As Halloween lurks around the corner, Winona State University’s International Club has been stirring up a spooky surprise.

The International club will be turning the Kryzsko Commons Oak Rooms into a haunted rooms walkthrough event on Friday, Oct. 25 from 5:30 – 9:30 p.m.

Xandra Okori, junior accounting major and president of the International Club at Winona State, said this is the first year the club has done anything like the haunted rooms.

“I was thinking of different ideas and I thought something for Halloween would be fun,” Okori said. “I originally thought about a concert but then a haunted house sounded way more fun and easier to get more people involved with.”

The International Club is not hosting just any kind of haunted house, putting a unique spin on the event and making the theme ‘International Scares’.

“It’s going to be on foreign creatures, and things that students here will not really know that much about,” Okori said.

The International Club is partnering with the American Cancer Society to fundraise money and bring awareness to the society.

Okori said half of all ticket sales will go to the American Cancer Society so they are hoping many Winona State students and community members will attend the event for a fun night and to raise money for a good cause.

“We have been encouraging international students to come but we want to reach out to all of campus next to reach a wider audience because we really want this to be a great event,” Okori said.

Gregory Okello, a transfer student majoring in film studies at Winona State, is the public relations chair of the International Club and explains more about the theme of the haunted rooms.

“Halloween is not a common holiday for a lot of international students with where they come from and their backgrounds, so this is an opportunity for them to witness how Halloween happens in the United States,” Okello said.

Students from the International Club will be creating, setting up and running the haunted rooms. Various students from the club will be in the haunted rooms as well.

“The students are going to be wearing their traditional wear from their various countries, but more specifically, they are going to dress like monsters from their country,” Okori said.

Bringing together multiple cultures, the international club will allow Winona State students and surrounding community members to come together for a night of spooks, scares and sharing different cultures.

“We’re aiming to make it scary, but not just scary,” Okori said. “We want it to be different and represent our culture instead of just being scary.”    

Okello said they are planning to work the element of surprise into the haunted rooms as well because they do not want it to be all scare all the way through.

“The rooms will have a lot of surprises in the them, none I will say now to ruin it, but definitely something to look forward to,” Okello said.

Okello said the International Club plans to start the festivities early with some surprises around campus before the event happens to get the word out and spread the Halloween scares before the event starts.

“It’s good to be scared,” Okello said.