KAYSVILLE—Students at Mountain High School are scaring up some Halloween fun at Mountain Madness Oct. 30 and 31. The event features activities for the whole family, including a family friendly haunted house, face painting, DJ music, thriller performances and more. 

“We came up with the idea over a year ago,” said teacher Travis Spackman. “We decided to put on a haunted house that was sponsored by our school. We’ve been planning it ever since. So my class has been building props for it like way back.”

It’s a fundraiser for a lot of the school’s different programs, he said. “Like our manufacturing, theater class and DECA. We do some hiking trips with the students to take them to some national parks. It helps fund some of those activities. Mainly we wanted something that the kids could get excited about.”

There’s been a lot of apathy among students, said Spackman. “So we said, ‘Halloween and dressing up and being scary is something that they could maybe get behind.’ So we made a haunted house so that they would participate and be involved and interested.”

Spackman said students are excited to be there. “You can see it in their faces. They’re staying after. We had 18 kids the other day stay after school and they’re not getting credit or anything. They’re just here to have fun.”

All kids deserve to be supported by the community, he said. “But especially these kids. A lot of them come from some pretty rough backgrounds. Sometimes they don’t have the family support or they’ve just gone through some rough times in life and ended up here at the alternative education school. They’re great kids.”

They received some donations that helped with costumes and wood for the sets. “We were graciously funded by a couple different people,” said Spackman. “The Davis Education Foundation gave us $5,000 and CTE gave us $5,000. Then we got some smaller donations from some other people so we had a bit of a budget to buy all the lumber.”

Spackman said they were able to supply all the costumes and all the makeup. “But the kids are doing it all. They’re putting together costumes, making them into zombies, doing the face makeup for each other and they’re leading the scares and the ideas.”

The haunted house is the main event, he said. “It’ll probably take you about 10 minutes or so to walk through and there’s 18 different sections from a graveyard to a crypt to a pig person area where they’re going to try and get you for eating your bacon. It’s very cool.”

There’s a regular version of the haunted house and a kids version, he said. “The regular version you can go through and get all the scares. But if you're looking for something a little bit less scary, like for kids maybe, we have some Disney princesses and Batman and Superman that will walk you through the haunted house.”

Spackman said kids will get all the atmosphere and see all the spaces. “You won’t get all the jump scares from the actors. They’ll just kind of wave at you as you go by or maybe give you a fist bump. So it could be for any age.”

Mountain Madness will be Oct. 30, 31 from 6 p.m.–10 p.m. at the school, 490 S. 500 East, Kaysville. Admission is free for children under 5 years old, $10 for students and $15 for adults. All proceeds benefit Mountain High programs and clubs.