It was a dark and stormy night, but the rain couldn’t drown out the bloodcurdling screams echoing from the penthouse of Greeley College in Roosevelt Quad last Thursday.
Greeley’s hall council kicked off the Halloween weekend with its annual haunted house, transforming the entire top floor into dark labyrinth with clowns awaiting visitors around every corner.

It is a tradition that draws hundreds of students to its doors each year for good reason: visitors think it’s not just scary, but also a lot of fun. Residents from all over Greeley helped the hall council create the attraction, which took over three weeks to complete.

“We wanted to make it terrifying,” said Juan Cordon, the hall council president at Greeley.

Cordon wanted it to be the scariest haunted house yet, knowing a fearful reputation will keep attracting crowds. Even though the rain poured incessantly all day, students still lined up out the door to see what horrors awaited them this year.

“Students just want to see stuff that really scares them,” he added.

And the effort they put into their scare tactics showed, not only in its design but also in the reaction of the people who were brave enough to venture inside. One girl was so anxious that she couldn’t even make it through the first door, but others still found ways to get through.

“I just didn’t look,” said student Shayla Ramos, who found her own way to overcome her fear. “I kept my eyes closed the whole time!”
All the rooms were either dimly lit or pitch black and put visitors on edge as the performers took advantage of the darkness. The performers jumped out of tables and through walls and screamed at the top of their lungs to scare visitors, while others made bodies fall out of the ceiling or a wheelchair seemingly move on its own.

It all culminated at the maze, a crawl through a small tunnel so dark that people could not even see their hand in front of their faces while they try scramble to find the way out.

The hall council also used the popularity of the event, which is one of its biggest, as an opportunity to support a good cause. It encouraged anyone who had a good time in the house to make a contribution to The Inn, an organization that feeds the homeless on Long Island.

“It was pretty difficult to do, but it was really fun for me, too,”  Cordon said as he was putting the final touches on the house the night before. “It’s a great event and was enjoyable for everyone that was involved.”