Students and others around the community spilled outside of the Pemberton Hall Main Entrance in order to encounter monsters at the haunted house Thursday.

The Pemberton Hall Council wanted to stray away from the ghost stories, which surrounded the building allure, but nevertheless succeeded in striking fear in some of those who took a tour through the basement.

In groups of six, students who participated after signing a waiver would first go through the elevator doors leading them through the main hall of the basement, which was filled with blood-crazed butchers, terribly-unfunny clowns and recently-arising zombies.

The tour would roughly take four to five minutes to go through and make it to the end.

Some students like Jada Swendsen, a sophomore family and consumer sciences major, found the elevator ride down to be the scariest part of the entire tour.

The basement itself added to some of the allure for the haunted tour. Swendsen said she found the basement added to the scenes.

Clowns got the best of some students like Megan Maybell, a junior family and consumer sciences major, who said the clowns got her to scream easily.

“I just don’t do clowns,” Maybell said.

Jordan Brown, a senior family and consumer sciences major, who helped in planning the haunted house, said it took roughly seven hours across three days to set up the scenes.

The Pemberton Resident Assistants helped out in the basement, playing as the clowns, butchers and zombies.

The clowns would be popping balloons while the zombies would be rattling chains and stomping on floor boards to instill fear into those who would pass by.

Students would pay $2 or a can of nonperishable food.

The proceeds from the night would all go to the Public Action to Deliver Shelter in Mattoon.

The shelter operates as an emergency shelter and a soup kitchen for those who do not have homes.

Paul Rilett, the executive director of the shelter, said he hoped to see more canned vegetables because they are hard to come by.

The money raised will go toward their capital building campaign.

“Right now, we a currently trying to work on getting a new building,” Rilett said. “We only have 16 beds, and this year we have had to turn away a bunch of families because we don’t have the space.”

He said he was excited because after 30 minutes, the people handing out safety waivers ran out of the 150 waivers they had on the desk.

Jarad Jarmon can be reached at 581-2812 or jsjarmon@eiu.edu.