A blood-red glow hangs over the anteroom. Chairs are arranged about the room, but no one sits. Five guests huddle around an antique coffee table, trying to keep their distance from the windows, walls and doors. The windows are shrouded with dark mourning cloth-to keep people from seeing in or guests from seeing out, nobody is sure. The guests cling to each other, shuffling nervously as the minutes tick by. As they wait for a member of the hotel staff to return with their room assignments, their eyes dart to the shadows under chairs, the unknown spaces behind curtains, the doors that could burst open at any moment. Then the hotel clerk is back, and as he leads the guests into the next room, they begin to question their choice to come to the re-opened Hotel Chicago.

The violent history of the Hotel Chicago provides the perfect theme for this year’s Lyceum Academy of New Hanover High School annual haunted house fundraiser. The Lyceum students drew on Erik Larson’s nonfiction book, “Devil in the White City,” in which he describes the true-life horrors of the Hotel Chicago and its mastermind, America’s first serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes.

The Hotel Chicago first opened in the late 1800s to correspond with the 1893 World’s Fair. Herman Webster Mudgett-more commonly known as Dr. H.H. Holmes-was a local drugstore owner who built the hotel. The neighbors referred to his building as “the castle” because it spanned an entire block and rose three stories above the street. However, the castle was not a place of fairy tales. Above his street-level drugstore, among the windowless chambers of the upper floors, Holmes committed anywhere from 27 to 200 gruesome murders.

The Lyceum’s  “re-opened” Hotel Chicago invites community members down deserted Burnett Blvd, to the abandoned Marine Reserve Barracks. The Lyceum students had the perfect canvas to construct Holmes’ “Murder Castle” with 14,000 feet of stark white walls and clinical tile floors.

NHHS senior Wesley Ganey said this location is definitely a step up from last year’s venue.

“Last year we were behind Steinmart,” Ganey said. “We had to construct everything.”

Upon entering the “hotel,” community members become guests at Holmes’ hotel. The lobby’s dim candelabra lighting and phonograph music raise goose bumps on the guest’s arms as a hotel concierge greets them. Before they get the chance to ask any questions, another hotel staff member leads the guests to a sitting room while he prepares their rooms. The blood-red light signals any alarms that might not have gone off in the dimly lit lobby. Shortly after the hotel worker returns with the guests’ room assignments, they are herded through another door, and a twenty-minute whirlwind of windowless rooms, corpses and tortured children ensues. Holmes’ hotel has just become a living nightmare.

Another “guest”-a Lyceum student acting as a guide-leads the group through a maze of rooms, exposing the horrors of the upper floors. Together, the group jogs past previously murdered guests wandering the halls in period clothing, begging for help. There are captured guests in cages, murdered guests in bedrooms, and mad guests so far gone they become as much of a threat as Holmes. All the time, there is a sense that you are being watched. The rooms are endless, each corridor darker and more winding than the last.

As the senior leader for the hotel kitchen, Wesley Ganey gave some insight about the construction of the room.

“To get the blood all over the walls and the floor, we just filled a Gatorade bottle with red paint and threw it against the wall,” Ganey said.

The simple technique paid off. The wood-paneled walls are streaked from floor to ceiling with what really does look like blood. There are splashes and handprints on every surface that make guests cringe as they imagine the horrors when confronted by Ganey’s kitchen weapons.

Though the bedrooms can get a bit repetitive, there are definitely other unique rooms to make up for them: the basement crematorium, Holmes’ surveillance room complete with live video feed and a snake room where guests are forced into cages among the reptiles.

While the Lyceum’s “Evil in the Port City” is not Panic Attack, the amount of space the students have to work with keeps the guests guessing around every turn. The actors creeping in the corners, jumping from the ceiling and gliding down the halls keep the guests on their toes, and each re-creation of Holmes’ horrors is more violent and sick than the last.

The Lyceum Academy of New Hanover High School did well in creating H.H. Holmes’ Murder Castle. The haunting screams of the re-opened Hotel Chicago will not soon be forgotten.

The Lyceum Academy’s “Evil in the Port City” will be running through Halloween night. Tickets are $10, with all proceeds benefiting the Lyceum Academy of New Hanover High School. For dates, times, directions, gory pictures and an awesome teaser trailer, visit the Facebook page.