For the sixth year, the Mississippi State University Residence Hall Association kicked off its Haunted Horse Park Friday night.
The event involved more than 120 people total, including RHA members, other student volunteers and supervisors. On its opening night, the event saw close to 500 attendees. In years past, the event has raised close to $10,000 for local charities.
The event is set up as a haunted house at the Mississippi Horse Park, with RHA students crafting the various rooms and other volunteers serving as actors. Haunted Horse Park ran from Friday to Sunday.
“We’ve been working on this for about three months, planning and everything, and it’s finally come together,” said MSU RHA treasurer Dylan McDonald, a sophomore industrial engineering major from Frisco, Texas. “For three days, we have anywhere from 500 to 1,500 come through.
Rooms in the haunted house included a haunted butcher shop, an asylum, a haunted bridge, a prison cell and several dark tunnels with cobwebs and other surprises. The lights in the building stayed on from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., but were turned off from 8 p.m. until midnight.
“It wouldn’t be possible without all the volunteers, getting them to help out, ” McDonald said. “The horse park brought in all these metal railings, and then for the past five days, us and the volunteers have been tarping and decorating and just getting everything together.”
RHA Director of Programming and Activities Rebecca Van Pamel led the design of the haunted house itself.
“I conceptualized it,” said Van Pamel, a sophomore English and psychology double major from Huntsville, Alabama. “I wrote about it. I drew it out, then as a team, we actually did the physical construction.”
Van Pamel said her favorite room in the haunted house was the purge room, where two masked volunteers charged guests with plastic knives.
Following the end of the event, the RHA will donate its profits to local charities. The charities will be determined following discussions of RHA members.
”At the end of the day, we did it,” Van Pamel said. “We put it together, and it was so much work, and we were really able to come together as a team and it was such a great bonding experience and a learning experience.”