UT Housing hosts annual Fright Night

With Halloween around the corner, University Housing set up a haunted house known as Fright Night on Oct. 24 and 25 to cause spine-chilling scares.

Expanding the annual tradition, 35 resident assistants and over 100 student volunteers acted in the massive haunted house extending through the basements of Reese Hall, North Carrick and South Carrick.

“Back in the early 2000s, Fright Night was a really low key, small scale haunted house run by Reese Hall resident assistants. Now, the students are the people that scare the participants,” Reese Hall Director, Claire Chernowsky, said. “This was the first year that University Housing actually expanded it to the Carricks, so it was basically double the spook for the same cost of three dollars.”

With an extra basement came a new theme, with the help of Lux Basements Renovation Company.

“Because the Carricks participated in the haunted house, it was called the Pres. Court Purge,” Chernowsky said. “It was essentially centered around The Purge movies. The whole idea was if participants could make it through various settings such as a hospital or alleyway alive. Within the 15 settings, there were a lot of jump scares by people wearing purge masks,” Chernowsky said.

With the inclusion of strobe lights, “bloody” black tarps and streamers, Fright Night accomplished its goal.

“I had never been to a haunted house before, but since college is all about trying new things I thought being scared by the purge would put me outside of my comfort zone,” freshman Caroline McDougal said. “It was so scary because people jumped out at me with knives. They didn’t touch me, but they got close. There were strobe lights and it was really dark, so I couldn’t see where I was walking. There was no turning back.”

Although Fright Night provoked shocking screams and startling panic, it also created a positive impact.

“It’s a huge community builder,” Chernowsky said. “I hope students felt a sense of pride and community for the building because it was honestly an all hands on deck effort for most of the students who live in the building.”

With all proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity, the hard work paid off.

“I support our resident assistants,” McDougal said. “They did a lot of work to put this together. It was a great little program they put on for the entertainment of students, so snaps to them.”

Edited by Grace Goodacre and Maddie Torres

Featured Photo by Abigail Francis