Standing Room Only (SRO) Theater, a community-based arts and theater group located in Yelm, will host a community favorite on each Friday and Saturday throughout October as the annual Yell Manor returns on Friday, Oct. 10.
Steve Harshfield, SRO Theater president, told the Nisqually Valley News that the annual haunted house will don the name “Yell Manor: The Haunted Carnival” this month at its usual location of Gordon’s Garden Center.
“We’re going to have some freak show activity going on, along with a rollercoaster, a fun house, and two escape rooms as well. It’s a virtual rollercoaster, and it’s a rollercoaster car with a video screen — much like the elevator last year,” Harshfield said.
He added that two escape rooms will once again return to Yell Manor and will feature themes of “Misfortune Tellers” in room one and “Escape from the Lions Den…ners” in room two. Yvette O’Keefe, who created the themes and stories for the two escape rooms in Yell Manor this year and previous years, described the two rooms to be featured inside the haunted house.
“The misfortune teller is cursing people who come into the room. They have to find the talisman to break the curse. They can exit, and they have 20 minutes to escape — because 20 minutes is how much time we allow in each room,” O’Keefe said. “The Lions Den…ner is where the lions are housed in the carnival. You have 20 minutes because the lion tamer has taken off on a break. You go into a room, and there’s a prisoner who is about to be fed to the lion, and you’ll be fed to the lion too if you don’t escape. You have to feed the lion in a certain order. There’s scraps of food around the room, and you have to feed it in a specific order or else the lion will break free and get you all. In the meantime, there’s an electronic lock that has the prisoner trapped, and you need to get the code in order to save the prisoner and get out of the room.”
