Face your phobias at MHS House of Fears

You just may come face to face with your worst fears under the stage of MacArthur High School (MHS) this weekend.

At least, members of the MHS Drama Club hope you do.

The club is hosting the House of Fears and has packed as many phobias as possible into a 20- to 30-minute tour designed to make attendees feel more than a little uncomfortable. The first fear to be faced is the fear of heights — and things go downhill from there.

The frightful experience is all in good fun and doubles as a fundraiser for the Speech and Drama Club, according to teacher Malinda Perez. Speech and Drama students will use proceeds from the House of Fears to help fund contest trips during the Spring semester.

Club officers met during the Summer to plan activities for the 2024-25 school year. One of the events at the top of their list was a haunted house, and they chose the theme of phobias.

“They put in as many phobias as possible,” Perez said.

And the list of fears one will encounter is long: acrophobia, iatrophobia, arachnophobia, trypophobia, claustrophobia, germophobia, basophobia, pediophobia, coulrophobia, pupaphobia, herpetophobia, and a few more you may have never heard of.

But students are sure everyone has heard of the last fear.

Drama Club Vice President Ashlie Overby is proud of his contribution to the phobias – the fear of holes.

“If you look up trypophobia, it’s people whose skin has multiple holes,” he said.

He found out about the obscure phobia when he was 12 years old and his older brother was teasing him. “It’s not good to look at,” he said with a shake of his head. (Trypophobia is an aversion to a cluster of small holes or bumps such as those found in sunflowers or honeycombs.)

This year’s haunted feature almost didn’t happen. After so many years of putting on the event, Perez thought it was time for a change. But the students didn’t agree.

“We didn’t have one last year. That’s why I was so excited to have it this year,” Overby said. “The seniors are always saying how they like it.”

The setup will be a bit different this year, Perez said. In past years, the attraction has been two stories tall and has been on the stage.

“The point between the two stories is the halfway point for people to leave the attraction if they need to,” Perez said. “We have had people leave. To me, that is a compliment.”

This year’s attraction also will have a midway point for attendees to catch their breath before either continuing or exiting. Most of the event will be held in the basement underneath the stage where between 50-60 students have transformed the area into their own version of a house of horrors.

Students have been busy painting doors, setting up a skull display, creating a pit full of fog, assembling a bed and creating other unimaginable terrors.

“It’s very scary,” Perez said. “This is not a lame event. This is not your mother’s haunted house. You don’t want to miss it.”

Those who make it all the way through will have to face one last fear before they will be allowed to exit. Perez, who thought up the last event, said the fear is pretty much universal to everyone.

“I’m a fear immersion therapist,” she said. “People fear this the most; it is worse than death.”