Michigan Tech’s annual Haunted Mine Tour took place this past weekend. From small
children to grown adults, scares were shared across the board.
The production brought in 898 visitors during the three day run time. “In total there were 1029 tourspots, so 898 isn’t bad,” said Kent Cyr, the faculty technical director of the production. While the final product came out great, a lot went into making this production a success.
Students loaded all of their gear into the mine Sunday Oct. 23, and began the long
process of transforming a regular mineshaft into a haunted attraction. Work call each night went
from 5:30 p.m. to about 10:30 p.m, but many students chose to arrive early to make sure
everything was perfect for opening night.
The theme of the production was based around various cryptid creeps found in folklore and other stories such as Pressie, Bigfoot and the dreaded Moth Man. Students were assigned to one of seven monsters, dedicating their time to bringing said monster to life in the mine.
Other specialized teams were audio, lighting, and power. Their job was to help the monster teams add dynamic elements including vision and hearing to their sections. The students worked long hours from Sunday until Wednesday as the production slowly started coming together. Team audio had some issues throughout the load-in process, ultimately deciding to scrap and redesign the audio system the night before tech rehearsal.
Despite many issues along the way, the students had the mine ready for opening day
on Thursday when an unforeseen curveball was thrown their way. About two hours before
showtime on Thursday, a GFCI outlet installed in the mine decided to break leaving about half the mine without power. This means there was no lighting or audio for the first half of the haunted attraction.
However, the power team worked hard to fix this problem, ultimately rerouting power and running new cables from other parts of the mine 30 minutes after doors were supposed to open. After a 45-minute delay opening night, visitors were finally allowed in the mine. Visitors spent the next three nights wandering the ominous cavern learning the story behind the theme and experiencing some well-placed jump scares.
Visitors seemed to enjoy their time in the mine. Cyr said the reviews were “mostly
positive” across the board. This was the first time the Haunted Mine was done in the Quincy
Mine since COVID. Given the success of the production, it is safe to say that the Haunted Mine
is here to stay.
