What am I Doing Here?

Halloween Scary House

Day 3959 on October 1, 2025



Favorite Halloween Memory

This event did not happen on Halloween Day. It happened when I was a teacher in school before Halloween. We had a new student of about 6 years old. He did not know much about Halloween. The teachers and I wanted to prepare a haunted house to reinforce some of the things the students might see in the neighborhood and learn language/vocabulary. I had a necklace with a blinking eye. The other teachers provided decorations to put in an empty room that had the lights turned off. The only lights used were at the corner of the room. We decided to use dry ice in a bowl with fake or plastic eyeballs in it. In another area we used fake skeletons. Finally we added other things for a special touch. We had approval to do this by our supervisor as long as the students were not traumatized.
We let a couple of students enter and walk along the path we had designed. We tried to explain that there was nothing to hurt anyone. But the new student must have never seen a haunted house and slowly walked behind another student. When I pulled out the blinking eye and picked out a fake eyeball, he panicked and ran out. He had also ran so fast, that he ran out of his shoes.
When we saw this we immediately went after him and apologized. His homeroom teacher give him a hug and waited until he seemed calm down. The other students were not afraid. But for the new student, it seemed real.
Since he was still afraid, we turned on all of the lights and let the new student and anyone who said that they were afraid, walk in the room and stop to look at the fixed up areas. They were impressed and seemed more comfortable with the lights on.
When we returned to the classroom, we had an open discussion of this haunted house and what we did. Soon the students were smiling and seemed to be relaxed. They even wanted to draw what they thought were scary masks. Some did a good job.
But I learned that young children really need to be prepared before they go into a strange, new place. This was the last year we were allowed to do a haunted house. That was fine with me since I do not like to have students to be afraid of the teachers, school or things that seemed very real. I think that Christmas or Valentine’s Day is better for the students to participate in.