School of Screams brings the frights of a schoolhouse

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Almost 15,000 square feet of haunted rooms in a schoolhouse built in 1927 is the venue of Carbon County’s largest haunted house located in Spring Glen. Called the “School of Screams,” it is located on 1950 West 4100 North and is open the weekend of 18-19, 25-26 from 8-11 p.m. and costs $10 per person.
This is the third year for the “School of Screams” and it just keeps getting better with more attractions, sounds and costumes.
“Because the building was already old, making it creepy and scary was easy,” says Jon Black, who, with his wife Jenny, came up with the idea to help raise funds to pay for insurance and upkeep of the old school building. It is owned by the Spring Glen community and is a non-profit entity. The adjoining park is also part of the property, Black said. “It’s funny because we get a lot of volunteers to help with the haunted school house, but no one wants to help with mowing the lawn or cleaning the bathrooms in the park during the summer months.”
When they came up with the idea to host a haunted house three years ago, they walked through the old building and envisioned the potential of a school being made into a haunted mansion. “It was already really old with an ancient boiler, nooks and crannies, lots of brightly painted rooms and squeaky steps,” he said.
To get ideas and props for the haunted house, the Blacks go to yard sales, thrift shops and scour the Internet looking for costumes and props to build and maintain it.
Black said the rooms all have themes including the White Lady room, gypsy room, evil clowns’ room, torture room, old cafeteria room and haunted prom room in the auditorium to name a few. The scary music and fog machines add ambience to the experience. They use 20 to 30 volunteers each weekend. “Apparently everyone likes to scare people because we do not have a problem getting volunteers to run the haunted school house.” Jenny said.