Haunted tour to benefit historic elevator By Courtney Warner FOR THE COLLEGIAN On Friday and Saturday, the Lemont Village Association will give people a chance to celebrate Halloween early. For the past 14 years, the associ ation has hosted the Haunted Granary. Tickets will be sold for $8 each until 10 p.m. on both nights. Event coordinator Sue Smith said guests will be divided into groups to visit each of the venues that have been created in spirit of the holiday. “Groups will be able to view a comedic Halloween skit, venture through a com maze, visit a haunt ed school bus and tour a dinky coal shed,” she said. The tours last 90 minutes each, and the festival is limited to no more than 1,000 people per night. Pood and tents featuring activi ties and entertainment will be avail able, too. If you go What: Lemont Village Association presents the 14th annual Haunted Granary When: 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Oct 22 and Oct. 23 Where: 133 Mt. Nittany Rd. Details: Tickets cost $8; The M bus (Nittany Mall) will drop off attendees near the event. The proceeds from the annual Halloween event benefit the restoration and maintenance of the last remaining wooden grain eleva tor in Pennsylvania, the Thompson Grain Elevator. The granary, built in 1885, was used to distribute locally grown agricultural products via railroad and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, according to the website. The association bought the land mark in 1996 and since then, it has raised and spent $425,000 toward preserving the building, Smith said. Nathaniel Peters (sophomore interdisciplinary digital studio) said he has been attending the festivi ties since he was 10 or 11 years old. As a kid, Peters said he loved how the Granary was made into a haunted venue. “It was cool to walk through a pitch black venue, where the only things you could sense were the frantic screams of others who were being scared to death as arms were grabbing them unexpectedly,” Peters said This experience gave Peters an idea of what Halloween is supposed to be like, he said. His participation continued in high school, when he volunteered at the Haunted Granary to com plete community service hours. During his sophomore year of high schooL Peters was hired as the vol- unteer coordinator for the event. While it turned into a part-time job in October for him, guests should still expect to hear him “screaming his lungs out,” in the Haunted Granary, he said. A student-run service group at Penn State, Circle K, volunteered at last year’s fundraiser. Circle K Project Director Amelia Ahnert (sophomore-chemistry) said the haunted granary is “a great local project that connects service groups with an immediate community.” Ahnert said last year’s event was entertaining. Circle K members helped by setting up the venues and dressing up to scare people as they entered the haunted scenes. Both Smith and Ahnert said new things are always being added to the haunted granary. Each year, the association asks for suggestions from their audience that they incor porate into the next year’s produc tion. Conveniently located on the University Park campus of Penn State http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/health The Haunted Granary opens Friday. There is never an instance where any part of the event is duplicated they said. “It is always changing, always new,” Smith said
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