[spooky music, chatter] [screams] [giggling] Tonight is Haunted Valley.

It is one of the keystone events of Parents and Families Weekend with Penn State.

A big part of being a Lion Ambassador is instilling Penn State pride in our students, community, and alumni.

So to just have everyone here for this event is kind of intermingling between students, community, and alumni.

And it's a great event to get people excited, especially for the upcoming months with fall and Halloween around the corner.

[chatter] Thank you.

ELENA HALMI: We have a lot going on.

We have lantern tours, a haunted house, student entertainment groups.

There's activities out on the lawn.

And right now, all of our Lion Ambassadors are getting their makeup done to be actors in the lantern tour and haunted house.

That looks really good.

[chatter] All of our Lion Ambassadors are involved tonight.

This is our biggest project of the year.

[chatter] Oh!

I feel like they add a little something.

Cute.

[laughter] MARA RYAN: We also have snacks.

And we are really proud to source all local vendors.

So we use Way Fruit Farm.

For all our items here to eat, we like to stay local.

It's really cool to see.

When you attend these events, you don't necessarily know how much goes into it.

[chatter] ELENA HALMI: Can you get them all out?

MAX GIBBARD: And if any of these stop working, too, we have batteries.

There's batteries in that.

MARA RYAN: It's all my students.

They plan it all.

I help where I can, help them manage a budget, help them put together vendors, help them create timelines.

That's what they're learning.

It's part of their event planning, their professional development, a lot of the things that they learn as a Lion Ambassador.

GUIDE 1: She never left.

There are reports of her hanging in the building.

Some students say that they can see a professor wandering the halls of Sparks late at night.

But I'm sure that's just a rumor, right?

MAX GIBBARD: The centerpiece event for tonight is probably the lantern tours.

GUIDE 2: There's a really scary story from the 1860s that a student wandered around campus in the middle of a blizzard without their coat, and then they were never seen again.

It's kind of a way for us to give a little bit of history about Penn State and the campus and that kind of thing, while having a spooky twist.

And so the stories that we tell might be slightly fictitious.

But for the most part, they're pretty true.

GUIDE 2: Women and men would bang on the pipes.

And then that's how they would be able to communicate with one another.

Sometimes students say that they can still hear the banging of the pipes throughout the spooky season at night.

[eerie music] MEGAN LAVELLE: We tell these stories as a way to get people in the Halloween spirit.

I see you've come to gaze upon my grave.

I was Penn State's eighth president from 1882 to 1906.

GUIDE 2: Old Botany is the oldest non-renovated building on campus.

The building cannot be renovated because Miss George Atherton still haunts the building looking for her husband.

Some students claim that when Old Main strikes at midnight, they can see Miss Atherton in the windows starting to tap on the glass and flicker on the lights.

I know there's a group of students during Halloween, they'll come out and sit by Atherton's grave.

And once it strikes midnight, they try to see if they can see Miss Atherton in the window.

But who knows?

I definitely would not do that.

I don't play with that.

I don't play.

[frantic music] MARA RYAN: It's a lot of work.

It's a very, very busy time of year for my students.

I'm just so proud of them.

They do a great job.

MEGAN LAVELLE: I just really want people to fall in love with the school in a different way.

See the history, have fun, have a good time with their family.

It's Parents and Family Weekend.

So enjoy time with your parents and your families who came.

Beware.

The Haunted Valley spirit still exists.

Don't let them take you.

[evil laughter]