All over the town of Palouse, Washington, townspeople prep for volunteer roles as ghosts, ghouls and dead children.
This annual Halloween fundraiser started after a devastating 1996 flood damaged the town’s sidewalks and gutted the buildings on Main Street. Haunted Palouse took up the slack after the grants and insurance money ran out.
Twenty-five bucks buys admission to two haunted houses, and a pitch-dark hayride through the woods. Inside the old jail and fire station, black plastic and wooden beams create a labyrinth of dark rooms. And a pig-tailed woman wearing a clown mask acts as the bellhop in an elevator to nowhere.
Washington State University instructor of history Robert Franklin has spent a lot of time exploring small struggling towns in the Inland Northwest. “You saw a lot of faded glory and opportunity,” Franklin said.
But, he says, Palouse is different. It’s become a bedroom community for two nearby college towns — homes to WSU in Pullman and the University of Idaho in Moscow. There are shops downtown and a busy restaurant — all of which also make money during Haunted Palouse.
“Palouse is bucking the trend,” Franklin said. “Many of the towns around it, they are becoming more and more marginalized. And many people leave them, or have left them to seek greener pastures elsewhere.”