Haunted house for visually-impaired youth tests all senses

404- 875-9011

$1 for youth; $2 for adults. Open only to STARS participants.

Friday from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Reservations: ltillery@cviga.org

The mushy innards of an operating room patient. The spine-tingling howl of a frenzied, rabid dog.

Here’s one haunted house that will not only stimulate multiple senses, but frighten the bejeezus out of them as well.

The Center for the Visually Impaired will hold its fifth annual haunted house Friday at its West Peachtree Street office as a way to bring a little bit of the Halloween spirit - or spirits in this case - to youth with vision loss.

The haunted house, which occupies most of the lower level of the building, let’s participants feel, hear and taste Halloween.

It includes a spider alley, complete with dangling arachnids and sticky webs, a costume contest and “Ms. Lara’s People Eatery,” a gruesome “restaurant” where kids choose items from a menu in Braille and taste the likes of, well, things best left to the imagination.

“It’s really been a challenge to be tactile for the kids due to their vision loss but at the same time be frightening to them,” said Lara Tillery, volunteer services coordinator and STARS (Social, Theraputic, Academic and Recreational Services) program assistant. “Traditional haunted houses are very visual. We decided to use the other senses like sound, taste and touch.”

The program provides after-school and weekend activities for students.

“In school, they might be segregated from their sighted peers. Here, they feel more at home and get to meet with other kids who are going through the same thing,” Tillery said.

The event is open to chill-seekers ages five to 18, who are part of the STARS program. It is not open to the public. Families of visually-impaired youth are also invited to attend.

Next year, said Tillery, organizers hope to work with other groups that operate haunted houses to come up with ways to up the ante, fright-wise.

“They should be able to have all the experiences that a sighted individual experiences,” Tillery said. “We want an even scarier haunted house.”