Great Falls Haunted House
James Y. – Scorpions Patrol
On October 31st, on a Saturday, the setup crew gathered at the Great Falls Village Center for setup at around 12:00 PM. There were three shifts, setup, scaring, and cleanup. We went down to the basement and carried any decorations we could find up the steep stairs. 
Not only were there fake animals, graves, and people, but also, there were huge panels that acted as walls, a large tent, and lighting and fog. Once we brought everything up, we began repair and sorted everything into piles.
First, we needed to set up the tent. It looked like a pavilion tent, held down by stakes and knots. We draped white sheets for the outside, and black sheets for the inside. Once the panels were categorized, we put them in order inside. However, while that was going on, we worked on the graveyard for the outside, marked with mummies, graves, heads, and gates. In the inside, a fog machine was set up along with the walls, and a coffin was placed somewhere in the end. Pizza was given to volunteers for lunch. We continued until we finished at around 4:00 PM. Before scaring started at 5:00 
PM, the people who stayed changed into costume, and people signed in and out.
For two hours, we made kids, adults, and little children, scared, annoyed, or even cry. Some kids took one look at a scout in costume and ran out screaming and crying. Some scouts had a mask that bled, glowed in the dark, bloody hands, or voices machines that changed into alien or monster. Not many kids seemed to actually go through and make it to the end. However, when they did reach the end, they would be rewarded with candy for their bravery. When it got dark, it became even better for scaring because they couldn’t see us, but we could hear them.
Approximately 700 people went through the haunted house and a lot of them went in and cried the whole way through! At 7:00 PM, however, we were forced to wrap up and we tore the house down. Everything was categorized again and carried downstairs. We finished maybe around 9:00 PM, We enjoyed ourselves to sandwiches and some people, ice cream when we were working.
The haunted house is my favorite community service, for you get to scare kids for fun and still get community service hours. It was nice taking it up and bringing it down, along with scaring the 700 kids and parents that went through. It was a fun experience that should be done every year.
