Spooky House a Real Treat

It’s deliciously creepy when you realize there’s a woman emerging from that skull on the table. Then she talks to you. And then she vanishes!

Just because you might think you’re too old to go trick or treating doesn’t mean you have to miss out on all the fun. You can talk to the woman from the skull, among other ghoulish attractions, at the Glendale Family YMCA’s Halloween Haunt nightly through Saturday.

“It’s a very visual show from beginning to end,” said Craig Yaussi, the Y’s associate general manager.

There’s a story, of sorts, linking the rooms together, Yaussi said. Visitors will pass through eight scenes--including a funeral parlor, King Tut’s mausoleum, a swamp and a laboratory where they can leave spare body parts with the mad scientist there.

Those who don’t have any parts to spare needn’t worry. “We’re not here to give kids bad dreams,” Yaussi said. “It’s a show. We’re not trying to gross you out.”

But the special effects are geared to giving you a good scare, which might be too much for young children, so Yaussi recommends that only really brave first-graders and their elders enter the house.

Yaussi put the haunt together with a friend, Matt Fuller, who has worked for Disney Imagineering and Universal Studios. Yaussi and the Y provided the space and the flyers. Fuller and his friends put together the floating heads and hands coming out of pictures and other spooky stuff.

The Halloween Haunt, at 206 E. Wilson St., is open from 6 to 10 p.m. Tickets are $5.50, with the money going to support the Y’s youth programs.

For school-age children who aren’t quite up to mummies chasing them, the Glendale Public Library is also having a haunted house Saturday. A giant tarantula, a mad scientist’s lab and other scary sights will be in the second floor auditorium of the Central Library, 222 E. Harvard St. from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free.