Englewood High School student TC Scaggiari’s news-feature on the Elitch Gardens Fright Night Media Day earned first place in our quick turnaround writing contest on the event. Scaggiari’s adviser is Sheila Jones.

Five schools attended the Oct. 2 media day, and reporters had the opportunity to write and submit a story on their experiences there. Four reporters chose to do so. The stories were then sent to Jeff Browne, executive director of the Kansas Scholastic Press Association, who judged the entries and supplied comments on their Word documents. The top three place-winners will receive passes to Elitch Gardens for 2011.

The place winners:
1st – TC Scaggiari – Englewood High School
2nd – Veronique Barbour – Englewood High School
3rd – Kasey Brueggeman – Palisade High School
4th – Brittany Lopez – Palisade High School

Here is the first-place story:

By TC Scaggiari – Englewood High School

Groups of people clustered together in dark circles, aware of anything that moved around them, forever on guard against any chain-saw wielding madmen or psychotic horn-honking clowns. The excitement on their faces glowed in the flickering light of the Ferris wheel and other attractions at Elitch Gardens on the first evening of Fright Night. Daniel Smith sat under a tree, cloaked in fog that slunk along the sidewalk and even into some of the friendly gift shops. His friend Jimmy Luna had recommended Fright Night to him.

“Fright Night is so much fun, dude! You’ve gotta try the experience! I was scared outta my pants!” Jimmy said. Daniel wasn’t afraid of anything. Zombies. Vampires. Ghosts. Haunted houses. You name it, he wasn’t scared. It wasn’t completely dark out yet, but everyone, even newbie Daniel, knew what would happen when the sun went down. Tonight, the usually familiar screams of adrenaline would take on a new note of fear. Danny had been warned that after the sun went down the monsters would come out to play, but Danny? Not scared. Roller coasters creaked and rattled from above as Danny stood in line for the first haunted house, The Suffering. He smirked at the terrifying description and cast it aside. Still not scared. The more his friends’ knees shook the more he laughed on the inside.

Finally it was their turn to go in. As Danny took each step he heard his heart pound. Faster. Faster. Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. He was in darkness. Nervous. Danny allowed his eyes to get used to the dark just in time for the horrors to begin. He edged through the darkness, always alert. No matter how hard he scanned the shadows he could never foresee the next “BOO!” around the corner. When they finally exited, it was dark. Night. Time for the creepers to emerge for some fun. Hoping to make himself feel better about his sudden fear, Danny asked one of the workers, Sean Games, if many people got scared of the haunted houses.

“A lot of people freak out while waiting in line. The man with the chainsaw usually comes along while they wait and scares them. So they leave before they even enter the haunted house,” the worker said. Danny was shocked that even while waiting in line for a haunted house he wouldn’t be safe from the crazies. Though the hair on the back of his neck was standing pin straight, he found that he was having more fun than he had ever had. He decided to ask some other people about it. Still a little shaky from The Suffering, he asked a group of people what they thought of Fright Night.

“So far being here has been entertaining. We aren’t scared at all though,” a middle-aged man who wore a fire shirt and who called himself Dennis said. A boy around the age of ten or eleven was quick to chime in with his two-cents about the horrors of the creepy haunted house and gave vivid details of Bloodlust, the other haunted house.

“We love it when we’re scared so bad that the hair on the back of our necks stands up,” the boy exclaimed with wide eyes. Daniel grinned at the family’s eagerness to share their experiences and grew warmer to the idea of Fright Night. He chatted with them more about creepy moon-loving monsters of the night before surging forward into the roller-coaster-lit park. He spotted five huge Halloween inflatables and thought there had to be at least one-hundred bales of straw in this place. He bobbed along to the music coming from the stage filled with performers dressed up as various Halloween-like characters. The smile on his face plummeted as the vicious rumble of a chainsaw ripped through the calm air. Daniel bolted to the nearest safe place to escape the chainsaw man and began laughing when the coast was clear. That was so much fun!