The old fire hall on Main Street will be transformed into the scariest spot in the city for 10 days in October, as the Boys and Girls Club of Airdrie (BGCA) prepares to host its seventh annual AIRSCARES event. Airdronians who enjoy a fright can check out the haunted house attraction from Oct. 18 to 21 and Oct. 23 to 28. “What we do is build a haunted house from the inside out, we invite people to come on down, buy some tickets and let us and our youth volunteers scare you,” said Jessica Nash, BGCA’s Manager of Events and Volunteers. The haunted house’s theme this year is H.H. Holmes – the notorious 19th-century serial killer from Chicago who confessed to 27 murders in the 1800s. Nash said BGCA is excited to show off its haunted house, which replicates a hotel from the time period. “It’s going to be very scary and we’re going to be beat the number of ‘unicorns’ we had last year,” she said. “Unicorn is our safe word, so when someone is in the house and they can’t go through because they find it too scary, they’ll say ‘unicorn’ and we’ll bring them out of the house.” Prior to 2016, AIRSCARES was held at the Blue Grass Nursery, Sod and Garden Centre near CrossIron Mills mall, and the old RCMP detachment on Edmonton Trail. This year marks the third time the event will be hosted at the city’s de-commissioned fire hall at 805 Main St. Nash said the new venue has benefited the event greatly – and not just because of its centrality. “It adds to the spookiness, because that building makes a lot of really strange sounds, on its own,” she said. Though AIRSCARES is a fun way to celebrate Halloween, according to Nash, the event is primarily a way for BGCA to raise money – the club’s largest fundraiser of the year. The 2017 rendition raised roughly $25,000 after expenses, she said, with 1,900 attendees passing through the haunted house. The money raised through AIRSCARES supports BGCA’s youth programs and subsidies for lower-income families for those programs, Nash added. “AIRSCARES…is really important to BGCA, because it does raise a huge amount of money for the year,” she said. “We try to make all of our programming barrier-free. “We like to keep our costs as low as possible, and with these events, we’re able to do that.” A new feature this year is a kid-friendly matinée Oct. 20 and 27 from 1 to 4 p.m. Nash said the daytime matinée will be geared toward children under 12, who may be overly frightened by the haunted house when it is dark and filled with ghosts and ghouls looking to frighten the "unicorns" out of attendees. “We’ll have trick-or-treating and fun little things for kids to do,” she said. An adults-only night will be held Oct. 27. Nash said volunteer positions are still available, but those who wish to volunteer as actors in the haunted house must be 14 or older. Last year, she said, 555 volunteers helped out, clocking 2,710 hours, collectively. “It’s a huge event and we need at least 40 people a night to run it,” she said, adding two sponsorship spots are also still available (as of Oct. 12) for local businesses who want to support AIRSCARES. According to Nash, the event will not be disrupted by the ongoing construction on Main Street.
