DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat A vampire haunts the house at the Grace St. Paul's Episcopal church.

Huge spiders lying still on the floor, seemingly waiting for the right moment to attack your fleshy ankles · dark hallways leading you into ancient Egypt, monstrously adorned laboratories, and into the hellish beyond · a friend screaming bloody murder in your ear as a vampire slowly creeps after you with a stake ·

You may think that you are in another dimension, another universe, another world, but this is a night like any other deep inside the Adams Street Haunted House.

Located at 2331 E. Adams Street on the corner of Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church, this haunted house is not the ordinary high-budgeted scare-fest that one may expect.

It all began when some children decided to throw together a small haunted house during the annual Fall Festival that the church hosts. This little batch of creativity inspired Donna Stoner to "make a bigger" haunted house; one filled with intricately innovative decorations, abrupt dead-ends, and classic monsters.

After recruiting some members in the midst of summertime, the next step was to obtain donations since the group did not have a budget. The group's first donation was from Grant Road Lumber, which has donated every year since the house began seven years ago. Now they receive everything from old sheets to plastic butter-tub lids, and they make good use out of every bit of it.

They began with the idea of using sheets with wooden frames, and from there creative designs abounded.

When Becky Bolitho, a veterinary science major, visited

the house on its opening night she was shocked at its professionalism.

"It was really beautifully decorated," Bolitho said. "All the stuff inside was really good considering that it was at a church and everything is donated."

Without a budget, there is no way to pay the workers. Everyone who works on the Adams Street Haunted House is a volunteer. They use their various skills, ranging from carpentry to sewing to acting, for the improvement of the project.

And volunteers are recruited in various ways.

"Some [volunteers] are members of the church, some are volunteers found through the Volunteer Center, and some found us through www.arizona.com," Stoner said. "Some are friends of mine that got roped into it!"

One such friend is Laura DeNinno, a former UA student who uses various skills she has acquired over the years to help out with the project.

"I coordinate a lot of the public relations as well as food donations," DeNinno said. "I've baked for it, and I've also been an actor in the haunted house itself."

After securing enough volunteers to get the undertaking off the ground, the team had to establish ideas for the actual house's design. Ten different "worlds" were decided upon, each reminiscent of an aspect of Halloween legend.

"We never do anything twice, because most of the time we can't remember how we did it the year before," Stoner said. "We like to change things up because people come back and they like things to be different."

Each year, the team adds a completely new world in order to keep the creative juices circulating. Oftentimes, it is this new world that is the favorite of the team.

Within and between each of the rooms, timeless characters lie in wait, watching for the perfect victim to come their way. These characters include everyone from the mad scientist with a green-faced project to witches in their bubbling lair. And, of course, Satan resides in his red, smoky dungeon that reeks of "evil" and sleaze.

These costumed actors add to the ingenuity of the house itself. Even more so than the innovation of making bats from milk jugs or a dangling octopus from plastic sacks, the actors themselves give the house a personal and slightly comical edge that other houses of its kind cannot necessarily boast.

Actors are not given rules about when to pop out and surprise unsuspecting guests. They are not given lines to memorize. They are allowed to say and do whatever they wish, which in turn contributes to fresh ideas from a great deal of sources.

Marc Kaufman, an astronomy freshman who braved the frightening depths of Adams Street on Friday night, appreciated the imagination demonstrated by two witches within the house.

"(My favorite part was) the witches, when they gave me the love potion No. 2," Kaufman said. "After they dumped it on me, I couldn't stop kissing my girlfriend!"

But if you have not gone yet, don't fear! The Adams Street Haunted House will be open tonight, tomorrow and Saturday from 6:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. The cost is $6 and all proceeds go to the Community Food Bank and Youth on Their Own.

So, if you like to run, laugh, kiss, jump, scream, admire, shudder or smile, you should check it out. The workers have put in many hours and they think that it is well worth the effort.

"I think that the Adams Street Haunted House is a great event that helps a lot of needed charities," DeNinno said. "I hope to see it continue to grow and more folks help out with it."

"It's one of the best one that goes on every year, and 100 percent of the proceeds go to charity."