Over 1,200 Halloween enthusiasts braved the Dr. Giggles House of Pain Chestermere Penitentiary providing support of the Chestermere Food Bank, Gifts of Kindness, and Making Heroes.
“It’s gone fantastic. Everyone thinks it’s the scariest one yet,” said Mike Koroll.
“I wasn’t too sure. I thought maybe we were reaching a little bit, just because we were mashing a lot of ideas together, but we wanted to come up with something a bit different than just zombies,” he said.
The Dr. Giggles House of Pain Chestermere Penitentiary also raised over two tons of food for the Chestermere Food Bank during presentation nights.
“We had a big donation. The Vikings Rugby Club made a large donation of 700 lbs, the whole team came through,” Koroll said.
Adding, “It’s been very well received.”
The Dr. Giggles House of Pain was more realistic compared to previous years, which made the haunted house even more frightening.
The scare crew, and builders used pallets to close in the space, creating hallways and ceilings, while using 1970’s props, lights, music, and hidden cameras.
This year the scare crew devoted countless hours to ensuring the haunted house was the best it could possibly be.
“It’s getting to be so much work now if we didn’t have a huge group of people just working on it owning certain jobs it just couldn’t possibly get done. Everyone does what their best at, and it just keeps getting better every year,” Koroll said.
“Thank you to everyone that’s involved. Everybody that’s involved now, this is as much theirs as it is mine now. It just happens to be on my driveway,” he said.
Adding, “They all bust their humps, they are very charitable with it, and they help out whenever they can. It’s a collaboration of everybody’s ideas.”
For Koroll, gaining additional community involvement, and bringing more residents in the community out to the Dr. Giggles House of Pain made all of the hard work well worth it.
“I’m really proud of the whole Dr. Giggles crew, it’s nice to see everyone take a little ownership,” Koroll said.
He added, “We all took pride in it before, but now everyone feels like they own a piece of Dr. Giggles House of Pain, which is nice because it shows in the results.”
