MAFB volunteers help make Halloween a scream

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Cortney Paxton
  • 341st Missile Wing Public Affairs
MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont. --  Volunteers from Malmstrom Air Force Base signed up to help create and participate in a haunted house at the Montana Actor's Theater in downtown Great Falls.

A dozen of the nearly 50 Malmstrom volunteers signed up gathered at the MAT, alongside volunteers from the Great Falls community, Oct. 12 to help build the path of the haunted house, dress the different themed rooms and get acquainted with their parts in the haunted house before it opened Oct. 17.

"Depending on their skills, some volunteers will be helping build and some will be helping set up the rooms," said Tech. Sgt. Jason Burleigh, 341st Maintenance Group security manager and volunteer. "There's been some people help write the story and we've also got some people working concessions. Some people will be working as guides actually telling the story, and some will just be in areas to scare."

The idea of the haunted house at the MAT began last year when another local haunted house wasn't able to be open for Halloween.

"When Kranz's haunted house wasn't happening last year, I suggested we do one here," said Staff Sgt. James Anderson, 341st Maintenance Operations Squadron maintenance scheduler and volunteer coordinator. "The theater is perfect for it - it has a lot of open space and you can design it any way you want. The Montana Actor's Theater approved it and so I took lead on setting up the haunted house. I had the resources from the base and from the theater so I could be an appropriate middle-man between the two."

"Jason put together a proposal for us back in June and we reviewed it and liked it a lot," said Josh Wendt, MAT chapter administrator. "We agreed that the things the [Airmen] could provide for us is exactly what was limiting us from doing the haunted house ourselves. The Airmen were going to provide most of the manpower and heavy lifting for building and manning the haunted house itself so that we could have security and enough people to run it. It is very labor intensive when you do a haunted house. The MAT is going to provide the expertise in acting, designing, makeup and character development for the scarers as well as the interactive folks that we call guides."

Unlike other static haunted houses throughout the community, the MAT house had a different idea in mind. By using the interactive guides to lead groups through the haunted house, they're hoping to get people entangled in a story, which the group ultimately creates by making decisions based on their scenario.

"We wanted to make it interactive, but we didn't want it to just go through a linear story," Wendt said. "We want the groups to interact with, not only the guide, but the story so they can kind of be in charge of their own fate a little bit."

The house will start with groups deciding to start in either a military or civilian route to take through the tour. The military side will allow the group to try and arm themselves whereas the civilian side puts the group in a small-town community type of setting.

"It's a loosely narrated story," Anderson said. "People can fill in the gaps themselves and that's why the role of the guide is so important. The guide needs to play off of the group. Some groups may not care about the story so he may just kind of rush them through and that's the end of it, but some people may be really into it and the guide would just feed off of that. That's why we needed the theater part of the haunted house. There are six rooms total - the military and civilian rooms kind of set up that arc so when you pick a military room you're kind of arming up and if you're a civilian, you may be from a small town that maybe offers zombie sacrifices."

The MAT haunted house opened Oct. 17 and will continue to run every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night through Nov. 2 from 6 to 10 p.m. (or until the line ends). Admission is $5 per person, which includes a wristband good for $3 tours the rest of the night. People may also bring canned goods to benefit the Great Falls Food Bank - each canned good is good for $1 off admission.

"I'd encourage everyone to come," said Burleigh. "It's a unique opportunity to see a different aspect of a haunted house."