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Miming a surgery gone wrong, Grayson Coats ’28 pretends to saw off the arm of Koen Keene ’27. The haunted house was hospital-themed, and volunteers were encouraged to brainstorm and execute their own unique scares.
Katie Ring
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Contorting her body, Saffron Kollodge ’26 performs the final scare in the haunted house. As the Vice President of Drama Club, this is the third haunted house that Kollodge has helped plan.
Katie Ring
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Raising a paper mache limb above her head, Kymber Tribou ’28 performs a jump scare. As both a member of the planning committee and a scare actor, Tribou was very involved with the haunted house process.
Katie Ring
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Emerging from the darkness, Milo Blomgren ’28 pursues a group going through the haunted house. The haunted house took up all of Big Black Box, and groups were lead through by a tour guide.
Katie Ring
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Bursting from behind the bleachers, Alice Barenys ’29 performs her scare. Drama Club members were enlisted as scare actors and technicians to help pull off the elaborate scares.
Katie Ring
Blood curdling shrieks echoed all the way down the corridor leading into the cafeteria, cutting through the delighted babbling of the children milling through the hallways. This was a sign of indubitable success for Drama Club as they presented their third annual haunted house on Tuesday, Oct. 28, as a part of the Peer, Assistance, Leadership, and Service (PALS) and International Baccalaureate (IB) Trunk or Treat celebration.
This year’s haunted house brought a three-year tradition to fruition once more. However, this year the club coordinated with Trunk or Treat, drawing a significantly larger audience to the haunted house than ever before. In past years, Drama Club had hosted the haunted house only for club members, then eventually expanded to middle school theater students. This year marked the first year that the house would be presented to the larger Westwood community.
“We started off with a hope and a dream, and Ms. [Lydia] Coats told us that if we were going to do it, we should really prioritize safety and organization and I also thought that that was very important,” Vice President Saffron Kollodge ‘26 said. “I wrote up a big document of all the procedures and what everyone would need to do. We sent that to the principal and she approved it, and she had the great idea of having us coordinate with PALS for the Trunk or Treat.”
To prepare for the haunted house, the Drama Club officer team planned and communicated not only with the members, but also with administration to ensure everyone’s safety. Members of the club were asked to volunteer in various roles such as scare actors and technicians.
“I was a scare actor in the haunted house,” Oak Novielli ‘28 said. “We were in one of the hallways in the middle. We had two racks with clear shower curtains with little fake cockroaches glued to them, and then at the end, we had a table with someone lying on it, getting butchered.”
The preparation process involved creating scary decorations, brainstorming creative ways to divide the space, and enlisting scare actors to come up with unique jump scares throughout the haunted house. The day of, tour guides took groups of six throughout the house to experience the scares and practical effects organized by the volunteers.
“[My favorite part of being a scare actor] was definitely when a scare would land and it would get the whole group,” Novielli said.
In comparison to past years, this year’s haunted house represented a huge difference in publicity and number of patrons for Drama Club.
“I think it went really well versus last year,” Drama Club Underclassmen Representative Kymber Tribou ‘28 said. “I think this one was very well-planned. I’m happy that we had way more people come than last year. As an actor, I got to see so many different faces and people actually being scared and enjoying the event, which made me really happy.”
The haunted house allowed Drama Club to hone their theatrical capabilities beyond the scope of traditional plays, providing them with another avenue to showcase student creativity to the wider learning community.
“I was really happy because I was at the end of the haunted house, so I got to see everybody as they reached the end and were happy or scared,” Kollodge said. “It was really fun to see that not only were all of the Drama Club members having a fun time doing it, but that we could put on something that other people enjoy [as well].”
By virtue of the audition process for the extracurricular plays, the haunted house was an inherently exclusive elective. The event gave Drama Club members an accessible avenue to get to know one another and collaborate with students they may not otherwise work with.
“The extracurricular plays are really exclusive, and you have to do an audition and it can be really stressful,” Kollodge said. “It’s nice to have people who don’t usually get to participate, like underclassmen, or people who maybe don’t audition because they don’t have time, have something that they can do and then something that the Westwood community can see us doing.”
