Yonatan Gazit
Photos by Pareen Chaudhari, Christopher Khew
A dark pathway with twists and turns. Fog in the air and blood on the walls. Mannequins covered in sheets. A shrill shriek. Fluttering of some hanging cloth. One of the mannequins starts. These were several of many scenes during Yale-NUS’s haunted house. The latter was one of two main events on Halloween night, the other being a Halloween Mixer. Both events were held consecutively in the Multi-Purpose Hall, and planned entirely by students.
The Haunted House took place last year, so the sophomores who worked on it had some experience. According to Meredith Jett ’18, there was a substantial amount of planning that went into the event. “It started with conception, which is basically we’re allowed to use this space, how can we maximize the scare,” she said. “We split the space into smaller sections and [talked] a lot about where we want people to get scared, how we want to scare them, whether its visual or auditory or whatnot.”
According to Jett, the haunted house ended up being quite a success. “I would say that it was a success … we had between probably 210 and 230 people … from Yale-NUS and other NUS faculties,” she said.
The mixer, planned by a student group called the Illuminafrati, ran for the first time this year. According to Goh Si Yuan ’18 the school was very supportive of the idea. “I went and pitched [the mixer], and surprisingly they were really happy about it and [said] ‘how can we help you to make this free for everyone?’” he said. The Illuminafrati ended up getting a sound and lights systems, an MC, and two DJs for the night.
The mixer was likewise considered a success by several students there, and attended by 150-200 students, according to Goh. “It was really awesome how it ended up, I think that everyone [who] came … had a really good time … even people that I didn’t ask to help us came in and helped us,” he said.
Ziyad Bagharib ’18 said he felt very happy with how Halloween was celebrated, because, “During orientation, there was this point we were sitting in the CAPT auditorium, and … discussing what [we wanted] to see happen in the school … and there was this big resounding sentiment that Halloween should be celebrated here … [The] fact that Halloween turned out this way, that’s just a show of how much initiative there is in the student body and how spontaneous people are and how there are people who help make things happen.”
The Halloween celebrations came to an end by 2.15 a.m. on Nov. 1.