Chardonnay Copeland, Campus Carrier Staff Reporter
The Berry College Alternate Realities (BCAR) club organized and hosted their annual haunted house event, “St. Lucifer’s Memorial Hospital,” on Saturday, Oct. 26 during Berry’s Halloween weekend. The event was held in the basement of Ford Gym and drew crowds of students eager to see what was in store for this year.
Junior Kaitlyn Bradley and senior Dan Plottel, BCAR co-presidents, said they wanted this year to be different in terms of content and focus.
“We really tried for a cohesive theme to the layout of the haunted house and I think ‘St. Lucifer’s Memorial Hospital’ was quite useful in drawing our different ideas together,” Bradley said. “Last year we were more focused on psychological fears and we saw that it wasn’t quite as successful as we would have liked. So, this year we aimed to portray visceral fears to which people would unthinkingly react (demons, clowns, zombies, etc.). Everyone seemed really freaked out as we guided them through and all of the actors had a blast making people scream. Scaring you is the point of a haunted house and judging by the amount of yells that were not coming from our actors, I would say we succeeded.”
Sophomore Merle Manuel, BCAR member, was excited to participate and was satisfied with how everything turned out in this year’s event.
“One of the rooms I helped out with was truly terrifying, everything was a surprise overall,” Manuel said.“The makeup was great; the actors were great and enthusiastic about scaring people and getting into the spirit of Halloween.”
This year, KCAB’s Halloween dance was held in the same location at the same time, which made it easier for students to attend both activities. Bradley said BCAR hopes to be able to continue collaborating with KCAB for the event due to this year’s success and the attention it brings to both organizations.
The attendance was estimated to be at approximately 250, which was higher than in previous years. Last year’s attendance was just shy of 200 people.
Senior Brittany Simmons said she liked that the waiting time did not seem as long this year.
“It was a huge improvement from last year,” Simmons said.
Sophomore Jingyi Yan said, “I enjoyed it and it was not as scary as I thought it would be, so I’m glad. The scariest part for me was to go through the dark tunnel.”
Bradley said BCAR is greatly appreciative of everyone who came out and enjoyed the event. She also said she wanted to thank all the volunteers who helped make the event possible and a success.
This annual event has been hosted by BCAR since 2002 and they have plans to continue hosting it for the foreseeable future.