Students at Mountain Pointe High School have turned their own theater into a sprawling, 20-room haunted house, and they are not just decorating hallways for fun — the fundraiser covers about 80% of the theater company's entire season. The attraction wound through backstage spaces, the orchestra pit and even the catwalk, giving visitors a route that organizers say takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes to walk, sometimes longer.
Mountain Pointe Theatre Company opened its annual haunted-house fundraiser in Ahwatukee on Friday, October 23, according to 12News. The haunted house, themed around “The Unseen,” was set to return Saturday, as well as Oct. 29 and 30, running from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the school, located at 4201 E. Knox Road. Admission was listed at $10 for students and $15 for adults, with a $20 fast pass letting visitors skip to the front of the line; tickets are sold at the door.
Those prices differ from what an earlier Ahwatukee.com report listed for the event in a prior year, when tickets ran $7 for students and $10 for adults. That same outlet's earlier coverage also pegged the haunted house as an experience of at least 20 minutes, longer than the 10-to-15-minute estimate in this year's 12News account — a reminder that admission costs, hours and walkthrough times have shifted from year to year.
Months of Building, One Slimy Payoff
Corey Quinn, a science teacher and theater co-sponsor, said planning for the haunted house began months in advance, with students spending the week before opening night assembling sets and preparing makeup, per the station's report. Mountain Pointe students handle much of the creative work themselves — building scenes, creating costumes and applying makeup, then acting the parts once doors open. Teachers help guide the production.
One standout room, built by a student identified only as DB, featured hanging materials coated in petroleum jelly and sprayed with water for a slimy effect. DB described the room as gross and said visitors reacted with disgust, exactly the response the room's creator was going for. Another student, Leonidas, had a simpler message for anyone walking in: guests should expect to be scared.
Not Everyone Has to Scream
Not Everyone Has to Scream For anyone who would rather skip the jump scares, the haunted house offers a gentler version on request. Actors are instructed not to deliberately jump out or try to frighten those visitors, giving families a way to see the sets and costumes without the full scare factor.
Kim Bonagofski, the school's theater teacher and a co-sponsor, said the fundraiser's proceeds support arts education along with the shows and programs that run throughout the year. The money helps cover set materials, costumes and makeup, and the theater program does not charge its own students to take part — the haunted house is how the group pays its own way instead.
A Decade-Long Tradition With Big Numbers
The haunted house is not a one-off novelty. Ahwatukee.com reported that the school has staged some version of a scary Halloween offering for at least a decade, with past years featuring students and teachers running an interactive haunted show through the building using the same orchestra pit and catwalk now part of the current layout. In that earlier report, Quinn — then identified as a biology teacher and a Mountain Pointe alumnus from the Class of 1995 — said the event had drawn as many as 500 people in a single night and brought in more money than the theater company's other school-year shows combined.
With the haunted house still scheduled for Oct. 29 and 30, Mountain Pointe has more on the calendar. The school has planned a trunk-or-treat event for the following week, and the theater company is set to present Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Nov. 6 and 7 — the kind of production the haunted house's ticket sales are meant to help fund.
