Since September, Project kind has been non-stop planning for Dakota’s most recent event, the Haunted Hallway.

The Haunted Hallway is an open to the public event that allows people to either go around kid-friendly stations or enter an immersive, spooky hallway. Before the event even began, students from Dakota’s Key Club, Project Kind, and National Honors Society all pitched in to help get the first floor ready and decorated for the night. The volunteers met in room 130, grabbing bags full of black paper and placed it on the walls of the first-floor hallway. Some even set up tables in the lunchroom, folding them up or placing tablecloths on them, getting ready for their stations.

When the event finally started, families from around our community entered Dakota’s North entrance doors to see tables filled with crafts, candy, and games with students at each station. Each of the volunteers last Friday came prepared and dressed up in unique costumes, blending into whatever area they were placed into. Kid friendly costumes for the kid friendly station, and scary costumes for scaring people in the hallway.

As the night went on, parents and their children poured into the Atrium, seating themselves at each of the stations. These spooky-fun activities included Mask Making, Crafts, Cookie Decorating, Face Painting, Scary-oke, Coloring, and Pumpkin Bowling. At the front of the lunchroom, kids could play a classic game that involved grabbing a ball and rolling it down the lane to knock down ghostly-shaped pins. Ahead of bowling was cookie decorating where families could sit down and frost and sprinkle up their very own Halloween-themed cookie. Next to Cookie Decorating was where volunteers of Dakota’s Art Club drew on the faces of many smiling faces that night. Just behind that was mummy making, where children could compete against each other, seeing who can wrap each other up in toilet paper the best. On the other side of the atrium lay an entirely different section of activities to entertain families.

Mask Making allowed kids to use pipe cleaners, glue, glitter, markers, and paper plates to wear their very own creation for the night! Going along with the theme of handiwork, Crafts was the station just behind it, using popsicle sticks, cotton balls, and various coloring utensils to let children’s imagination’s flow and make anything they wanted. The next station families could go to was coloring where different sheets full of both frightening and silly images were available to embellish. The final kid-friendly station was Scary-oke that welcomed kids to sing and dance to their favorite Halloween songs. For the kids that wanted a little more fright, the back of the school was far from sunshine and rainbows.

In the first-floor hallway of Dakota, the infamous haunted hallway was a path that led from one side of the school to the other, having the volunteers dress up in supernaturally creepy costumes and scare the bully out of those who dared to enter. When you first entered, Mr. Renaud would lead people through the blacked-out hallway, making it hard to see when the actors jumped out to scare families. This was quite a popular event, having an extensively large line that could stretch out so far, it could get to the entrance of our school!

For the people who came for a show, some of the volunteers that arrived even came to act in the play Romeo and Juliet. This was a fun activity for families to see before the night ended, immersing you into a dramatic and authentic reenactment of one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays.

As the night finally came to a close, students throughout the atrium gathered decorations, candy wrappers, and trash, placing them in their designated areas. Those who were finished scaring in the hallway grabbed the black paper from the walls, taking down some of the creepy decorations with it. And with a brief period of cleaning, our renowned event, The Haunted Hallway had come to an end.