The Office of Student Life brought scares to Los Medanos College with its Carnevil Halloween event, featuring fundraising, free treats for kids and a haunted house that took up the whole first floor of the college complex.

For a $1 fee, students could enter the haunted house, which featured scary situations such as killer clowns, demented human marionettes, a killer scarecrow and a zombie pushing a cart piled high with human limbs.

The house’s victims moved carefully throughout the maze of cobwebs and monstrosities as the actors stalked and spooked them. One student was particularly impressed with the attraction’s capacity to scare.

“It was better than I expected,” said Nyema Williams. “I went in saying ‘I’m not going to get scared’ but I actually got like nine out of ten scared.” Williams praised both the set design and the actors, saying that Student Life “went all out” this year.

Several children had similarly chilling experiences, as the haunted house may have been a bit too intense for the little ones. Some left the attraction early as the actors terrified them with their antics.

The person largely responsible the Halloween event was Adrian Montemayor, who orchestrated everything from advertising and funding to layout and design.

“I had a lot of responsibility, first the set design, I was responsible for how everything would look and I even helped build some of it,” said Montemayor.

Montemayor was also responsible for scripting the many ghoulish denizens of the haunted house fright-fest.

“I was in charge of the actors, but most of it was improv,” said Montemayor, who went on to assert that the directed-improvised approach “showed what the performers could do.”

While the event went well, there were a few things Montemayor wanted to change.

“I was 85 percent happy with the event,” he mentioned. “That’s much better than last year, I was about 60 percent happy with that.”

Despite the success of this year’s event – the haunted house raised $140 for Student Life – Montemayor did have a few regrets, including unclear pricing of the haunted house and some last minute construction issues. He remains hopeful that next year will be even better.

“Its mainly minor things that will be easy fixes,” he stated.

In addition to the haunted house, the second floor was devoted to clubs and fundraising. Over a dozen clubs were in attendance, including Allies Club, SACNAS and La Raza, and many of these clubs were selling food and drinks. Also in attendance was Art Club who were selling prints of the club’s artwork.

Art Club President Ashlyn Bell was happy with the event.

“It’s a pretty good turnout,” said Bell, “we’ve sold quite a few prints.”

Bell was also particularly impressed with one student’s costume.

“There’s a guy with a pumpkin face that contorts its face and it’s pretty creepy,” she commented.