Tales From the Madison Terror Trial

On Oct 27, at the 4-H Grounds, a night of frights and terrors awaited at the Madison Terror Trial. The DSU Drama Club not only works the entire month of October to set up the haunted house, but also hosts the event by dressing up as various characters to scare children, teens, and adults alike.

There were various rooms throughout the Trial, containing murderous maidens, the Boogeyman, Hell’s Kitchen, and Krampus. There was even someone who scared the guests before entering the Trial. 

Part of the Trial was a room with three doors labeled with varying degrees of scariness. Pennywise, from Stephen King’s It, resided behind the one labeled ‘Not Scary’. For this jump scare, Photography Club set up a camera so that they could catch people in the act of getting scared by the monstrous clown.

The haunted house eventually led participants outside. Freshman Andrew Field said this was his favorite part. “You had to go outside, and there were a couple of guys in the camo suits, and they just popped up out of nowhere. One of them had a fake chainsaw that blew air at you.”

With so much work put into the Terror Trial, there was a variety of different ways in which participants like Field could be scared; “one of the first rooms, the Sacrifice Room, there’s a dude in the corner backed out of your sight, and he’s in a werewolf mask, and he just jumps out and growls at you. I screamed at that point, and I don’t get scared that easy.”

Even though the Haunted House is put together with the help of our Drama Club, it is not owned by DSU. Freshman Elizabeth Olson, a member of the Drama Club, shines some light on the subject; “the owners are Heather and Larry. Larry is out of a job right now, so he was working on the haunted house basically every single day.”

Drama Club comes together every year to be a part of the haunted house, this year named the Terror Trial, to scare people from all over Madison. “I like that it’s a creative outlet, that it’s a place where people can come together from different places and work for one goal[.] That was my favorite part, the collaboration of it.”

EDIT 11/2/17 : The yearly haunted house is funded and put on by the DSU Drama Club. Larry and Heather volunteer their help every year.