By Ellie Fawcett
| I spent my Tuesday evening hiding under a table. As many of you may have heard, Tuesday evening marked the big Student Honors Council Halloween event, the Honors House of Horrors. SHC turned the Honors House into a haunted house, each room with a different theme and staffed with SHC members ready to scare. Our places had been assigned the week before, with people acting out scenes of mayhem, murder, and cannibalism. My thinking was that hiding under a table in the dining room would allow me to participate while also not being subjected to the dramatic face painting and stares from attendees other positions would force me to deal with. While this may have been true, there were unfortunately certain unintended side effects with which I was confronted during the course of the evening. |  A lovely selfie of me hidden under the table. Unfortunately, as the underside of the table was basically pitch black thanks to the tablecloth, you can’t actually see me. |
Upon arriving at the Honors House at 7 p.m., we began to plan our scare tactics. It was decided that myself and a fellow called Josh would hide under the table and scream, pound on it and, most importantly, reach out from under it to grab at people’s legs.
The table looked magnificent with its long tablecloths draping to the floor and a “dead body” laid out on top. At 7:55 we took our places waiting for the show to begin. The first groups began to come through at 8, and we discovered a major flaw in our scare tactic.
Neither of us could actually reach any ankles from our position.
People were giving the table too wide of a berth, skirting around the edges of the room. There’s just something anticlimactic about an arm flopping about on the ground. It’s certainly not as scary as we intended.
Having failed in our original mission, we were forced to reevaluate. We decided for the next few groups we would forego the grabbing and focus instead on the pounding and the screaming. This worked out ok, but we both felt that the performance was lackluster.
We needed the ankle grabbing.
Between groups Josh and I quickly switched positions. We found that we could now both actually reach people, grab them, and scare the living daylights out of them.
Boom. Problem solved.
Unfortunately, at this point we encountered a bigger issue. Two people plus a cramped enclosed area made the underside of the table approximately 20 degrees warmer than the rest of the room.
We were sweating like a pair of hogs.
There was no way to remedy this situation, though believe me we did try. We stole the ice from the fog machine. We rolled out from under the table the minute each group left the room. We flapped the tablecloth, desperately trying to create a breeze.
Nothing worked.
We were doomed to be trapped in that circle of hell for the next hour.
When 10 p.m.finally rolled around, we sprang out from under that torturous table.
The glorious, cold, open air outside of the Honors House was the most refreshing thing I had ever felt in my entire life. The rain practically steamed as it landed on my overheated face. My hair, frizzed from the gross, moist air under the table, was flattened by the water. I quite nearly broke into a dance right there on the Honors House’s front lawn.
It was over. We were free.
The table looked magnificent with its long tablecloths draping to the floor and a “dead body” laid out on top. At 7:55 we took our places waiting for the show to begin. The first groups began to come through at 8, and we discovered a major flaw in our scare tactic.
Neither of us could actually reach any ankles from our position.
People were giving the table too wide of a berth, skirting around the edges of the room. There’s just something anticlimactic about an arm flopping about on the ground. It’s certainly not as scary as we intended.
Having failed in our original mission, we were forced to reevaluate. We decided for the next few groups we would forego the grabbing and focus instead on the pounding and the screaming. This worked out ok, but we both felt that the performance was lackluster.
We needed the ankle grabbing.
Between groups Josh and I quickly switched positions. We found that we could now both actually reach people, grab them, and scare the living daylights out of them.
Boom. Problem solved.
Unfortunately, at this point we encountered a bigger issue. Two people plus a cramped enclosed area made the underside of the table approximately 20 degrees warmer than the rest of the room.
We were sweating like a pair of hogs.
There was no way to remedy this situation, though believe me we did try. We stole the ice from the fog machine. We rolled out from under the table the minute each group left the room. We flapped the tablecloth, desperately trying to create a breeze.
Nothing worked.
We were doomed to be trapped in that circle of hell for the next hour.
When 10 p.m.finally rolled around, we sprang out from under that torturous table.
The glorious, cold, open air outside of the Honors House was the most refreshing thing I had ever felt in my entire life. The rain practically steamed as it landed on my overheated face. My hair, frizzed from the gross, moist air under the table, was flattened by the water. I quite nearly broke into a dance right there on the Honors House’s front lawn.
It was over. We were free.
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