Slowly, Whitney M. Young Job Corps Center is returning to the traditions that COVID disrupted.

Its basketball team has successfully been revived, and now its wildly popular Halloween Haunted House has returned as well.

“It took me about three weeks to get it prepared,” said Devin Holt, staff sponsor and primary decorator. “Once we got it done, SGA supplied us with a certain amount of money to decorate the haunted house.”

A yearly event to help celebrate the spooky season, Whitney’s haunted house has always been held in the Norton dormitory, which is one of the oldest buildings on campus and is rumored to actually be haunted.

“The legend of it lends to the anticipation of doing the haunted house over there. Most students don’t even want to go in there in the daytime,” said Property Supervisor Sabra Shields, who was also involved in the haunting. “The hand dryer going off every now and again is a little suspect.”

And with the yearly tradition back, the people involved did not want to pull punches.

“We want them to regret their life choices,” Shields said.

However, Shields added that in case they regretted their life choices too much, she and Holt introduced a safety measure – just say the word pineapple, and the student will be taken to a safe room and escorted out.

“We want the students to be happy and enjoy this. Otherwise, what’s the point,” Shields said.

And did they? Holt said that signs point to yes.

“It was good,” Holt said. “It was as scary as possible with the limited resources that we had.”