Illinois youth group’s haunted house fuels disaster recovery and putting faith in action

This Halloween, the Salem United Church of Christ youth group in Alhambra, Illinois, will spend the weekend scaring up funds for their annual mission trips to volunteer for disaster recovery.

For weeks, they have been working with church volunteers to transform their County Fairgrounds 4-H barn into an elaborate haunted house. The youth, from grades 6-12, are the designers, builders, and actors for the family-friendly spooky event.

Salem UCC is in a small town of about 620 people, said Rebecca Resillez, the church’s youth director. About 25 youth are regular participants in the church’s middle and high school youth programs, and it’s “a very involved group,” she says. Resillez, who was once part of this youth group, has served as youth director for 10 years.

An intergenerational endeavor

The haunted house, now in its fifth year, originally sprang up as an idea at one of the weekly gatherings of their Exhale Youth Group. Many of the youth are involved in 4-H and FFA, and they noticed that the County Fairgrounds sit empty for much of the year. So they set out to fill it with frights and fun for Halloween.

For the month of October, the youth meet at the fairgrounds twice a week to build a haunted house from the ground up. They design a map that includes many classic haunted house rooms like a “cabin in the woods” room, a circus, and a blackout maze. They compile decorations throughout the year and create a route with pallets from local businesses.

Building the haunted house is a community-building endeavor. Church members help and provide dinners. Youth bring along their parents and friends. On a recent Sunday evening, over 30 people were there working together, Resillez said.

“It was so cool to hear the kids meeting and re-introducing themselves to congregation members who have watched these kids grow up,” she reflected. “People might see the middle schoolers at church, but to work by them in this project, you start to know who they are and learn their names, personalities, and interests.”

There are a wide range of ways adults and kids can participate in the haunted house – from acting to building to selling tickets.

Alaina, a high school junior, will be a scarer in this year’s “spider hallway.”

“My favorite part is being able to hang out with and get to know everyone in Exhale as we put together the haunted house,” she said.

Mission trips for disaster response

The work is all for a frighteningly good cause.

Each year, the high school youth travel on a week-long mission trip to aid in disaster response. This past summer, they traveled to California to assist with building tiny homes donated to people who lost their homes in wildfires. Previous trips have focused on hurricane relief in New Orleans, Houston, Florida, and North Carolina, Resillez said.

One summer, the Exhale youth went to Kentucky for tornado cleanup, and another tornado hit while they were.

“We were able to be one of the first groups on the scene and help the people start to clean up debris and get people back in their homes,” Resillez said.

Lia Braundmeier, a high school senior, is ready for this year’s haunted house as a behind-the-scenes manager, helping to set up props and let scarers know when to get in their places as people come through. She has participated in four of the Exhale mission trips, and some of her favorite memories are of how thankful the homeowners are for the help.  

“I will always remember seeing this man tear up when I found his dentures in the debris from his house after it was torn up by a tornado,” Baundmeier said. “He had been unable to talk well since he couldn’t find them, and he thought they would be lost forever. The look on his face will always bring me joy when I think of it.”

Learning to put faith in action

Resillez emphasizes how mission trips like these play an important role in youth faith formation.

“For high school kids, these mission trips are a way of taking what we hear in church and lessons in youth group and actually doing something with them,” she said. “For a lot of kids, they’re not fully aware yet how their faith and relationship with God plays out in their lives. It can be just words in a lot of cases – hearing Bible stories, talking about God – but it’s not until you go out in the world and do something with it that it actually clicks and connects. These mission trips are one example of how we do that.”

And she’s witnessed the impact.

This past summer, Illinois experienced a record number of tornadoes, and several communities around the church were impacted with damage. Some of the Exhale youth group graduates reached out to Resillez to initiate an impromptu trip to help with early recovery.

“They were messaging me that we need to go, that this is what our mission trips have led us to,” Resillez said.

Help on the journey

The haunted house is just one creative way the youth raise funds so all can participate in the yearly mission trips. Other events they host include a church Thanksgiving dinner and an “egg my house” fundraiser where parents pay them to fill their yards with eggs the night before Easter so their kids wake up to the surprise.

“I love that we have a church that supports our group. We are 100% supported by our church. We love them, they love us, and I also want our kids to feel invested in this,” Resillez said.

That feeling of investment shows through, as Alaina described what she has taken away from her mission trip experiences.  

“Meeting all the people that were affected by either hurricanes or fires taught me to be grateful for what I have,” she said. “We were able to bring them new hope when we came to help for the week just by painting, putting up drywall, or mudding the walls. This brought me so much joy being able to help them on their journey to being back on their feet again.”

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