Below My Feet: Casa de Miedo

As the end of October drew nearer, Halloween was of course on the minds of many volunteers, especially the Americans. We decided to do a casa de miedo, probably better known to most of my readers as a haunted house. The theme was based on a Guatemalan legend called La Llorona (llorar= to cry, so translate that along the lines of “the wailer”). In the legend as I have heard it in Guatemala, a woman drowned her children and now wanders the night crying out for them and bemoaning her actions. Guess who got to be La Llorona? Jess Heintz, that’s who. The idea was that the kids would hear the story of La Llorona at the beginning of the haunted house and then walk through “searching” for the lost children. Ummm, let it be known that we absoultely killed that haunted house.

For starters, we set it up in a fantastic location. There is a large room on the NPHG campus that is just used for storage. It is filled with metal bed frames, mattresses, industrial mashing machines, shelves, wheelchairs, and other random things. A few volunteers arranged everything into a path in the afternoon the day of. We put out a ton of tea light candles and it looked incredibly creepy in the dark. To keep with the theme, we also dismembered some dolls and hung them randomly throughout the maze. Again, pretty creepy in the dark.

As you entered the maze, one volunteer told the legend in this eerie, whispery grandma voice hunched over in a wheelchair. Then, there was me, honestly acting like a freak. As the story was told, I would cry out at a certain parts. The kids thought that was all I did… until they passed me and I jumped up screaming in their faces and scared the living daylights out of them hahahahaha. (“QUIERO MIS HIJOS!!! DÓNDE ESTÁN MIS HIJOS???) Seriously though, I screamed like my life depended on it! I honestly could go on and on for paragraphs about how great everyone did in their various roles in the haunted house. Shoot, we even had one person hanging above a door! Everyone just really got into character and played off each other. Grammy award winning performances, all around. Good work, team.

So far, the haunted house has been my favorite large-group activity with NPHG for a lot of reasons. I loved that it was something the volunteers did on their own that was not obligatory. I loved that it came together in the end (I will admit, I was a doubter at first because it was all a bit last minute). I loved that we did it so well. I love that the kids loved it! And, I honestly just had a blast with it. Man, there is so much more I could say about this event but I am still very behind on blog posts! (MUST. MOVE. ON.) I’ll close with saying it was better than any Halloween I had in college, hands down, and I wish all my family and friends could have seen it! <3

Enjoy the photos...