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The Ski Sprites Water Ski Show Team is putting down their skis to scare students this weekend at a haunted house.

The house is used as a fund-raiser for the team and a food drive for Hope Gospel Mission.

“We’ve done this for years,” senior Brent Edwards said. “It’s starting to become sort of a tradition.”

The team and their friends organize and execute the haunted house each Halloween season.

“We build an actual house from scratch within the empty Expo Center,” President Neil Morley said. “When we tear it down it takes two entire semi trucks full to load the stuff away.”

The theme this year is casket maker Edward Van Crumpel. Legend has it Van Crumpel’s wife had an accident in the workshop and from then on he made uncomfortable caskets. So those laid to rest in his caskets are rising from the dead to haunt him.

“We have 14 interactive rooms this year including a crematorium, body disposal center and funeral home,” Morley said.

“Last year was our biggest to date and went really well,” Edwards said.

“I’d guess there were probably about a thousand people last year,” Morley said. “But every year it grows.”

Junior Rob Ruf went to last year’s haunted house. “I thought it was pretty decent and definitely worth it for the money,” he said.

The Ski Sprites hope to use the proceeds to work on their new ski site in Mt. Simon Park.

“It’s a good time and the best Halloween event in the Chippewa Valley bar none,”

Morley said.