A model of “Mother Cheese” awaits being reproduced on a life-sized scale at Haunt Camp’s outdoor workshop Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022, in Enterprise. It’s part of what will be the Cheesecake Laboratory haunted house Friday and Saturday, Oct. 28-29, at the Cloverleaf Hall in Enterprise.

ENTERPRISE — A spooky cave. Eerie lifelike masks. “Mother Cheese.” An oven with dancing flames — and cheesecake.

No, it’s not your typical Halloween haunted house, which is one thing that makes it so unique.

“It’s Lewis Carroll meets Martha’s Vineyard,” said JR Rymut, program director for Haunt Camp, an artistic venture she oversees for students at all Wallowa County schools.

The students didn’t want to do your usual haunted house, with ghosts, goblins and gore.

“The theme of this haunted house was chosen by the kids,” she said. “I told the kids we’re not going to do just a typical blood-and-gore-type of haunted house. It has to be funnier than that.”

To come up with a theme, she and the kids got together.

“The kids talked about dozens of different types of places — places around the country, places they’ve gone to on vacation, places they’ve seen on movies and TV — and we came across the Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Seattle and that is the one they thought would be the funniest and the scariest,” Rymut said. “So our entire haunted house is a spoof on the Cheesecake Factory restaurants. The attraction name is the ‘Cheesecake Laboratory,’ and that’s how we’re getting around the intellectual property. We’re reimagining what it actually means to have a cheesecake laboratory.”

The programRymut has been operating Haunt Camp since 2019, with various levels of success.

“After I did my workshop last year, which was the Creature Creation (a prosthetics workshop), this year is the first year we got a significant chunk of funding through the Josephy Center to do the entire program,” she said.

The program received a grant of $40,000 through the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture, she said. It came as part of an Oregon Community Summer Grant through the Oregon Education Service District.

Proceeds from the attraction will go back to the Josephy Center, Rymut said.

About 20 students are in the program, eighth grade through seniors, along with three recent graduates from all the county’s schools.

Rymut said she and the kids have been working on the project since Aug. 1.

“Hopefully in subsequent years we can start our program even earlier so that it’s a full summer-through-fall activity for the kids,” she said, adding there will indeed be subsequent years. “If we get funding.”

One of the volunteers who has been a big help to Rymut and the kids is Kelly Riggle, a former county resident now based in Huntington, Vermont. Riggle said one of her favorite things about Haunt Camp is the way it brings diverse kids together.

“This is a community of students that have arrived, each of them with their own reason for being excited,” she said. “It’s a really wonderful and interesting group class. Were it not for Haunt Camp, a lot of these kids wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn alongside each other.”

Also, it provides skills that kids can possibly use in the future in the entertainment industry — in Hollywood or Broadway, for example.

“This is an industry that usually happens in urban places and they would otherwise not have the opportunity to be learning a whole array of skills that JR brought from her travels,” Riggle said.

Rymut is an example of how the skills involved in Haunt Camp can be used professionally.

“I spend my winters working in Los Angeles,” Rymut said. “I’ve worked in studios all around the country.”

The laboratoryThe Cheesecake Laboratory is intended to be more amusing than scary.

Most restaurants have a restroom, and so will the Cheesecake Laboratory — but this one will come with some tricks. The program has been receiving old pedestal sinks and toilets for use in that feature.

“Any of the theme park dark rides are exactly what we’re trying to do with this attraction,” Rymut said. “We’re trying to tell a story while moving through different rooms.”

She said there will be some false doors, monsters that suddenly appear and the entire attraction is “a little bit of a maze.”

The kids are painting murals, such as one to establish a restaurant scene.

But it’s not without its eerie side. Another mural will depict a laboratory scene.

There will be a hallway leading to a “creepy cave,” Rymut said, through an oven and the use of an old stage illusion called Pepper’s Ghost, which makes what appears to be a ghostly image by the use of mirrors. In this case, those going through the laboratory will see a “ghostly apparition of a cake,” she said.

Also on the eerie side will be some of the leftover masks made last year in Rymut’s Creature Creation program with a little “blood” added — it’s really strawberry sauce, she said.

The kidsThe youths involved in the Haunt Camp program come from all over Wallowa County.

Daniel Zeise of Enterprise put his prop-making skills to work by creating a fake weapon.

“I was just handed this tube and I thought I could make it like a mortar or a gun,” he said.

Allieigh Weaver of Wallowa said her mom learned about the program on Facebook and suggested she take part.

“She thought it would be fun for me,” she said. “It is.”

Summer “Kitty” Ellis of Enterprise also got into Haunt Camp because her mom learned about it on Facebook. She’s been putting her artistic skills to work decorating a fake cake.

“I got into it because it seemed fun,” she said. “It’s really fun because we get to make a lot of stuff.”

Rymut said in an effort to make sure kids could come from all over the county, the Wallowa Valley Center for Wellness has been providing transportation for the kids who live in the Wallowa area.

“That just blew my mind getting that kind of support,” she said.

The attractionRymut and her crew have been working on the corner of Depot and Main streets in Enterprise building all the elements to go into the laboratory. But they’re going to need some help when it comes time to set it up.

Most of the walls are standing out in the weather and the props are in a shipping container there. They’re hoping for volunteers to help move the items this week anytime from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

There also will be treats — real cheesecake.

“We will have some cheesecake bites from Sugartime Bakery — real cheesecake — but perhaps it’s not all what it seems,” she said.

Although based out of the Josephy Center, Rymut said the Cheesecake Laboratory wanted it to be at the more central Enterprise location.

“We especially wanted it to be at the Cloverleaf in Enterprise because we wanted the kids in town to be able to walk there to visit multiple times,” she said. “And if people want to give back to the Josephy Center for presenting this, that would be wonderful.”

What: Haunted house

When: Friday and Saturday, Oct. 28-29, 7-10 p.m.

Where: Cloverleaf Hall, 600 NW First St., Enterprise

Cost: Suggested donation of $5.