FULLERTON : Haunted House Is a Scream

Johnny Serna and Sergio Rangel tried to act cool as they entered the Boys and Girls Club’s Halloween haunted house Thursday.

They almost pulled it off--except the two 12-year-olds had a death grip on each other’s shoulder.

As they walked through the maze, mummies jumped from graves as the sounds of organ music and screams poured from speakers in the ceiling. A ghoulish maid helped a severed talking head eat a bloody supper. Ax-wielding madmen sneaked up from behind. Tormenting hands reached through walls. And vampires and werewolves were in abundance.

Traditional haunted house fare, to be sure, but it’s all in the execution. Ask the guy repeatedly being zapped in the electric chair.

“People think it’s not going to be scary,” Johnny said. “But then everybody starts jumping and screaming and they do scare you.”

More than 50 members of Cal State Fullerton’s Kappa Sigma fraternity and Alpha Delta Pi sorority provided the characters who haunted the house, which was designed by Steve Bass, a conceptual artist with the Walt Disney Co.

It will be open again from 5 to 8 p.m. today in conjunction with a penny carnival. The club is at 348 W. Commonwealth Ave., and admission is 50 cents for club members, $1 for others.

“We’re just trying to provide a safe place for the kids and their families to enjoy Halloween,” said Allyson Gold, the club’s branch director. “We think the fraternity has done a good job of taking the designer’s ideas and putting them together.”

Sergio agreed, still shouting from excitement minutes after leaving the house.

“There are all of these people grabbing you,” he said. “I kept getting squirted with stuff. I really thought it was blood.”