Helping children, giving back to charities, and winning awards along the way
TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR
The Haunted Sawmill, on the corner of Hendricks and Seventh Streets in Merrill, celebrated 10 years as a spooktacular attraction in Merrill this past October. “The Spirit of Halloween” was this year’s theme, honoring everything magical about Halloween. But the Haunted Sawmill is far more than just laughter and screams on Friday and Saturday nights each October. The volunteers and kids who make up the Haunted Sawmill team are making a difference in one another’s lives, and they’re making a difference in the Merrill Community.
“It’s very important work that we do here at the Haunted Sawmill. People don’t realize the impact that we have made on the lives of people over the last 10 years,” said Gerald Hersil, President of the Friends of Vincent Foundation (FOVF), the Board that governs the Haunted Sawmill. “It’s superficial to think that our volunteers do this simply because they like to dress up and have fun scaring people. Our project is really about helping children. We do this, first of all, by giving the kids that volunteer a safe place to come and belong as part of a larger family.”
“It was humbling how one of our teen actors said to me this year, that the Haunted Sawmill saved him from hurting himself,” Hersil recounted. “He felt for the first time that he truly belonged to something and that people accepted him for who he was. I can’t tell you how much that personally meant to me.”
“At the same time, we are teaching life skills and fostering leadership,” Hersil said. “We want to teach by example and show our Scare Crew members how to give back to the community. Our volunteers know that this project is not about themselves. People don’t donate 20 hours per week throughout the entire year to something that they don’t personally believe in. The Haunted Sawmill is really about reaching your hand out, even when things are the most difficult, and doing what you can to lift someone else up.”
The Haunted Sawmill has long been a fundraiser for the area. Dick Duginksi, Secretary and FOVF Board Member, said, “It was very satisfying to see Merrill’s popular fundraiser continue performing its mission to help support youth groups in our community.”
“With the money that we raise, we are able to help children attend activities that they couldn’t otherwise pay for. We are also able to donate to so many different things. This includes the Merrill Food Pantry, our high school scholarships, the Backpack for Kids program, and even helping to purchase Christmas gifts for families that are down on their luck,” Duginski said.
This year the Scare Crew went above and beyond. Several of the main characters picked their own charities to raise money for, on their own, during the 2020 10th anniversary season. These “monsters-with-a-heart” met guests outside the haunt and asked them to contribute to their worthwhile causes, raising close to $1,000. The Haunted Sawmill made up the difference so the characters could donate $250 to each of the selected charities.
“Buzz Buzz the Clown and his protégé’, Lil’ Buzz, scared up some laughs to benefit the Merrill Youth Hockey Association. Candie Kane and Ruby Morris asked guests, with a little bit of their sweet persuasion, to contribute to Suicide Prevention. Phaedra the Vampire bit deeply into the necks of enchanted guests to bleed out money for Boy Scouts of America. And, the Haunted Sawmill’s main lumberjack, Vincent Mudgett, with the assistance of two of his lovely ghouls, Brianna Lemanski and Autumn Reissmann, ‘axed’ for donations to benefit Concerns of Police Survivors (COPS).” Hersil said.
Along with raising funds for favorite causes in our community, the venue picked up an award. The Haunted Sawmill was named “the Favorite Northeast Region Haunted Attraction” by a poll conducted through Haunted Wisconsin.
Admittedly, the Haunted Sawmill faced challenges this year, opting to continue operations in the midst of dealing with COVID-related issues while so many other venues and activities were simply canceled for 2020 and even now, many for the summer of 2021 are already canceling. But the Haunted Sawmill got serious and focused, and they proved fun and safety can still work together.
“We began working on our own very strict COVID-19 policies and guidelines at the very onset of the pandemic,” said Kristin Tobin Woller, FOVF Vice President. “We believe that put us ahead of the curve with addressing how we would deal with the Corona Virus.”
The Haunted Sawmill’s guidelines included requiring all of their volunteers and guests to wear a mask at all times and maintaining social distancing in line and through the haunt.
“We worked very closely with the Merrill Fire Department, the Police Department, the City of Merrill, and community leaders to ensure that we followed all of the guidelines and that we could open and operate safely,” said Cheryl Skoug, FOVF Treasurer. “You would not believe the number of hours that we put into making sure that everything we could do was done to keep everyone safe.”
Despite false reports of a COVID outbreak, the Haunted Sawmill made certain that all of their guests and volunteers were safe and protected throughout the entire haunting season while still having a scary good time.
“We only had two people that came down with COVID despite having over 100 volunteers and over 4000 guests this year,” Woller said. “I think we were very successful in dealing with the crisis that COVID-19 presented.”
“… Despite all the obstacles we faced, we were all doing everything we could to keep the Haunted Sawmill running,” Hersil said. “I could not be more proud of our Board of Directors and all of the people that make the haunt so successful.”
This October, for its 11th season, the Haunted Sawmill will present a whole new way of experiencing a haunted house attraction: “Abandoned.” For advance details and insider information, watch the Haunted Sawmill website or send Vincent Mudgett a friend request on Facebook.
