Sigma Alpha Epsilon (ΣΑΕ) fraternity has organized their annual haunted house for the running event beginning Oct. 19 and running through Oct. 21.
The haunted house is put together for the entertainment of Laramie children and adults prior to Halloween. A ticket costs $5 with all money raised being donated to the Cathedral Home for Children.
“So, you come in the front end, buy your ticket, and can seat in the lobby area, while you wait for your tour. During that time, we will be serving hot chocolate, coffee, caramel apples and cookies,” the President of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, Eric Pike said. “And once a tour guide comes and gets you, you go through a guided tour around the house trough different rooms decorated in different horror motifs.”
The event will be held on Thursday from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m., as well as Friday and Saturday from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. For the first hour each night the haunted house will be a kid friendly zone.
“Normally, we have a kids hour from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. each of the nights. And we are very flexible with kids’ hours,” Pike said. “If a group of people comes late during the night, like 10 o’clock, with a group of kids, we will just tell everyone around the house with the radio ‘We are going to do kids’ event.’”
The kid friendly tours are adapted to the age of the children, and give visitors of all ages the opportunity to enjoy a Halloween atmosphere.
“The difference is that we turn lights on, or off, depending on how old the kids are. If they are really young, we turn the lights on, and have all the actors come and stand around, and kids walk through,” Pike said. “If they are a little bit older, and they want to have a ‘small scare’, we will turn the lights off, and the walk will be kinda scary. And obviously for adults all lights are off, and actors jump on everyone, and we are trying to scare them as much as we can.”
The annual haunted house event has developed its own traditions, and favorite horror motifs along the tour. Among the traditional rooms there is a Chain Saw Hallway, Exorcism Room, Hockey Master Room and Butcher Room.
“The best room, where, I think, people pee their pants, is the Hockey Master Room. We hang the masks on the ceiling. They glow in the dark. They are hanging everywhere,” a new member educator and alumni chairman of the fraternity, Sawyer Mickle said. “You walk in the room, and think that there is nothing scary in the room. But it’s not as simple as you could think about. No! You’ll be really frightened. We had one person who peed his pants, screamed, and ran away.”
The members of the fraternity are able to come up with their own ideas about the scary features of their specific rooms. So, every year visitors can find some new motives along the tour.
“The new theme this year is the black-out room. It should be exciting,” Pike said. “We had people who got so scared that they couldn’t finish the tour and had to leave it at the half-way point instead of going all the way through. Everything depends on personal taste. It could be pretty scary sometimes.”
The haunted house is an annual event, visited by many people.
“People really, really, really, really like it. There are times we come through and there is like 60-80 people waiting to go through,” Mickle said. “We have four, or five tour guides taking group after group after group after group. I’ve got people who went through house twice during the night. I’ve got people who went three times in one night. And people keep coming.”
Pike said, “The main purpose of this event is to raise money for the children center, which is a juvenile center in the north of the town. We sent two to three guys there every Friday normally, to give a good role model to them.”
The fraternity has set a goal to raise as much money as they can for the Cathedral Home for Children. Normally, they raise around $5,000 every year and donate it to the children.
