By: Dagney Palmer
Tuscarora High School – You walk into school on the morning of Monday, October 14^th and head toward the upper 600 hallway. You discover a suspiciously adorable scene blocking your way…

SWEET DREAMS

…bright signs lead you toward a shadowy doorway…

SOMETIMES

…The lights are growing dimmer and dimmer…

TURN INTO

…You make your way up to the daunting doorway and notice the final sign…

NIGHTMARES

 Warily you nudge your way through the darkening corridor and come face to face with hairy spiders dangling from the ceiling. As you bat them away with a laugh, someone grabs you from behind. A fully costumed senior snickers and then jumps away to frighten the next group of unsuspecting freshmen. Nightmarish images greet you as you stroll down the length of the hallway; the walls and doors are littered with skeletons, ghouls, and tombstones. You can’t help but stumble about in awe at the seniors’ prowess.
The upper 600 hallway stood out impressively on Friday morning, and students crowded the area to get a look. Instead of just plastering the walls with cheesy Halloween decorations, the seniors took a creative approach to their ‘nightmare’ theme. Playing off of the junior theme of ‘sweet dreams,’ the beginning of the hallway was decorated in a bright, happy manner with flowers, a cute little house, and a big, yellow sun. But then, as you passed through a doorway lined with black streamers, what appeared to be a sweet dream transformed into a nightmare.
The majority of the 600 hallway was lined with black paper. This, along with the midnight black lockers and dimmed lights, gave the hallway a dark, menacing appearance. Dozens of handmade spiders dangled tantalizingly from the ceiling, and ghostly skeletons were hanging from the clocks. Terrifying drawings of ghosts and ghouls lined the spaces on the walls, and seniors dressed in scary costumes roamed about, one even pretending to be bloodstained corpse lying on the ground.
 One of the scariest parts of the hallway had to be the large red box that, unbeknownst to students, concealed a crouching senior. Whenever someone would press the circle labeled, “PUSH HERE” on the box, the masked senior would jump out, scaring students and teachers alike. At the end of the hallway was a classic haunted house made of paper as well as a giant black spider web surrounded by tombstones.
 It was obvious this must have taken a lot of time and effort. However, the seniors were prepared from the start, “We were pretty much unanimous that we wanted to do the nightmare [theme]… and then once they came up with ‘nightmare,’ everyone had their own ideas,” said Ms. Purvis, the senior class sponsor, “I think just about everybody got to put something into it.”
According to Ms. Purvis, the senior class was very organized both in getting the materials for the hallway and in putting the final product together. She explained that “we needed this much of this and that much of that, and everything just worked out.”
Senior Bridgette Loy said that setting up the hallway “pretty much came easily.” She explained that it also helped to have more people participating than they had last year.