Here’s an idea for Halloween in Marceline that could be a great fundraiser for Marceline’s high school students, while also bringing more visitors into town. The Junior and/or Senior classes could organize, build, and operate a ‘Haunted House’ over a few weekends before Halloween.
I’m not talking about a little haunted house that takes five minutes to walk through. Instead, something bigger, on a smaller Marceline-scale of Knott’s Scary Farm. The students go all out and create something that draws people from throughout north-central Missouri.
At the moment, a perfect place would be the old Dollar General building on Howell… It’s a big enough space that could temporarily transformed into a pretty impressive haunted house. Students could design a maze of rooms, hallways, and scary scenes, with a designated entrance and exit.
Hopefully Rick Prenger would be willing to let the students use the building for free, or for a very low cost in October (and early November,) so they’d have time to build out everything, operate the attraction, and clean up afterward. Obviously, that would depend on the building being available, having event insurance in place, and everyone working out the details.
It could be a great opportunity to give the kids some freedom to design, build, decorate, and operate the haunted house however they want, with a few reasonable requirements… like, nothing that permanently damages the building, appropriate safety precautions, and plenty of parent involvement and oversight.
The biggest point though, is that the students would charge admission, and use the money for their class fundraisers, activities, trips, or whatever else they need to raise money for.
But here’s the part I think could make this really successful – PROMOTION! The students could spend at least a month leading up to opening to promote the event throughout the region. Social media, flyers, local newspapers, radio stations, and anything else they can think of. There are about 20 high schools within a one-hour drive from Marceline (with about 3,000 9-12th grade students.) With those students, and a good chuck of adults who like halloween and haunted houses, that could be a pretty good draw for something like this.
While the junior and senior classes might organize it, they could the freshman and sophmores to get involved too. There’s lots of things to do… construction, decorating, costumes, acting, ticket sales, advertising, and everything else it takes to put on an event. The more students involved, the better.
It could also be a way to help students see how to draw tourism to Marceline. Let them own the project (with the help of parents and business people in town.) Let the kids plan it, figure out the budget, organize volunteers, market it, and see how much money they can raise. There’s a lot to be learned from putting together an event like this, and it’s the kind of real-world experience that can’t be taught in a classroom.
And just like Toonfest, The Wine & Art Stroll, the Marceline Spring Festival, there’s good potential for Marceline. Families from Brookfield, Chillicothe, Macon, Kirksville, and all over the region could make the drive to Marceline for a really good haunted house. And while they’re here? There’s a good chance they’d grab lunch or dinner in town, visit the shops, and either come early, or plan to come back to visit the Walt Disney Hometown Museum.
This is just an idea, and I don’t think it would take a huge investment. Some parent volunteers and students willing to put in the work. As for insurance, you can generally get event insurance for something like this around $2,000… So if you can get 2,000 people to pay to go through, just $1 from each ticket could cover that cost.
And, if the kids like it and it’s successful, it could become an annual tradition that gets bigger and better every year.
