Harrow Rotary Club’s Halloween spirit scares at Colchester Schoolhouse

by Kyle Reid

Screams could be heard loud and clear near the Old Schoolhouse in Colchester on Friday and Saturday as the location transformed into a chilling house full of ghosts, ghouls, and other creepy creatures that scared visitors in support of the Harrow Rotary Club.

  Members of the Harrow Rotary Club transformed the Old Colchester Schoolhouse into a creepy maze of horror in celebration of the second annual Fright Night. The event offered a children’s haunted house on Saturday afternoon and a more malevolent feature for older patrons on both Friday and Saturday evenings.

  For Rotary Club organizers, the schoolhouse, built in the late 19th century, served as the perfect, spooky location for this year’s attraction of terror.

  “We kept this in a schoolhouse theme,” Rotary Club Co-Chairperson Corrie Bramhall said. “This building was built in 1881, I believe, so we wanted to keep with that theme.”

  The children’s haunted house on Saturday afternoon gave some braver children the opportunity to take part in activities, like face painting, spider races, and pumpkin painting. Volunteers with the Rotary Club took no prisoners in the adult haunted house in the evening, however, and anyone who navigated through the terrors of the old schoolhouse and the outdoor maze found themselves in for quite a fright.

  “They would be shrieking right when they walked in-all the way through you could hear them,” Bramhall said, laughing. “But as scary as it is, it’s rewarding to know that we did our job right.”

  Of course, all scares were in support of a good cause. Funds raised from the event went to support the Harrow Rotary Club and its local and international humanitarian projects.

  In order to organize such a terrifying encounter, numerous volunteers jumped in to help provide the scares. That volunteer spirit is something which the other Harrow Rotary Club Co-Chairperson, Alexandria Mertz, said the group is extremely thankful for.

  “Some [volunteers] are part of the Rotary Club, others are just friends and family we’ve recruited to help,” Mertz said. “There’s a lot of positive community support and we wouldn’t be able to do it without our volunteers.”