Blood-red light washed over a dimly lit room in the Keathley University Center on Monday, illuminating fake limbs, skeletons and cobwebs — only this haunted house wasn’t meant just to frighten.

“The Horrors of War,” an interactive haunted house experience, was the culmination of a months-long process involving students from political science professor Amy Atchison’s Humanitarian Aid and Crisis course, with assistance from the National and Tennessee Red Crosses. The event aimed to educate visitors on international humanitarian law during times of war.

“This is one of the most creative groups I’ve ever had,” Atchison said. “No one’s ever done a haunted house before. This is new. So I’m really, really proud of them. They worked really hard to make this happen today.”

Each fall, Atchison’s students participate in a national Red Cross program called the Youth Action Campaign, which was designed to encourage peer education about international humanitarian law and the rules of war. She said she has participated in the program for nearly 15 years — first at Valparaiso University in Indiana, then at MTSU starting in 2023.

Every Red Cross Society in the world has a mandate to teach humanitarian law to its citizens, and one of the main ways the American Red Cross fulfills this is through youth outreach, Atchison said.

Emma Wylie, a senior sociology student who co-wrote the script and acted in the event, said she and her peers wanted to focus on four areas of humanitarian education.

“What we really wanted to display with this haunted house was distinction, humanity, military necessity and proportionality,” Wylie said. “We used the backdrop of a haunted house to share those stories.”

Guides took groups of five to seven people through the haunted house at a time, making three stops. 

In room one, visitors learned about the distinction between combatants and civilians, in room two, people could see the effects of war on humanity and, in room three, visitors saw a soldier make an impossible decision about whether or not to use a nuclear weapon.

String lights reflecting off crushed soda cans, meant to represent spent artillery shells and brass ammo casings, marked the first stop on the tour. But any awe at the decor was quickly extinguished when the tour guide, Bradley Cukr, shouted at the group to get down because a soldier was coming. 

Cukr, now crouched under a table, warned that this soldier does not differentiate between civilians and combatants — something that is illegal under international humanitarian law. 

“Civilians are protected from soldiers, but the soldiers around here don’t care who you are,” Cukr said. “They’ll take you and put you in their internment camps.”

As soon as he finished, a soldier — Kameron Adcock — walked into the room, escorting both a civilian and an enemy soldier. 

“[The soldier] was violating the rules of distinction by capturing a civilian,” Wylie explained after the tour. 

Soldiers are supposed to treat civilians differently from enemy combatants in war zones, but that line often gets blurred, Wylie said.

After the close encounter, Cukr led the tour group to another room, one awash in an eerie red light and slowly filling with fog. 

The second room intended to illustrate the loss of humanity that occurs during war, organizers said. In it sat Wylie next to a skeleton, both withering away in what was once a battlefield. Both lay motionless as the distant sounds of war echoed off the walls.

Lastly, the group entered the third room, where they saw a projection of a city turned to rubble by war and a soldier who had just received a difficult phone call. In it, the soldier’s superiors ordered him to conduct the final sequence of launching a nuclear warhead. 

The soldier fell to his knees after hanging up, showing how war can devastate a person even hundreds of miles away from the frontline.  

“You don’t really see something like this on campus very often, especially just in a class setting,” Elena Jones, junior sonography student, said about the exhibit. “I think there should have been more fog, but I definitely think that their audio was very straightforward … I definitely thought they were a little scary.”

Jones was not the only one pleased with the event.

John Mitchell, the executive director with the Heart of Tennessee Chapter of the American Red Cross in Murfreesboro, emerged from the experience pleased with the effort students and Atchison put into the event.

Atchison was grateful to Mitchell and the Tennessee Red Cross in Nashville for their assistance in purchasing supplies.

“I feel very fortunate,” Atchison said. “We’ve had such good support.”

Wylie shared that she was most proud of the collaboration that took place between students in her class today.

“I know that’s like a boring answer, but just the fact that our entire class has been here throughout the day, helping with setup and kind of pulling it all together really quickly,” Wylie said. “Everyone worked really hard, so that’s what I’m most proud of — the effort that went into it.”

Atchison said her class will host another event in Peck Hall in November, focusing on journalism during wartime.

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