Borough shelter hosts seriously scary haunted house

PALMER — Headhunters, zombies, werewolves, an organ-playing opera phantom and hoboes. It’s hard to name a Halloween stalwart that won’t be populating the Fur and Fright haunted house at the Mat-Su Borough Animal Care and Regulation Shelter.

“Kind of our theme is going to be claustrophobia,” said shelter volunteer coordinator Susan Fujimoto as she led a tour through the part of the house that will contain a narrow hallway of blowing fabric. Another section includes crawling on hands and knees through a tunnel.

Later, she pointed out a new addition — a guillotine — before accidentally executing a rubber rat.

Fujimoto said this is the third year the shelter has put on its haunted house, which is its big yearly fundraiser. Hundreds of people come through each year and the $5 haunted house admission fee brings in several thousand dollars, all of which stays at the shelter to pay for shelter projects.

“It takes us at least six weeks to get it all together,” she said of the haunted house.

She said the idea to do a Halloween fundraiser came one day when she was leading a group of new volunteers through the shelter’s barn and storage area.

“One of the kids said, ‘this is kinda spooky back here,’” Fujimoto said.

She knew that one of her other volunteers loved Halloween and the idea just kind of clicked into place.

Over the course of the two days the haunted house is open — today and Saturday — between 30 and 50 volunteers will perform parts in the various rooms of the haunted area. She said the difficulty of finding enough volunteers with enough time to offer is the only reason the haunted house isn’t open longer.

All of those actors come from the shelter’s pool of volunteers.

“I’ve trained probably 800 or more volunteers since I’ve been here,” Fujimoto said. “We have a great pool of volunteers.”

She said that the past couple of years she and the volunteers will have a powwow immediately afterward, write down all the things they could have done better, their ideas for the next year, tear down everything, and take a break until the fall.

Fujimoto said the recommended age for the haunted house is 13 — it can get pretty scary.

“We have a lot of younger ones come out crying,” she said.

But the lobby will be set up with activities for the younger crowd to do.

The course of the tour leads you outside twice. It’s a serious haunted house that Fujimoto said can take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes to get all the way through.

“It depends on how scared you are,” she said.

And people do get pretty scared. One of her favorite parts is one of those outdoor sections. It’s funny, she said, to listen to people when they get outside.

“Oh, we made it,” they’ll say.

Then the door will slam, a chainsaw start up and the screaming recommence.

“It really is a riot listening to people in there,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.