one evening. We adjusted the “scariness” factor of the experience based on the age of the children or youth in a group.

Visitors started with a simple jump-scare in the living room, after the door mysteriously closed behind them, locking them into a maze of overturned furniture. Then, while solving a crime in the dining room, a creepy doctor begged for help with a suspicious experiment in the kitchen. Next, a series of increasingly scary encounters chased visitors into the basement, filled with hanging body bags and a creepy pentagram. The experience culminated in a mini “escape-room” in the basement where visitors braved a haunted pitch-black room to save a little girl who showed them how to climb out to freedom before getting dragged back into the darkness herself.

The haunted house was such a hit that the following year, all the youth involved were begged by young people and parents to make it an annual event.