Dairy club’s haunted pavilion has successful evening of scares

This year’s haunted pavilion put on by the Dairy Club had a bigger audience and more donations compared to last year.

The haunted pavilion was a success last Friday, Oct. 24, with over 70 people being scared by the members of the club. Dairy Club President Eric Zwiefelhofer says that this year there was a positive and hardworking team that worked well together that brought more people this year. Compared to last year’s haunted pavilion, where only 30 people showed up to be scared.

The haunted pavilion was free to all students and community members, but the Dairy Club accepted money donations and canned goods. All donations were given to the food shelf in River Falls.

The haunted pavilion was designed and put together at the Campus Farm located on Wasson Lane in River Falls. The farm is walking distance east towards Moody’s from the UW-River Falls campus.

The Dairy Club has been assembling the haunted pavilion for about 10 years. Each year the second vice president is responsible for deciding how to design the pavilion.

This year’s designer was Paige Roberts, the Dairy Club’s second vice president. The haunted pavilion is a couple of rooms that are decorated, and the members dress up and scare the people as they go through the rooms.

The construction and decoration of the rooms took three days with four-hour shifts each day. The hardest part of the construction was making sure that the walls made out of black plastic bags were hung correctly with ropes attached to pipes in the ceiling so they wouldn’t fall down, according to Roberts.

The pavilion is a building with open space, and the construction was simply putting up walls to create rooms.

According to Zwiefelhofer, the decoration was simply getting props, such as a bed and a priest outfit for the exorcism room. This year’s haunted rooms were a clown room, a haunted corn maze, an exorcism, an electric chair and a car crash.

Roberts said her influences and ideas came from Trail of Terror and Scream Town. Some of the other members in Dairy Club worked in haunted houses as well and were able to help.

The Trail of Terror in Shakopee, Minnesota, has a variety of attractions including a haunted trail in the woods, and “Hotel 666,” a heated, indoor attraction spanning nearly a mile. Scream Town in Chaska, Minnesota, “Minnesota’s #1 Halloween Attraction,” is the best value in the state with numerous attractions.

With this year’s success at the haunted pavilion, the Dairy Club was able to entertain the River Falls Community and UWRF students with scares in their haunted pavilion. Compared to last year, more people showed up and donated more to the food shelf.