Author photo

By Garth Meyer
Gazette Reporter 

Palouse will launch 17th annual haunt

 

October 18, 2018



The imagineers of Palouse are at work again.

Truckloads of lumber were brought out from the city flathouse. Hundred-foot rolls of heavy black plastic arrived. Pathways were taped on the floor of the old firehouse and printing museum.

After weeks of work, the 17th annual Haunted Palouse starts Friday, to run two weekends, Friday and Saturday nights before Halloween — transforming the town into two haunted buildings, an eerie night ride along the river and general unsettling in the streets.

“The first meeting in September is always chaos,” said volunteer Janet Barstow. “All kinds of ideas. The second meeting, the practicality and feasibility comes in and you start to envision it.”

This year the group planning and building for the Roy M. Chatters Printing Museum had to buy extra 2x4s.

“We have the most complex floor plan we’ve ever had,” Barstow said.

In the museum, as for the firehouse, volunteers first frame the pathways (that patrons will walk through) in old, rough-cut 2x4s — eight-foot uprights — used since the start of Haunted Palouse in 2002.

“All covered with staples or screw holes,” Barstow said.

Plywood comes next, enclosing the four-foot wide paths.

“If people get scared and jump back, you want to have a solid wall to catch them,” said Barstow.

Then comes the black plastic and the world inside Haunted Palouse begins to appear.

Last year the four-night event raised $59,477 for various Palouse community groups, from which volunteers organize, create, build and act in the attractions. All told, Haunted Palouse has raised $581,121 since the beginning.

For each show night, also on hand is the Palouse Lions Club hamburger trailer and the Xenodican Club, selling its homemade treats and hot drinks. Fortune tellers will again come to town this year, setting up in the transformed “Needful Things” store.

Tickets for Haunted Palouse are $20, age 12 & older. The event runs from 7 p.m. - 10 p.m. each night until all have had a chance to make it through the line for the firehouse, museum and Shady Lane.

“It’s always nice on opening night to realize things worked as you thought they would,” Barstow said. “Any night that it doesn’t rain is awesome too.”

Author Bio

Garth Meyer, Former reporter

Author photo

Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.

 

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