Behind The Scenes: TAB’s Annual Haunted House!

Written by: Debbie Xu

Contributors: Serena Chaudhary, Emily Morano, and Madeleine Homer

There is no doubt that one of the best parts of Halloween at TAB is our annual Haunted House, created and performed by Mr. Houston’s senior drama class. Despite the performers only having less than a week to prepare, it was absolutely loved by the students. 

This year’s theme was the “Eternity of the Damned” which featured scenes and characters from horror movies like The Shining, It, and Annabelle. 

Ten years ago, the TAB haunted house was created by grade 12 drama students. When asked about the origins of the Haunted House, Mr. Houston explained, “It was the theatre production and development class in 2012; it was a group of about fifteen grade 12 students. I had talked about the idea, because in 2011 we did a surprise Thriller dance in the cafeteria at lunch, and everyone really liked it. Anyway, it worked really well. My class wanted to build on that the next year, and they were like, ‘what if we turned the studio theatre into a haunted house?’”

On Halloween, students coming out of the haunted house were asked what they thought was the highlight of the experience. Popular answers included the twins from the classic horror film The Shining and the crawl-through section.

The performers enjoyed scaring everyone as well. Some of the actors have shared their favourite reactions below. 

“One kid just looked dead in my eyes and screamed 'leave me alone!’ and then fell on the floor.” 

“I snuck up behind someone and they didn’t know I was there. And then they slammed themselves into the door.”

There was clearly a lot of effort and care put into creating such a thrilling experience. Mr. Houston and his students were asked about the process of creating this haunted house. Mr. Houston shared his thoughts on the overall process: 

“Once we have a theme, students come up with their own scenes-their own idea for what they would like to do: characters, a backstory, and the environment that they want to create. Then, they’re assigned a spot throughout the studio theatre where they get to create that environment, and I help them. Whatever pieces of material they need: props, costumes, we try to support them in and a lot of the money that’s donated to help us to fund a lot of that stuff. We also pull from the material that we have in storage from over the years that we’ve accumulated from doing the haunted house.”

Many scenes employed methods like flashing lights, jump scares, screaming, and most importantly: timing.

“With the twins, just the way that they waited until you were right there before turning around and then waiting, and then snapping at you like that. The anticipation of that was what made that part really really scary. So, it’s a lot of timing and waiting for them to let their guard down,” a performer said.

In the end, all their hard work paid off and the TAB Haunted House was a blast for everyone involved, said perfectly by a senior drama student, “When people run out screaming for their moms, you feel very good about yourself!”