By Kayla Hoang, Staff Writer & Tracy Lam, Staff Photographer
On Saturday, Oct. 27, the FVHS Theatre Department offered a thrilling experience for guests through a terrifying twist on some familiar fairy-tales in their annual Haunted House.
There were two possible fairy tales for the customer to choose from: Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, each story taking you through its own morbid interpretation.
At the beginning of the maze, you are met with two doors, and the guest has the choice to pick which story they’d rather experience.
Sage Delaney, a senior and co-director of the Haunted House, played an important role of planing and executing the attraction.
“We chose the theme by having a bunch of ideas that we all liked, and voting for out favorite. We had ideas ranging from aliens, to classic monsters, to eerie underwater creatures,” Delaney said. “In the end, we chose woodland fairy tales! Mainly because we had a bridge we wanted to incorporate. But, we were all very happy about the theme because we were excited to play the classic fairy tale characters.”
In Red Riding Hood, I entered through the black door, and I was instantly met with a girl sitting in the room’s corner. She instructed me to pass into the next room, where another door was cleverly disguised as a bookcase. After coming into the next room, I was met with a small wooden bridge, surrounded by old and eerie-looking trees. The white, blinding fog over the atmosphere definitely helped to improve the creepy atmosphere as I moved ahead.
In the next room, you find Red Riding Hood’s grandma on her bed, caked in blood and shrieking at you to get out. Before you can, a “wolf” hurries in and starts attacking her, eating and pulling at her intestines. Of course, it was acting, but it was so well-planned and detailed to frighten anyone out. You’re quickly rushed into the next room where you finally see Red Riding Hood, with a bloody claw mark scarring her face, and she ushers you out the exit before the wolf comes in with an axe to kill her.
Theater went above and beyond with their transitions from the Red Riding Hood set to Hansel and Gretel. This story began the same way, with a girl sitting in the corner, but that is where the similarities end. After walking through the hidden door, actors draped in hoods guided me across a wooden bridge to the witch’s house while flashes of light and fog resembled a spooky, stormy night.
In the next room, I was met with Hansel and Gretel, who were chained and caged while the witch confronted me and led me into the oven, a small window, I had to climb through. Inside the oven, there were flashing red lights and red streamers, where the story ended with Hansel and Gretel covered in blood, gasping for air screaming for help.
The attraction took about a month to plan and build, but the overall result proved to be a worthwhile one for guests and those involved in making it.
“Overall, it was pretty stressful for Michael, my co-director, and I, but in the end we are very happy with how it turned out. Our actors are having fun, and hopefully our customers, too. It’s a great learning experience for us as students,” said Delaney.
