Halloween Event

On October 31, 2012, we here at Project XIII held our own little haunted house in order to both celebrate Halloween, as well as to promote red ribbon week and drug awareness. This little event was lead by our very own Derrick Williams who planned and participated in the haunted house.

The basic format for this event was fairly simple. We first broke the event into two main parts, one targeting children, telling them about how bad drugs were, and the main event, the haunted house. For the haunted house we decorated our room, creating pseudo-walls out of joined garbage bags, adding small decorations such as "bloodied" signs, strobe lights, and a skeleton. We also had students positioned near the entrance who would tell their own little story about how drugs affected them and ruined their lives, while at the same time scaring them and moving them into the second part of the haunted house. Mind you, for this event, all of our students had dressed in costumes as to keep the tone of the event.

To give you an overview, we first had groups of five to six come in through the back doorway. There we had set up an arch with a paper curtain to block their view. As they walked into the arch, we had a large fake spider drop onto their heads. As they stumbled pass that part, they then ran into me, their designated tour guide for the first half of the haunted house. Seeing as I had been dressed as an evil jester, I made sure to unnerve the group with constant signs of insanity and mental imbalance. I then lead them into an area we designated as the "graveyard." Their we had one of our students, Esmi, play the part of a dead body. After introducing her, I lead the groups towards the designated story area. However, practically right after we left the graveyard, Esmi would pop up to scare the group. From their I lead them to the stories, where they would listen to about two stories before we start to literally scream at them to get out. This lead to many groups trying to stumble area from us, where they would pass Cynthia (playing what I believe had an uncanny resemblance to a creep doll). She would then usually pop up screaming at them, scaring them even more as we pushed them into the second part of the house.

As they entered the second half of the "house" there would be students popping up at random intervals to scare the groups, as we herded them into Fabian's "domain." While I am not a hundred percent certain as to what occurred in that section of the event, I do know that a large percentage of our people who visited our event, ended up running out screaming from his little "dungeon of horrors."

In the end we had over 240 individuals who signed to show that they stopped by to visit the event, surpassing last years by a fair margin. In fact, we had so many clients that many were simply unable to enter seeing as their lunch had ended before they could enter. All in all, I would say that this event was a smashing success, and a great way to start off our bigger events with.

First Friday

Last Friday, we of Project XIII held our First Friday for the month of October. For those who may not know what a First Friday is, a First Friday is a small event we at Hambleton Enterprises hold on the first Friday of every month. At these events we pass out information for various events that are planned to be held at the school. We also tend to base these events around a certain topic, this latest one being based around breast cancer awareness. At this event, I was given the task to act as the events security, making certain that only the intended audience group was allowed into the event area. I also was given the task to distribute mandatory papers to seniors that would inform them of the fees that they could be expected to pay this year. When looking back at the event, I've noticed the amount of work that was put into making this event the success it came out to be. Plans had been made to determine where tables would be placed, as well as determining who would be assisting at which table. However, the event could have been better had we put that bit more effort into promoting the event, drawing in a bigger crowd. As for the event itself, we did magnificently. Tables were well decorated any very attracting. The music created a very upbeat and energetic atmosphere. However one problem I came to notice was a lack of communication, with one event worker leaving without notifying the others. In a real job, this lack of notification would lead to a reprise, seeing as it could disrupt the flow of work. And this was not done by only one individual, but by a small sum of workers. This small issue aside, the event was a success. Although, in the future, it may be advisable to increase the target audience, allowing us to further spread information of our up and coming events.