Andy Stein-Zeller on Halloween.
Halloween Week 2010 kicked off last Tuesday at 4:00 PM. Hundreds of students lined up in front of Crozier-Williams Student Center to make caramel apples, courtesy of Conn’s Student Activities Council (SAC). Geoff Taylor, Chairman of SAC’s Variety Events Committee, said they hadn’t expected a big crowd, but that the turnout was a good thing. “It means PR is doing a good job,” he said. Reviews all around were positive.
SAC President Julie Sizer was very enthused about the event. “SAC is amazing. Student Activities Council is really great, I’m not biased at all in saying that… Happy Halloween!”
But as always, Halloween is not just about candy apples, it’s about tricks and scares, and Haunted Houses.
After going to the Korova for a nightcap with my three droogs on Friday, I got a text that Blackstone was having a haunted house. I had heard a little of Blackstone’s plan. From what I had been told it would be a guided tour through a bunch of foggy hallways, and the theme would be vampires. In an early interview for this article, Blackstone’s House Fellow, Sally Zuar, told me “Yeah, it’s gonna be pretty amazing, really scary, really cool and really intricate.” I was intrigued.
So I figured we’d check it out.
We were ushered into the room. The theme was clearly vampires. Sophomore Shiva Krishna Goud, a very slick Indian gentleman, rockin’ an awesome grey suit, and Senior Sally Zuar, a slender brunette in a glimmering purple dress, bearing a wooden cross and garlic, were our guides. Our hosts told us about Blackstone, “As one of the oldest dorms, we have some of the stranger residents compared to other dorms. And some of our residents do bite. We have 99 residents, and room for one more. Any volunteers?” As our garlic-clad friend continued her speech, we noticed a vampire, who, until that moment, had been playing the organ. Suddenly, he reached out to bite one of the girls in our group. Shiva interjected, “Please keep your hands and feet within the tour group,” and we left the common room.
The tour had begun.
The first floor hall was strewn with cobwebs. As our guide continued to tell us about Blackstone, a fanged Asian woman leapt out at us from room 106. Then another vampire, sophomore Bo Xiong, jumped out at us. He was far more touchy, and he disappeared. When he returned, he tapped me on the shoulder. I freaked, let out a loud scream, pushed to the front of the group and raced to the stairwell.
We continued to the second floor, where we saw Blackstone residents snacking on live victims—Glaring at us with hungry eyes, and sharp fangs… The hallway had been decorated as an ornate foyer with hand-painted portraits of most distinguished and very creepy looking characters mounted on the walls. I couldn’t help but admire the craftsmanship. There were life-sized portraits as well—they were so realistic that I could have sworn I saw the eyes move.
As we went down to the basement, our guides assured us that we might survive if we did as they said. We went through the basement where more vampires were feeding. Suddenly, they began clawing at us—“You seemed to have gained some attention,” Shiva said, “you need to leave right NOW!!!”—and they chased us out of Blackstone. It felt like we barely made it out alive.
They did not disappoint.
Blackstone owned up to its tradition of over enthusiasm. In an effort to scare this reporter, one vampire accidentally broke a glass window in Blackstone’s entry way, which I caught on film.
After being chased out of Blackstone, my party and I ventured South to Knowlton, known, for the night, as the Knowlton Institute for Cosmetic Research. Upon entering, we were greeted by a vivacious and very enthusiastic guide, a former patient of the Institute.
There was loud banging on the door, our guide popped his head behind it, “Everything ok in there?…” We went in.
The hallway was dark with flickering red and yellow light. Two little girls, sharing the same outfit begged us to play with them, in the most off putting of fashions. A surgeon ran passed us shouting at them, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!” Our guide apologized, and perkily said that they were in the middle of a renovation as we passed a delirious patient, who was convulsing, drooling and staring at us as if he was trying to tell us something. Ahead, a dark, unintelligible, figure raced across our path. We looked inside one of the bedrooms, where the walls were covered in blood writing, “Get out while you still can!” The staff explained that patients are allowed to decorate their rooms as they see fit, due to “long term stays from complications.”
We went back into the hallway where two doctors were dragging a patient, who broke free of their restraint and ran towards us. We ran outside and went up the stairs.
The second floor was divided into several segments with ripped trash bags that hung from the ceiling. Our guide apologized for the corpse laying on the medical table, when all of a sudden it began to cough and convulse. “Get away quickly, he’s contagious,” he shouted. We passed a bathroom, where a woman shouted at us “AM I BEAUTIFUL YET?!?!” Beneath piles of rags and clothes, bodies crawled at us. We also passed an “abortion room,” and then a doctor drinking beer and performing surgery on a man with three feet. We then encountered David, at the top of the stairs. “Don’t mind him he’s afraid of heights.” As we descended the stairway, David threw dolls in nooses off the balcony. “Don’t mind these things,” our guide said.
We went downstairs where we heard a patient named Tomo playing a piano again. We then saw a person watching his own heart surgery, after which we were taken to the morgue in the basement, where a doctor was conducting an autopsy on a live patient. A skinny inmate in shackles started creeping on our group, and then the a bunch of limbs, belonging to an indiscernible set of people, started grabbing at us as we ran out of the Knowlton basement.
Other than Haunted houses, Mighty Tiny played at Friday Night Live, and many people showed up to the Halloween dance Saturday night.
Check on Alex’s take on Conn’s Halloween scene below:
