With its creaking floorboards and corner cobwebs, the old Ridenbaugh Hall Building is creepy, even during the day.
However, during the annual Ridenbaugh haunted house Saturday night from 7-11 p.m., music students aim to turn the scare factor up.
University of Idaho junior Caitlin Wikel can’t remember a time that there wasn’t a Halloween haunted house at Ridenbaugh hall.
“It’s something that’s always just been a tradition,” she said.
For the last two years, Wikel has been in charge of organizing the event. The haunted house plays on the fact that many students believe Ridenbaugh is actually haunted, she said.
“When you come as a freshman music major, everyone tells you, ‘Don’t do late-night Ridenbaugh, the ghosts will get you,’” Wikel said.
The story about why the building is haunted keeps changing, Wikel said. She said she’s heard many versions of the story — sometimes it’s a girl who died in the basement and other times it’s someone who committed suicide.
“People who stay late at night to practice say they’ve seen things though,” she said.
For Jerry Rodgers, a UI sophomore studying electrical engineering, the possibility of a haunting is high.
“It could be, you never know. It’s pretty creepy in there,” he said.
The haunted house itself consists of six different practice rooms that turn into scare rooms, Wikel said. They also decorate the hallways and lobbies.
“Last year, we did this thing called the spider hallway, where we put black threads hanging down that people couldn’t see,” she said.
As a teaser for this year, Wikel said they’re going to play off recent fears in the media.
“We’re kind of taking a spinoff of the big clown thing that’s happening this year. We have a room that’s going to play off of this,” she said.
The “monsters” in the house are students from music fraternities on campus, music students and the Vandal Marching Band, she said.
“The fun part is watching all of the actors have fun, they all really like doing it. It’s cool knowing people think this is scary and watching people’s reactions,” Wikel said.
Rodgers attended the haunted house last year. He said the most fun part is watching other people’s reactions. He said one of the friends he went with got so scared he passed out.
“If you have a low tolerance for fear, you’ll get scared easily. Otherwise it wasn’t the scariest thing ever,” he said.
Admission costs $1 or a can of food. Wikel said it’s a way for the music students to give back to the community.
“We want to do a fundraiser that includes the whole community. All of our proceeds go to the Moscow Food Bank,” she said.
Last year they raised about $80 and 140 cans of food, Wikel said.
She also said that the haunted house isn’t just for college students. From 7-8 p.m., Wikel said the actors turn the scare factor down to make it child-friendly. She said they have activities for children to participate in at the end of the house..
“Once 8 o’clock hits, we take away all the kiddy stuff at the end and go into scare mode,” she said.
For students that are worried about missing their weekend plans, Wikel said it only takes about 10 minutes at most to go through the haunted house.
“There were a lot of people who put a lot of work into this, and we want to share that with people,” Wikel said.
Carly Scott can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Idaho_Scotty