If you thought the ISU cemetery was a place where students who don’t make it through Finals Week end up, think again. The cemetery is filled with familiar campus names like Welch and Beardshear and represents decades of university history.

A moonlight tour of the cemetery will help shed some light on some of the historical figures that have made campus, as well as provide some spooky Halloween fun with the new addition of “ghosts” to this year’s event.

Amanda Hall, program assistant for university museums, says the walk will start with a few introductions of the cemetery and then the ghosts will take over.

The walk will then cover parts of campus and end at the Farmhouse Museum.

“We have volunteers who will be helping us out on this walk, whom we will kind of run into along the way. They will be dressed as historic figures from the time period,” Hall says. “They’re going to be talking about their time spent here at ISU – that’s the haunting part.”

The cast members say they felt it would be eerier if the ghosts were encountered in the time period in which they lived.

“They’re talking like they’re going about their everyday business during the time period they would have lived,” Hall says.

More surprises await the audience as they are led into the darkened Farmhouse Museum, Hall says.

“There are a lot of rumors that surround the Farmhouse and this was a way to sort of take advantage of those without necessarily scaring anybody,” Hall says.

“We’re inventing our own ghosts for the Farmhouse so it will be a bit of history along with a lot of fun.”

A lot of research has gone into the planning of Haunted ISU, including writing scripts and coming up with costumes for the characters, she says.

The event has gone from a one-person tour to a full-blown cast involving several staff members, students and friends of the museum, Hall says.

Lynette Pohlman, director and chief curator of University Museums, says much of the change was inspired by the museum staff in an attempt to make the event more appealing to students.

“I think the other thing is we’re trying to forecast and get ready for the Iowa State sesquicentennial,” Pohlman says.

“The sesquicentennial will be a lot about looking back into Iowa State’s past, as well as jumping forward to what we want to be for the next 150 years and how we link up our past with our future.”

Pohlman says she feels it is important for students to know something about the college’s heritage.

“It will be about how we have built, how we have gone from a house on the prairie to a farmhouse to now a world-class institution and the people who made it grow and were a part of that,” Pohlman says.

Jeff Johnson, president of the ISU Alumni Association, and a cast member on the tour, says the event has allowed him to get to know some students he probably wouldn’t meet otherwise.

“I’m always asking for people to give back,” he says. “Now this is an opportunity for me to give back.”

Johnson and the rest of the cast of the Haunted ISU say they are excited about this year’s event and the new changes.

“If you want to go on a moonlight walk at ISU, this would be the year to do it,” Hall says.