By ABBY BRAVO
News Editor
Students gathered on Tuesday, Nov. 2 to conclude their Halloween festivities with House of Horrors. Located in Fontbonne Hall at 935 Madison Ave, House of Horrors was a haunted house put on by Residence Life and run by 17 Residence Assistants, or RA’s, along with some additional students.
The theme of the house was a haunted hospital. The experience began with two of the actors in hospital gowns sitting on the steps of the house giving eerie stares as students passed. They would continue to try and scare students as they were waiting to go in.
Two floors were used in the house for a fully immersive experience for the visitors with multiple rooms and story lines. Students were guided through the house by two of the RA’s, Paige Menneci and Jimmy Cunniffe, acting as the married couple who owned the house. The two told the story of the house and the people in each room while prompting the other scare actors.
Interim Area Coordinator, Theresa Belfance, said that “The RA’s really took the reins on everything and planned it themselves.” The idea has been in the making since the end of September, and Laura Borrelli and Brianna Moss wrote the whole script. They even took some of their inspiration from the rooms and house itself. Being built in 1890, Fontbonne Hall had some real history behind it. “Fontbonne actually used to be a funeral home before owned by Saint Rose so we had some truth behind the script,” said Borrelli.
The RA’s had a great time participating in the event and were very passionate about making it a good experience for the visitors. Borrelli was very thankful everyone had the time to work on this event. “Our goal was to create a safe environment for students on campus to come together and have a good time.”
The event was a big hit amongst many of the students, 160 people in total had attended. Officer Mangold, who was at the event to promote the RAVE Guardian app to students, had mentioned “everyone has been rating it really high!” Belfance would ask the students what they rated the haunted house as they were on their way out and the responses were high, one person had exclaimed “that was official!”
Even after knowing what was going to happen in the house, Belfance was still shocked. After going through the house again, she stated, “This was the second time I went through and I was still scared!” A student, Mel Ortiz had said, “I felt like I was going into bootcamp at the end, everyone just started screaming.”
After students went through the house, they were met on the other side with treats like apple cider and candy bags, along with pumpkins that they could paint. “We were able to also apply for a Late Knight grant to help buy pumpkins for after the program, so people were able to make a night out of it because the haunted house was only 15 minutes” said Borrelli.
RA’s need to do an event for their residents at least once a month, so their collaboration counted as this month’s event. Even with some minor issues on the day of the program, like a brief power outage and last minute room changes to the set, the program had a great turnout and was overall enjoyed by the students. “One job we have as RAs is to enhance students’ experience and build a community at Saint Rose through programming. I am happy as long as one person on campus enjoyed the event,” said Borrelli.
