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Insane Asylum fundraiser

Fireworks and a bakesale at 108 Heritage Site
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Anikka Nielsen, Courtney Cave and Lauren McLean are three students running the bake sale, a new addition to the haunted house to get more students involved, on Oct. 31. Brendan Kyle Jure photo.

The Grade 12 students of Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School decided to put the scare in Halloween with their haunted house at the 108 Mile Heritage Centre.

The yearly event, in addition to a haunted house, also featured fireworks, a bake sale and more.

“We’re doing this big fundraiser to get some money for our grad year, that will involve setting up prom and paying up for all that stuff,” said Lauren McLean, one of the students running the bake sale tents pitched outside the house. “It’s just kinda something we were really excited to do to help the community and being involved. A little exercise to make the grad class and community come together.”

The school has been doing the haunted house for several years now and the theme isn’t always the same. This year, it was an insane asylum, with many students dressed in white gowns chained to walls or being electrocuted. One girl was locked in a cage.

“We have a lot of people in straight jackets and we have one stall that’s kids, like an orphanage, running around with dolls ripped apart,” said McLean.

Layla and Brittany McLean, two of the attendees thought it was really well done.

“It was done really good, some parts were really funny, other parts I was pretty scared,” said Layla.

Brittany, a student from 108 Mile Elementary who will be attending the high school next year, said the scariest part was at the ending, when one of the students grabs your leg and begs you not to leave or tells you to run.

For selecting the theme, the students have a round-table where they throw all of their ideas out and vote on the more popular one.

“They did their vote, they wanted the insane asylum,” said Marsha Ried, a parent who supervises the fundraiser. “They rounded up all the decorations and did all the ideas by themselves.”

McLean likened it to a democratic process, with making sure everyone has a say but ends up being majority rules.

Not being part of the voting process, Ried was really hoping the students would use the theme of a recent movie released in September.

“I was hoping we would do ‘It’ because of it coming out but they didn’t want to do clowns,” she said.

Ried anticipated 400-500 people would show up to the haunted house this year.