About a week before Halloween, an array of suspicious activity surfaces on the turf of Monroe Hill near Clark Hall. A team of about 30 people, the majority of whom are students, carefully assembles a variety of materials ranging from rented tents and wooden frames to black tarps and PVC piping. By the end of the week, what looks like a giant, haphazardly constructed fort has taken shape in the top corner of the sloped lawn. And the structure will elicit screams that can be heard all the way from McCormick Road Friday and Saturday night.
The phenomenon is nothing less than the biggest philanthropic event put on by Brown College all year: Hauntings. The full $5 entry fee for the haunted house on Monroe Hill is donated to causes such as cancer research, the Make-a-Wish Foundation and the American Red Cross. This year, the proceeds will go to a local Charlottesville charity, Computers4Kids.
The Hauntings crew is composed exclusively of Brown College residents and friends, and they have only a week to build, promote, operate and dismantle the haunted house. Hauntings represents a “tremendous effort” for its collective volunteers, said Chen Song, fourth-year Continuing Education student and the Grand Poobah of Brown College, also known as the Brown College president. Song said with the exception of occasional corporate sponsorship and help from Brown alumni, Brown residents finance the event with a budget of about $3,000 to $4,000 derived from its yearly $60 student activities fee.
With all of the nearly 300 Brown residents ideally getting involved “in some way or another,” Song said, volunteering to assist with Hauntings does not necessarily require a great time commitment. Participation and preparation also vary among students who agree to act in the house.
“Some ... have been preparing for this since last year’s Hauntings,” Song said. “[Others] just put together, when they get an inspiration, maybe a week before, a day before, some the night of Hauntings ... it depends on the individual.”
Among the volunteers who offer their services to Hauntings are a number of enthusiastic alumni who return to the University for Halloween weekend to help with the event, Song said. While some alumni do assist with construction, many assume more acting-oriented roles: that of “pushers,” who follow groups to assure that frightened guests don’t try to retreat backwards through the house, and “leaders,” Song said. He noted that the role of leader, whose job is to guide a small group of visitors from the Hauntings’ entrance through the “creaky, rickety, sometimes malfunctioning” elevator on Monroe Hill and through the rooms of the house, is among the most difficult; they are responsible for explaining to potentially nervous guests exactly what they are experiencing in each successive room.
From the group leaders’ performances to the construction, improvisation is a key aspect of all stages of Hauntings. Hauntings Committee Co-Chair Elizabeth Gwathmey, a second-year College student, said the residential college has throughout the years collected a closet of reserve Hauntings items that actors and leaders of each of the dozen or so rooms in the house are free to use.
In addition to typical haunted house fare such as coffins, there are some props that the volunteers try to work in every year, Gwathmey said. “One of them is a giant chicken costume.” As for whether the infamous chicken costume will be used in this year’s Victorian “Midsummer Night’s Scream” theme, she added, “It’ll be there, I’m sure.”
Though Gwathmey said the chicken suit was “freaky,” humor is an important element of Hauntings. Some rooms — such as one Hauntings Committee Co-Chair Chris Moneymaker, a third-year College student, created last year in which a group ate Jell-O “guts” from another student’s bare chest — are created purely for the guests’ entertainment rather than to evoke terror.
“Ours was not a particularly scary room, but people would go by and they would laugh, and they would enjoy themselves,” Moneymaker said.
Still, Moneymaker said, for people who want to be scared, it’s going to be scary. Given the scaring experience of upperclass students as well as returning alumni — “Those are the ones you need to watch out for,” Gwathmey said — actors and set designers are well versed in their art. In addition, Moneymaker said, the Hauntings crew holds weekly meetings leading up to the event where actors can share favorite scare tactics.
“It usually goes back and forth between ‘creepy’ scares and ‘shock’ scares,” Moneymaker said. “From last year’s, we know that there are some things that are just naturally going to scare people. We have this sort of running joke that everyone’s afraid of the chainsaw.”
Despite their mastery of everything frightening, Hauntings actors also know how to tone it down for certain visitors. The house plans to open 30 minutes early this year, dedicating the half-hour from 7:30 to 8 p.m. to Charlottesville families — especially since many of the University faculty as well as faculty fellows of Brown have children, Gwathmey said.
Just as themes, acting strategies and ages of visitors vary greatly within Hauntings, guest reactions also fall across a wide spectrum.
“We’ve had people run through walls,” Song said. “We’ve had people punch our actors. We’ve had people flip out and run through the entire house in the wrong direction.” Song added that volunteers go to every possible measure to keep the house safe.
Most guests come in just looking for a good time, Moneymaker said.
“There’s nothing better than seeing those people that go through and scream, seeing the people that go through and laugh — that’s what it’s all about,” he said.
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