On a dark and stormy Tuesday night, students and staff gather to celebrate Halloween and the myths, fables, and icons that have shaped our culture. Baker’s Haunted Humanities night, held on Tuesday, Oct. 28, marked the second annual celebration of artistic, linguistic, and interdisciplinary perspectives of horror.
This year, Collins Library hosted a new department, Education, not present the year prior. Professor Tara Burnham shared how the School of Education Ambassadors (SEA) rescheduled their S’mores Night and reincorporated it into Haunted Humanities as its own pop-up stand.
“It’s fun to be inside and not out in this horrible weather making s’mores… and we’ve gone through about half a bag of marshmallows!” Burnham said.
The professor went on to reference the opposite corner of Collins’ main floor, a wax museum of humanity’s most notorious killers. “It’s creepy how much some of our students look like those serial killers. [Specifically] Parker [Lane] as Jeffrey Dahmer.”
Nearing the end of his time at Baker, senior Parker Lane was happy to help Dr. Prosser, professor of his Teaching Secondary Level Reading class. When pressed to choose an event on the spooky night to participate in, Lane was drawn to Dahmer for the infamous killer’s simplistic decor.
“I was like, ‘What’s an outfit I can put together [and] don’t need to buy anything for?’ Jeffrey Dahmer dressed pretty plain. I’ve got the mustache, the glasses, the hair, I’ll do it.” he said.
Despite his frightening persona for the night, Lane still glowingly endorsed the event. “I think it’s a good experience, especially for the little ones” he said. “College kids [should also] come check it out, there’s a lot of people, a lot of your friends are in it.”
In another corner of Collins, Yik Yak star junior Tucker Armstrong sat strong in a king’s robe and crown, deciding the fate of those who dared tell him a story. Junior Abby Klein stood nearby, warning storytellers of the king’s fierce discipline.
“We were told to make little booths based on a part of [The Arabian Nights],” Klein, an English major, explains. “For our group we focused on the frame tale, which is about a king who takes a new wife every day and kills her in the morning.”
In bringing this story to life, Klein and Armstrong’s group offered a bowl of printed short stories for attendees to read and, if the king approves, some homemade sweets as well. Though the original story sounds rather grim, the students’ creative interpretation became a key location for the night. Klein was able to celebrate amidst the chaos of passersby: “People keep coming over…We’re so popular!” she said.
Towards the center of the event, Spanish professor Katya Soll reprised a hot commodity from last year’s festivities, creating stage wounds for people of all ages. Though she was on sabbatical during the last Haunted Humanities, Soll couldn’t help but participate in the fun.
“We taught a few theater majors how to do stage wounds. I didn’t have time to do a workshop for them again this year, but I was like, ‘I can still do the booth!'” she said.
During the interview, Soll was in the process of applying an incredibly real-looking lip wound, leading her to share about past experiences with too-real wounds. “I’ve had students freak out their parents because they send them pictures afterwards, and [the parents] are like ‘What did you do!?’ not wanting to believe them: ‘No, that is not fake, that is clearly real, you got in a fight.'”
While Soll’s wounds may not be real, Armstrong’s royal status a fraud, Lane’s wax depiction a farce; the community’s buzz was fully alive. Here’s to next year’s Haunted Humanities, with all new students and ideas here to run about.
As English professor Joanne Janssen puts it: “While we can imagine doing Haunted Humanities for many years, it will never be the same experience.”
