People have been disappearing from the old tax office behind Zachary’s restaurant on Second Avenue North. A Columbus native named Dementia recently returned to town to look for her family, the building’s most recent victims. She’s asked the Columbus Police Department to investigate. And what they’ve found is nothing short of terrifying.
The tax building is haunted.
“And that is where the mystery begins,” Community Police Officer Rhonda Sanders said.
That fictional scenario is what tour guides will tell visitors starting Thursday and continuing through Halloween at the annual CPD Haunted House, Sanders said. She, along with city firefighters, police officers and volunteers from Lowe’s Home Improvement, have been turning 405 Second Ave. N. into their own little shop of horrors. From a Voodoo room to a gruesome crime scene, the haunted house is full of all that goes bump in the night.
“I’m so excited,” Sanders said. “Hopefully we’re going to blow it out of the water.”
CPD and Columbus Fire and Rescue convert the old tax building into a haunted house every Halloween to raise money for the city’s annual toy drive and for the families of sick or injured police officers and firefighters. Until this year, the tax building has been open for two nights. Last year, tour guides had to turn people away because so many came, Sanders said, leading organizers this year to extend the event.
The house is full of newly-bought props from a haunted house in Caledonia. Iconic horror movie villains peer down from the ceilings of narrow black hallways, and the entire building is stuffed with snakes, zombies, witches and other monsters waiting to leap out at tourists.
Tour guides will take four to five people through the building at a time, from at 6 p.m.-midnight every night.
The tour begins in the waiting room of the tax building where guides will present the story of Dementia and her missing family to haunted house-goers, said CPD officer Jared Booth, who is helping decorate the house and market the event.
“We’re going to have them sit down, and then what we want to do is write the story on the mirror … so then someone will read it out loud,” he said.
CPD is leaving it up to parents to decide whether the tour would be too scary for their children, though Sanders did say she won’t be taking her own 7-year-old through.
Booth also warned people prone to seizures may be sensitive to strobe lights hung in the hallways.
Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for kids. Sanders thinks the building is easily as scary as some $35 haunted houses she’s been to in bigger cities, but she wants to keep the tour affordable.
She also wants kids and teenagers to come to the event instead of getting into trouble on the nights leading up to Halloween. Older kids can go through the haunted tax building, while younger ones can trick-or-treat out of a decorated hearse in front of the Trotter Convention Center. Families can buy hot dogs, hamburgers and caramel apples while waiting to take the tour.
Coinciding with the event is the CPD’s Haunted Glow Run, a 5K at the Soccer Complex Saturday. Registration begins at 7 p.m., and the event is open to both runners and walkers.
“I asked everybody to wear glow stuff, but we’ll be giving out glow sticks and glow necklaces,” Sanders said.
Both events will help raise money for the upcoming holiday toy drive for underprivileged kids, Sanders said. As for the CPD Haunted House, it’s dedicated to Sgt. Glenn Culpepper, an officer who suffered a stroke, and in memory of deceased officers Sgt. Michael Griffin, Investigator Kelvin Lee and Patrolman Tommy King.
“Every kid who gets a toy from our police department, it’s from them,” Sanders said. “In honor of them.”
To register for the glow 5K online, visit:
http://www.active.com/columbus-ms/running/distance-running-races/haunted-hollow-5k-glow-run-2016-26435545.
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