Haunted Palouse covered the Palouse with excitement and fright over the past two weekends on Oct. 17, 18, 24 and 25. This included the “Spooktacular Saturday” event for children, tarot card reading, a haunted house and zombie hunt, along with the evening street fair. 

Richard Link, Haunted Palouse board co-chair, said Haunted Palouse began in 2002 as a source to raise funds for the printing museum in downtown Palouse, Roy M. Chatters Newspaper and Printing Museum, which was damaged during floods in 1996. 

The founders of the museum raised $3000 and the organizers decided to continue running the event and putting down the proceeds to various community groups, including the Palouse Arts Council, Vikotic (Palouse High School Robotics Team), SciBorgs (Pullman 4H Community Robotics Team), Palouse Paint Ballers, Palouse FFA and more, Link said.  

Link said that in total, the Haunted Palouse has raised nearly $900,000 for community groups. 

“Haunted Palouse planning is undergoing a change,” Link said. 

After conversations with the local robotics teams, they expressed interest in building animatronics and other props for the event, but needed a longer lead time to be able to perfectly complete the task, Link said. 

This will cause the Haunted Palouse planning to begin as soon as the event ends this year.

To balance the scary portion of the event with keeping it family-friendly, the event has been broken up into several different parts with different scare levels, Link said. 

“Spooktacular Saturday” was a kids-friendly event from 2 to 6 p.m. on Saturday afternoons, Link said.  This is the tamest event, with some referring to it as the “Scooby Doo” level. 

On Friday and Saturday from 7 to 11 p.m., the scene on the street, which included magic acts, fan dancers and street vendors, was a “level up,” Link said. This portion included roaming scare crews and flash mobs doing the “Thriller” dance. 

The old printing museum offered tarot card reading while the next level of scares was the Haunted House in the Police Station, Link said, where the robotics teams and FFA have put most of their effort.  

This year, it was themed into “Classic Horror” from the 1960s-2000s.

“The most heart-pounding is the Zombie hunt,” Link said, where participants arm up with a gelball blaster and enter the forest path and maze found there to brave the zombie hordes and try to survive.

Link said that this event not only brings money into the small community in the Palouse but also binds people together, giving everyone a focus to work together while breaking down barriers between different groups. 

Link said volunteers always come back to help. Last year, more than 300 volunteers contributed over 3000 hours to help the event come to life.

“We see many of the same faces from year to year, with some of the Haunted Palouse founders still around lending their talents to the show,” Link said. 

Zee Augenstine, a student at WSU, said they always wanted to volunteer at the Haunted Palouse since scare acting was a dream of theirs as a kid growing up in Pullman. Augenstine said they never got a chance to attend the Haunted Palouse as a child, but had always heard about it until they finally got a chance to volunteer last year. 

This year, Augenstine said they decided to help with the makeup for all the scare actors as well as volunteering as one themselves. 

“This year I am a clown,” they said. “I get to walk around the streets, scare and creep people out.”

Augenstine said they prefer to complete their makeup at home before reaching the Palouse to help others with their makeup to help save time and help others more attentively.

Getting into the scary mindset for the performance is a difficult task and can be daunting, Augenstine said. There is always the worry about not being scary enough or people laughing but other scare actors always support and help get excited about the performance. 

“I just become a whole different person when I am out there scaring,” Augenstine said. 

Augenstine said they find it extremely fun to scare people in a way that visitors are able to get what they came for and have a great time. While some are not scared, Augenstine said they interact with the visitors as the character, which makes it funny and helps to have good memories at the Haunted Palouse. 

“I really just want people to have fun,” Augenstine said, “To be able to bring the community together and decorate an entire town is great.” 

Behind the scenes, it is almost like controlled chaos since the scare actors only have two hours to prepare for the night, which includes last-minute changes, costumes, makeup, safety briefings and more, Augenstine said. 

“When I scare people, it leaves me energized and ready for the next people,” Augenstine said. 

From eerie zombie hunts to family fun, the annual event celebrates creativity and community spirit. With another successful year behind them, organizers and volunteers are already gearing up for next year’s Haunted Palouse.