The outdoor CORE challenge course looks innocent enough in the daylight, but as the sun goes down the cackling of evil clowns and the screams of terrified students can be heard for miles.

The annual haunted trail ran ended Tuesday, but not before everyone got to experience this year’s circus theme.

“Since we’re on the center of town, we wanted to provide something fun for not only for our VSU students but for the community to get in touch with them,” Kate Latevola, graduate assistant, higher education major, said.
CORE hosts this trail every year which differing themes.

“This haunted trail is one of our annual events we provide to help student development throughout the rec center to raise money,” Latevola said.

According to Latevola, the trail was open to anyone over the age of 13. During their open hours, the line of waiting visitors never disappeared.

The outdoor course was nothing like what students normally see during the daytime and the dark forest was filled with visitors’ screams and clowns’ chuckles.

All of the street lights in the outdoor course were turned off, forcing visitors to go through with flashlights and candles.To go along with the circus theme, the trail featured elaborate acrobat gimmicks, circus crowns and circus decorations. Even visitors accustomed to terror enjoyed the trail and left as terrified as the REC staff intended.

“The scariest part for me was people falling from the sky,” Brooke Simmons, a junior, undecided, said. “We actually worked for the trail in Wild Adventure for Halloween, but we still enjoyed this a lot too.”

Not only were people falling from the sky, but other creepy characters followed behind students as they walked the trail to make sure the terror never ended.

“Probably the scariest thing was the people stalking me from behind,” Telicia Woody, a junior, exercise physiology major, said. “I don’t like people behind me, so that was definitely the best part.”