Each of the past several years, the Hays Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) has hosted a haunted house on Main Street. In past years, it has been a huge success, and this year continued that success. The theme featured clowns this year, which seemed to be a hit with those in attendance.

The week before Halloween, I went to the haunted house with my good friends Andrea Zarate, Arely Maldonado and Eleanor Bittel, and it was amazing.

From the start, workers outside are dressed as clowns, so even when you are standing in line, the haunted house has already begun.

Once you enter, there is a small waiting room, with Halloween decorations from Frankenstein pictures to fake spiderwebs and with spooky music from the speakers.

After you get inside the actual haunted house, it becomes very dark, as all the lights are off. This makes the haunted house scarier, and you can hear people screaming as they make their way through the rooms.

Each of the rooms in the haunted house is different from the previous one, with some being decorated to trigger different phobias, from claustrophobia to nyctophobia. The passages between rooms also sometimes require you to crawl. Throughout the entire time, the maze is still pitch black, so people are bumping into walls and into each other, and it makes it hard to see the clowns following you around, too.

About halfway through the haunted house, you go down to the basement, which I think is cool. It makes the maze even spookier because you never know what is going to be at the bottom of the stairs.

At the end of the maze, there is a walkway where people pop out of random hiding places, but then hand out candy. Finally, you walk up this huge staircase, and the fright is over.

Although the haunted house starts slowly, with few jump scares, as you move through the maze in the dark, it does get scarier and scarier.

Overall, I would say it is a great haunted house; the participants play their parts well, and the actual building was set up in a frightening way. While the haunted house is only open one more weekend, on Oct. 28-29 from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., and while it costs $10 to attend, I would definitely recommend the CYO haunted house for people who enjoy spooky adventures.

24jwente@usd489.com