By Grant Terwilliger
Delta Sigma Phi fraternity hosted their third annual Night of Frights event in Adirondack hall, while raising funds for the local American Red Cross, while encouraging a better sense of community at a halloween-themed event for students.
The first ever Night of Frights event was started three years ago by alumnus art major Evan Hernandez who was in Delta and brought up the idea of a haunted house in a chapter meeting.
“A few of the guys were on board with it, but a few of the guys were hesitant because it was like, ‘Oh, what are we, a fraternity hosting a haunted house? What’s that gonna look like,’” President John Vilca said. “We got approved by the school and everything, and then we had to, at that point in time, chip in our own money, like all the members of that time. We had no grant. So everyone contributed a bit of money to go out and buy decorations.”
For the Night of Frights event, Delta reached out to Project Help for volunteers for the event. Sophomore Lindsay Wells volunteered for this year’s event and expressed how the event helps garner community.
“Events like this really strengthen sorority and fraternity life, because you get to know other members of different organizations. It’s really good for building those relationships and getting to know and meet other people,” Wells said.
The event takes about three days to set up every year and then opened on Thursday and Friday. This year the event fell on October 23 and 24.
According to Wells, the second night of the event was better than the first as a result of being able to work on how to properly scare people and knowing the procedure better.
“All the scares were perfect. Everyone was scared the second night, the first night, we were still trying to figure out the flow of everything,” Wells said.
Wells described her costume as wearing a trash bag with a white mask with blood on it and carrying a decapitated head.
“We weren’t even supposed to wear the garbage bags. They were like, ‘just cover up with these garbage bags and pop up like you’re a dead body in a graveyard. Wear the garbage bag so nobody sees you.’ But then we decided to put the garbage bags on,” Wells said. “So we turned it into our character, the trash bag people.”
Volunteers all brought their own ideas together and contributed to the themes of the different rooms in the haunted house as well as contributed ideas for the costumes. The best part of the event for the volunteers and members of Delta was being able to scare students.
“I was in the Spider room, and I just remember seeing that they were crawling under the webs and everything. Then I jumped out at them and they jumped back, but three or four of them fell to the ground in absolute fear, and then crawled out of the room, and then had to get up and, like, sprint out of the building,” Vilca said.
The future of the event will have to adapt to changes in the college with Adirondack hall being set for demolition in May. They hope to continue the event next year, just in a different location.
“I’ve already talked to some of the guys about maybe doing the ballroom, if possible, and making it a huge maze, like a haunted house maze kind of style, because the ball rooms are a huge area,” Vilca said.
Overall, Vilca said that he feels that the event was a success both financially for the American Red Cross as well as in terms of creating greater community.
