For most of the year, the tunnels inside the Kalif Shrine Center at 145 W. Loucks St. in Sheridan are a piece of quiet theatrical infrastructure — passages that let performers move from one part of the building to another without walking across a stage in the middle of a scene. For a few nights each October, they become something else entirely.
This year the Kalif Shriners are opening their Tunnel of Terror on Thursday, Oct. 29, with a theme of the haunted asylum. The doors open at 6 p.m. that night, and according to Shriner Joe Schwartz, opening night is the best bet for families with younger children — a gentler introduction before the attraction settles into its full run. Tickets remain $5 per person, or $20 for a family, and are sold at the door.
The event is built by the membership itself. Former potentates Bill Rathburn and Steve Schlenker and fellow Shriner Schwartz appeared on Sheridan Media's Public Pulse to talk up the attraction, and Schlenker said the Shriners look forward to it every year as a way to provide fun and scares for the whole family. Volunteers and members do the work of transforming the tunnels — hanging the walls, rigging the lights, staffing the dark corners.
The tunnels themselves are the reason the attraction works at all, and they carry a bit of the building's history with them. Rathburn explained on the program that the passages were originally built so performers could move throughout the building without disrupting stage productions. That same backstage geography — narrow, enclosed, easy to black out — is what makes a haunted house possible inside a fraternal hall. The Shriners did not have to build a maze. They already owned one.
The Kalif Shrine Temple has long doubled as one of Northern Wyoming's more versatile venues. It houses a full kitchen, a dining room, a bar, a ladies lounge and an auditorium and ballroom, and in recent years it has become a home for dinner theater in Sheridan. The Ace in the Hole Players, founded by Erin Kranz-Linden and Jay Arcarese, opened the temple to stage productions, and the troupe's founders have cited the building's combination of kitchen, dining space and a stage with a tunnel system supporting behind-the-scenes logistics as the reason the venue works for them. Past productions there have included "The Music Man" and "White Christmas." The same tunnels that once kept actors out of sight now keep scare actors out of sight, which is more or less the same job description.
The Shriners are the public face of the Freemasons in Sheridan — a fraternity grounded in the tenets of Freemasonry but with added elements of fun, fellowship and philanthropy. Many Sheridan residents know them from the WYO Rodeo Parade, where the Kalif Klowns, the organization's fire truck and the Oriental Band have long been fixtures. The Kalif Shriners are a well-known presence across Sheridan and Northern Wyoming, and they collect contributions to a travel fund that supports Shriners Children's.
The money raised at the Tunnel of Terror stays close to home. According to the Shriners, proceeds go to maintaining the Kalif Temple, to upkeep for the equipment used by the Kalif Shrine Klowns, and to paying for other events the Shriners hold for the community. It is a fundraiser in the literal sense: the building that hosts the haunted house is also one of the things the haunted house pays to keep standing.
What that means for a visitor on Oct. 29 is fairly simple. There is no online ticketing gauntlet and no timed-entry slot. You show up at the Loucks Street building in the evening, hand over five dollars, and walk into a dark corridor that was designed to move performers quietly from one side of a stage to the other. For one night, the people moving through it will be screaming instead.
Opening night begins at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, at the Kalif Shrine Center, 145 W. Loucks St., Sheridan. Admission is $5 per person or $20 per family.