When most people think of summer camp, canoes and sunny lake days might come to mind. But in Wallowa County, teens participate in a slightly spookier version. Haunt Camp is a design-build program in which students fabricate an avant-garde haunted house.
The program is the brainchild of JR Rymut, a professional museum exhibit fabricator and set builder in the film industry. She hopes that Haunt Camp will introduce teens to using power tools and techniques like molding and casting that she uses in her work.
“These were all skills that I never learned going through fine arts school,” said Rymut, a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design. “I wish that I had gotten an introduction to these skills ahead of time.”
Rymut also thought building a full-scale haunted house production would be more attractive to teens than simply conducting a fabrication skills workshop.
“It’s so hard to grab their attention,” said Rymut. “I thought that it would be an excellent way to get a lot of community involvement. And [get] a lot of people in our community excited about seeing what kids can actually build.”
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Summer Ellis, a 15-year-old homeschool student, was one of 25 teens who participated last summer. She was lured in by the spook factor after her mom saw the camp on Facebook. “I really like scary things, so I knew I’d love it,” said Ellis.
Cassidy Davis, 19, had recently moved to Wallowa County and found out about Haunt Camp by chance at the library. “I thought that sounded really cool,” he said. Davis and Ellis worked with the other students to build the sets and fabricate props over a six-week period last summer, and both also acted in the two-day production last fall.
Rymut made sure the teens thought beyond a traditional Halloween concept to make something that was both funny and spooky, “I told the kids right off the bat, we are not gonna do a normal blood and gore haunted house,” she said. “This is a little bit of an art prank. We’re gonna make it strange.”
Last year’s haunted house was a parody of the Cheesecake Factory restaurant, even though the nearest Cheesecake Factory is over 300 miles from Wallowa County.
A student acts as a chef in the restaurant kitchen scene at Haunt Camp's October 2022 haunted house production in Enterprise, Ore. The haunted house was an avant-garde workplace nightmare behind the scenes at a "Cheesecake Laboratory." Cakes were made from life-casts of students' arms and legs.
JR Rymut/H / JR Rymt/Haunt Camp
“That was one that we collectively decided was the funniest, the most original,” said Rymut. “We loved thinking about, ‘OK, what does it mean to be a factory of cheesecake?’” They created an eerie workplace nightmare, which had a terrifying, hulking boss monster called “Mother Cheese.”
“I think that on opening weekend when people actually saw the production of the Cheesecake Laboratory, a lot of people were very surprised at what they walked into,” said Rymut of their lactose-themed production.
Cassidy Davis played a guard, yelling at visitors to give their cakes back to Mother Cheese as a toll. “My voice was ruined on the first night [after yelling at guests],” he said, “but I didn’t swap out because it was just a lot of fun.”
Summer Ellis’s favorite scene was the final maze, created to look like an oven with flame creatures chasing visitors outside. The flame creatures were played by students in bright-orange camouflage ghillie suits.
A prop face inside Haunt Camp's 2022 haunted house, which had a series of scary restaurant scenes, including towering spirals of dirty dishes in the kitchen, a mad scientist laboratory, bathrooms filled with monsters, and ghostly apparitions in a 50-foot-long cave made of cake. Mother Cheese, a hulking, roaring monster as tall as the ceiling, wearing an apron that said “kiss the cook,” waited at the end of the cave.
JR Rymut/Haunt Camp
Despite the challenge of maintaining the secrecy of the project in a small town, Haunt Camp was able to pull off a spectacular spookfest.
“It got to a point where we had a line of over a hundred people waiting to get in,” said Rymut. “This is in Enterprise, Oregon, a town of about 2,000 people. So, this was a remarkable turnout.”
Rymut is gearing up for another year of camp, despite Oregon Department of Education budget cuts to the funding Haunt Camp relied on. Instead, Rymut has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the program. “There’s just not a lot of robust arts opportunities for kids out here in a really small town,” she said.
Students stand behind the scenes in costume at Haunt Camp in October 2022 in Enterprise, Oregon. After waiting in the line, visitors walked through a spooky restaurant scene, filled with community volunteers acting as patrons and a live pianist playing ragtime music.
JR Rymut/Haunt Camp
Rymut believes in the importance of programs like Haunt Camp and their ability to inspire teenagers, especially those underrepresented in the trades, to pursue careers in creative fabrication like her own. “I do think of it as kind of like a gift and a service to my little local community,” she said.
Davis and Ellis both plan to participate again this year. Haunt Camp has filled a void for young people like them.
“Especially in small, rural counties like these, there aren’t a whole ton of creative avenues for kids,” said Davis. “I think Haunt Camp and things like it should stay and continue and there should be more of them.”
With the success of the Haunted Cheesecake Factory behind them, the teens are already envisioning the wonders that await in this year’s haunted house. Ideas for the production include “haunted fridge” and “inside a venus fly trap.” To see what they build, you’ll have to visit Wallowa County during the spooky season. Just watch out for Mother Cheese.