Photo by flickr/nightmaresfearfactory
Halloween will be a little more scary this year thanks to the hard work and community spirit being generated by the Turn This Town Around initiative here in Whitesville.
We spent September transforming a vacant building into 5,000 square feet of ghostly goodness.
And not just any vacant building.
A former funeral home. The perfect Haunted House!
Our goal is to provide locals and visitors with a scary, fun and perhaps a unique Halloween experience, while raising funds in the process. (Turning a town around is fun, but expensive!)
Get more info about the Haunted House at our community blog, The Whitesville Word.
We spent September transforming the space into more than a dozen rooms of different themes. From fortune-telling to undertaking, and scarier things between, the space is crawling with fright and fun.
The process of turning the vacant building into a haunted house is much like the process of turning a town around. 
Different ideas and different people meet, collaborate and take action to try and achieve a vision of possibilities. Although different rooms and themes exist within the haunted house, the collective effort transforms the once empty, vacant space into something new and full of excitement.
But not everyone shares the excitement of our latest project. We saw some negative comments on social media, criticizing our effort. But that was only until more and more comments of support emerged from the local community!
Those words of encouragement are critical for volunteers and community members actively engaged in a wide variety of projects to help improve Whitesville.
The Hub’s Kent Spellmen once described the process of Turn This Town Around as “a real challenge.” He’s not joking.
Our Turn This Town Around group experienced opposition early on, even vandalism of projects.
But the past two weeks of support have validated every effort we have all made together.
Community members are watching, even joining our project groups. We are committed to this effort and we are committed to our town!
Join us every Friday and Saturday through October beginning at 7pm! General admission is $10 and student admission is $5.
And that vacant building currently housing the haunted house? The building will serve as the future town hall, thanks to the generosity and continued support from Whitesville State Bank. Thank you! One more (big) project that will help Turn This Town Around!
So, is that photo you used actually from the “attraction” in a Whitesville? Just curious. Surely you wouldn’t fasely advertise.
Gday there,
no, that isn’t a photo from the haunted house in Whitesville, which, as you probably know, doesn’t open until this coming Friday. We’re excited to visit, when it does!
But, unfortunately, you haven’t uncovered a false advertising scam! That vertical space at the top of each blog post is reserved for what art is available to illustrate what the story is about. Take a look through the Hub blog, or any other for that matter, and you’ll notice that sometimes we have a good photo from the community or subject we are writing about, and sometimes we use something else. Here’s some good examples of how that works. No trickery involved!
Many thanks for your interest. No doubt you are proud and excited that the people of Whitesville are making every effort to bring life and activity to their community!
Jake.
PS – it’s always great when our interested readers put their real names behind comments to our blog. Something tells me blahblahblah@aol.com isn’t your real name or email address though! My name is Jake Lynch, and my email address is j.lynch@wvhub.org. Be sure to stay in touch!
Thank you for getting this out there for us. You can take a real picture of us after Friday! 🙂
Good for you Josh!
This is obviously something about which you are passionate.
I will be attending.
I think this is a wonderful idea! I grew up close and spent a lot of my childhood in whitesville! It saddened me greatly to revisit and see how much it had went down. I am a huge supporter in their efforts to bring back the whitesville Ive always loved! The people are amazing. You’re treated like family! I’m anxious to see all the upcoming changes!
Keep up the good work! I never thought I’d see even an effort like this. I too, grew up in Whitesville, so, it is meaningful to me.
We have had so much fun working together to make this haunted house. We have had about 15 students excited and lining up to volunteer and about 15 other adult volunteers. We are proud of our efforts and can hardly wait for opening day and for all our visits to finally get to experience it
Awesome too see this …I belong to Scareview in St albans ..wv ….u need help please Holler ..this is great .good luck
Had a really great time tonight at the Haunted House Tonight Great Job Whitesville!!!! And all the peeps that helped!!!!!
i grew up in Sylvester and going to Whitesville was “where it was at” back then. It saddened me when I was last back there a few years ago to see how most all of the buildings were empty and run down. I’m so proud to see all of these positive changes happening there now, and the dedication that you guys have put in to “Turn the Town around”! I say BRAVO!!!!
I wish you all best with your haunted house and think that it’s amazing how you are coming together as a community.
Good idea to have haunted house in a place where they were the last to let you down. Born at Sundail W.Va Go for the gold Whitesville.