Haunted Heritage Museum Returns!

The Haunted Heritage Museum Fundraiser is back!
The Heritage Museum of Newaygo County, located in downtown Newaygo at the intersection of 37 north and Quarterline Road, is excited to announce the return of our popular haunted Museum, which we will host for the first time since 2019, and the first time in our new building! The event has a low admission price of $5 a head, or $20 dollars for groups of 5 or more, and all proceeds go to supporting our mission and improving the event for future years.
A big group of volunteers have been working on decorating the museum for the past several weeks. This year, we will be splitting the museum into two different sections: One geared towards children, with a bright and colorful room with activities like face painting, coloring, a feel station with “eyes”, “brains”, and the like, and other fun spooky activities, and of course, lots of candy and goodies! The other haunted side is up to the parent’s discretion, as it is geared more towards the “adult” scary side of Halloween. We cannot thank our dedicated group of volunteers enough for the months of planning and the long hours put in to transform our space!
In the past, we have had different scary scenarios in place, all done with the help of our amazing volunteers. The old building, with its long hallways, multiple small rooms, and natural maze-like structure, along with the dark and dated ambiance, lent itself well to a haunted museum. Our new facility, with its bright, modern colors, and spacious high-ceilinged rooms, proved to be a bit more of a challenge. Due to our innovative modular exhibit system, we were able to condense the exhibits down to a quarter of the gallery, so that visitors during the month of October were able to still enjoy our primary exhibits on topics such as the Fur Trade, Native American contributions, the Logging Era, Farming, and Tourism. This left the remaining three quarters of the vast room to be made over as a haunted Museum.
A series of spooky rooms are anchored by scene setters using the mobile and collapsible wall systems developed by Armstrong Display Concepts, Inc., which is headquartered in Newaygo. With different graphics, these are in use during our regular operations as a way to separate the various exhibits, and they were easily and quickly converted to set the mood for a cemetery, a haunted gothic chapel, an abandoned hospital, and the edge of a field at night.
After consultation with our artifact review committee and staff, we decided to utilize many items in the Museums extensive collections as “props.” Great care was taken when using these objects to ensure that they would not be harmed any more than may happen in the normal course of being on display in an exhibit. The use of objects from the collections add greatly to the unsettling feeling we were able to create for our visitors.

As we are now fully operational in our new building, and very proud of it, we are hoping to hold this event annually as a way to raise awareness of our essential role in the community and to help raise the funds so vital to our operations through community support.
Both sections will be $5 per person or $20 for groups of five and up. We will be open for two nights, Friday October 27th and Saturday October 28th from 6pm to 9pm. We look forward to seeing you all for a frightfully good time!