When autocomplete options are available, use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.
Apply Give

Scaremare celebrates 45 years of fright – and a message of hope

 

Scaremare through the years

 

Scaremare capped off its 45th year as a Fall semester staple in Lynchburg over the weekend, giving crowds a chilling experience in the funhouse of horrors and confronting them with the question, “What happens after we die?”

The original “House of Death,” operated by Liberty’s Center for Youth Ministries, opened just one year after Liberty was founded, and is one of the university’s longest-running ministries. Steve Vandegriff, professor of youth ministry and director of Scaremare since 2000, said the event has not only grown in the size of its property, but also in the number of guests, volunteers, and the amount of people who have been positively impacted by its underlying message.

Five years ago, Scaremare attracted around 18,000 visitors. Since then, it has consistently seen crowds of up to 28,000.

The event was not always as large, however. When the event was first created by youth pastors at Thomas Road Baptist Church in 1972 as a creative fall outreach ministry, the event’s scope was constrained to a limited amount of volunteers and only one building. Now, the space has almost tripled. Scaremare guests go through two buildings and an expansive wooded area.

Throughout the many years, Vandegriff has found new ways to decorate and use the original building, which was operated as a community and daycare center decades prior to being purchased by Liberty to use for Scaremare. In years past, Vandegriff said his team of volunteers have found floor tiles with clown faces on them and other pieces of evidence over the years that have gradually told the story of the building’s history.

“We have talked to this one family who said their relative was once electrocuted in that building while working in it,” Vandegriff said. “They actually had the newspaper story about the whole incident from way before Liberty owned the building, and we just thought that was very interesting.”

Vandegriff said his team of volunteers tries hard every year to bring out the creepy parts of the building’s past and use the dark depths of the forest to their advantage with new scare tactics that play on people’s paranoias. Although different themes and tactics have been used throughout Scaremare’s history, Vandegriff said they have most recently worked to effectively create a theme centered around “the reality of death.”

What has never changed about Scaremare, though, is its central purpose of introducing the gospel of Christ to both newcomers and regular attendees after the walk through the “scenes of death,” as Vandegriff calls them. Contrasting death with the eternal life people can find in the Word of God, Vandegriff said, has been an effective way of introducing people to Scripture.

“We know that people are coming to Scaremare for a reason, and it’s not to be evangelized,” Vandegriff said. “But I think our history speaks for itself that while we are going to entertain you, we are also, what we call in youth ministry, earning the right to be heard.”

Local news links:

News & Advance – Behind the screams: The untold story of LU’s Scaremare

WSET-13 – Scaremare now open for 2017 Halloween season

Chat Live Chat Live Request Info Request Info Apply Now Apply Now Visit Liberty Visit Liberty