There is a laundry sink in a garage behind a house near Westminster College that is going to play big in "Field of Screams," an event planned by two creative student groups.
"There's going to be some intense things," said Eric Woytus, member of Phi Delta Theta who is majoring in environmental studies with an English minor.
This will be the second Field of Screams event, put on as a joint fundraiser this year between Alpha Gamma Delta, a sorority, and Phi Delta Theta, a fraternity. It will be 8:30-10:30 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Phi Delta Theta house, at the northeast corner of West Fifth Street and Westminster Avenue.
The cost is $5 per person. The proceeds will go to the Live Like Lou foundation, which is Phi Delta's national philanthropy raising money for patients with ALS, also called Lou Gehrig's disease. A third of the proceeds go to the Alpha Gamma Delta Foundation to fight hunger, Woytus said.
On Wednesday afternoon, a group of young men were busy building "stage" props at a garage off West Sixth Street. They used purple foam boards carefully carved and then painted to look like wooden planks.
"We'll put them over our front windows to make them look like they're boarded up," said Woytus.
Others, he said, will be painted to look like rusted steel. In a corner of the garage, dozens of tall corn stalks leaned against a wall. The sink was in another corner, and although specifics weren't given, it will be involved in something quite grisly.
It may be an event for middle school-age kids and adults rather than young children. Woytus said it'll be mainly "jump scares" and spooky scenes. There will not be any swearing and the actors cannot touch or grab the guests at any time, he added.
"Some of the stuff came from our adviser's house, and some of the stuff I bought," Woytus said.
The making of the props fell a bit behind when he became ill, but now he's feeling better and has a crew of about 10 young men working on the project. One of them is Jim Malven, a journalism major at Westminster College.
"We're going to have everyone in the (fraternity) chapter involved during the event," Malven said. "There will be actors and tour guides."
Some of the ideas for the props came from YouTube videos, according to Woytus.
"There will be a creepy cornfield with a scarecrow kind of thing," he said.
One clearly creative prop is an arch that looks like something out of Sleepy Hollow. While it looks like twisted trees, it's actually made from a more pleasant material.
"It's made from pool noodles," Woytus said, laughing. "They were individually wound up with shrink wrap and then I hit it with a heat gun and melted it on there."
A team of fraternity brothers then painted the resulting arch to look like the real thing.
Last year, mostly college students came to the event, and about $200 was raised. Woytus wants to attract more people so more funds can be collected for their charities.
"Our goal is to raise $1,000," he said. "It's one of the best philanthropies we've done. It's been a dream come true for me. I never had an opportunity like this before."