Audiences can expect to be spooked and delighted this Halloween season with the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts’ (Charter Arts) very first virtual Halloween experience. This program has been designed by students in the school’s Productions Arts Department and includes a virtual haunted house escape room, titled “Don’t Look Under the Bed,” and a set of audiobooks called “Not Your Bedtime Stories.”

Halloween has been a widely celebrated and much-anticipated event at the school for the past 17 years, with such highlights as Charter Arts’ annual Halloween costume contest and lip sync contest that has occurred at Levitt Pavilion in recent years. Of course, COVID-19 has changed the landscape for the school’s events this year, so the Production Arts department stepped up to the challenge of creating a virtual Halloween experience.

Under the direction of the department’s artistic director, Rae Labadie, a group of students was assembled to produce the audiobook series and the haunted house escape room using their learned skills in the areas of set design, costume design, sound design, projection and lighting design.

Production Arts faculty member and digital media specialist Carlo Acerra, who is leading the direction of the projects, said, “It has been challenging not being in person, but because Charter Arts goes big for Halloween, we knew we had to create something that would lend well to a digital application and would still be enjoyable.”

The audiobook series,”Not Your Bedtime Stories,” will include three storybooks, developed by students in the Production Arts Storytelling class. Students will lend their skills with the voice-over narration and sound design. The series will be launched on Oct. 23, and will be available for purchase through Nov. 1. Due to the spooky nature of the stories, parental discretion is advised for younger children.

The virtual haunted house escape room, “Don’t Look Under the Bed,” will be created with Google applications, and will operate as a ‘point and click’ game. There will be several rooms that players can access the key for each door by using clues in the room to answer a series of riddles. The escape room will launch Oct. 30 and will be available through Nov. 1.

Tickets for both virtual experiences can be purchased through the school’s ticket line, located on the school website, www.CharerArts.org.

Charter Arts is located at 321 East Third St. in Bethlehem. To learn more about the school, visit CharterArts.org or call 610-868-2971.

Contributed article