CEP HAUNTED MANOR BACK IN ACTION

Larry Sala, called "Mr. October" by friends and family, can't wait to scare the crowds outside of his favorite haunted house this week when he pulls up in a giant funeral hearse to help kickoff the second coming of one of the area's most ghoulish Halloween activities.
"I'll be in the parking lot and in the waiting room scaring people," he said. "I live for Halloween."
After seven long years without a haunted house program teaching children and teens valuable leadership and teamwork skills, helping them build relationships with adults and lifelong friendships with their peers from other schools and towns, CEP Youth Leadership's once-popular Haunted Manor is back.
The unique haunted house, which benefits the La Grange-based nonprofit whose mission is to engage and empower junior high, middle school and high school students throughout Lyons Township is, according to its organizers and volunteers, resurrected from the dead.
"Surprisingly, little has changed," said longtime CEP board member and volunteer Scott Meyer, as he stood in the 4,000-square-foot shell of a former retail store helping put finishing touches on the final masterpiece earlier this week. "It's still very family oriented, yet you feel strange to be doing it again. Some of the scenes are similar and we have 11 rooms this year. Plus, roles of key players, and almost all our department heads, are identical."
Brian Thomson, 34, formerly of La Grange and now of Western Springs, has been Haunted Manor behind-the-scenes fixture since its inception in 1992, when he was a student at LT.
"I help with everything. I even put on makeup and I dress up, too," he said. "It's a lot of fun and it's so great top see the kids do such amazing things. It's a lot of kids from different areas getting to know each other; they're meeting good role models here."
The Halloween event, last held in 2002, was shelved seven years ago because of changes in leadership at CEP and due to the inordinate amount of staff time it took to monitor volunteer youth in building and operating the venue.
But after board member Amanda Perez of La Grange heard over the past few years about the success and excitement the activity generated from just about everyone she met, she convinced other members to get behind it again and to craft a business plan to map out its return.
And at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16, the doors of Haunted Manor Resurrected open to the public at 40 S. La Grange Road in Countryside. The haunted house, open to all ages, is inside Countryside Plaza, roughly halfway between Home Depot and Best Buy.
"We used to have a huge following," said Cathy Pierson, CEP's senior program director and longtime haunted house worker and coordinator, who is confident its popularity will also return -- especially since the house this time is more contemporary (you'll love the "Saw" room taken from the popular horror flick).
She said more than 40 haunted house alumni, recruited in large part through networking on www.facebook.com, really helped pull it off this fall.
"They made a huge difference," she said, adding their return "shows it was successful ... and had a profound impact on them."

Perez said she has heard nothing but good about Haunted Manor, which is sure to scare the daylights out of teens and adults and thoroughly entertain the little ones.
"I would hear about it from the board, from staff members, from residents," she said, "about how outstanding it was, how fun it was."
She said what's neat about young participants' involvement with youth from other school districts and communities is that "it takes away the cliques" that so often form in other social settings.
One prime example can be found in former Nazareth and LT students Jason and Haley Safranek, who met as youth building and working Haunted Manor, who are now married and back lending a hand, said Pierson.
Brianne Lucke and Heather Rae are now career graphic designers who came back to design all of the posters, flyers and other marketing materials. Brianne, a former LT student, now lives in California.
Then there's volunteers like the Leininger Family of La Grange P:ark, whose haunted house activism is almost a family business.
Heidi Leininger was a house guide years ago and used to love hanging out there with her girlfriends.
"I was a guide when I was younger," she said. "Now, I'm in charge of the guides."
Her mother, Megan, is a board member and volunteer at the house, as is her sister, Heather, an American Academy of Arts grad who is from the LT Class of 2000.
"My whole family works here ... and I've been working here since I was four," she said. "Same as my mom, I am an artist and I absolutely love it all, the I(room) designs I work on ... just everything that goes into this entire project."
Her best friend, Libby Kollar of Brookfield, got her industrial design degree from the University of Illinois. She also worked on the house while attending LT.
"It actually helped me choose a major," she said. "I now work at the Art Institute, with the curators."
Since the house is so new to the latest generation of youth, dozens of adult volunteers and alumni have joined together this time around to construct the house, leaving the staffing and scaring up to the kids who in the past were involved every step of the way.
Those very kids already attended "monster training" workshops late last week and are ready, with other alumni, staff and others to make this year a whole new experience.
"The kids this year," said Perez, "they don't even know what to expect, and that's exciting."
Kicking off at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16, the Haunted Manor Resurrected will be staged almost every night through Halloween Day.
That night and every Friday and Saturday through Saturday, Oct. 31, Haunted Manor will be open from 7 to 11 p.m. On Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, the hours will be from 7 to 10 p.m., and matinees will be featured from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday,Oct. 24 and 31.
General admission will be $10 per person. The "lights on" matinee shows will cost $5 per child.
Presented by PersonalizationMall.com, sponsors of the event this year include the Park District of La Grange, Health & Safety Associates Inc. industrial hygiene and safety consulting and Linda Sokol's Brookfield Financial Plans, Inc.
Extensive parking is available for visitors, some who may recognize the location as the original space of the haunted house 17 years ago.
Further information is available by calling (708) 579-5898 or visiting CEP's website at www.HauntedManorCEPYL.com.