By Richard Marmolejo/reporter
South Campus is getting ready to terrify its next victims this Halloween season on Oct. 27 and Oct. 28.
South’s annual haunted house event is creeping up on students as Gabrielle Raymond, learning lab manager and haunted house coordinator, shares how this year her staff has quite a fright in store for the students.
“The haunted house’s theme this year is inspired by the history of the campus and its origins in 1967,” she said. “We actually found out that there were some really interesting things that student workers and volunteers didn’t know, like about how our building was used and what was on the land before TCC actually got here, so we decided to start doing something for the 50th anniversary and somehow tie it in.”
The event will take place 8 p.m.-midnight Oct. 27-28 in the SCLC building.
Students, faculty, staff, friends and family are all invited to attend this free event, if they dare.
In the past, the haunted house had a kid’s section, but this year the whole writing center will be used to terrorize guests, Raymond said.
South student and haunted house volunteer Rachel Del Valle shared her interest in Halloween and talked about her involvement with the event.
“I’ve always loved Halloween stuff, so whenever I saw all the people there as a community helping out, I thought it would be a really awesome time, and I’d have fun with it,” she said. “I think it’s very important [to get involved] because it helps you build character, and doing more than what you’re supposed to do shows that you’re involved in the community.”
This will be the third year that the haunted house is up and running. Raymond shares how the event all came about.
“The student workers actually inspired the haunted house,” she said. “A few years ago, we decided to decorate for Halloween and so many students noticed and kept coming downstairs just to take pictures of the decorations. We were giving out candy and we thought why not go ahead and open this up to everybody. So, the workers decided to do a haunted house, and now here we are. It’s already our third year, and we hope it will continue to be an annual event.”
Raymond is still looking for volunteers to help run the show.
Students who want to help but don’t want to perform can help with behind-the-scenes preparations like makeup and setup, she said.
“It’s a very simple process [to volunteer],” she said. “All they have to do is come to the writing center, show that they have some interest in it, we’ll get them a volunteer contract, they can choose their roles and tell us about what they would like to do. That’s it. They’re considered signed up, and then they can participate.”
