Mom-Daughter Duo Scare Up Help With 'Haunted' Santa Clarita Shelter

SANTA CLARITA (CBSLA.com) — A mother and daughter from Stevenson Ranch spent last Halloween scaring up donations for needy families in the Santa Clarita Valley.

KNX 1070's Diane Thompson reports Theresa and MacKenna Basore hosted a "haunted house" to benefit those less fortunate families in need of a real home.

"It was just awesome, everybody loved it," Theresa said. "It completely terrified them."

The mother-daughter duo set up the "Haunted Homeless" event at the Santa Clarita Valley homeless shelter in October to help bring in some much-needed supplies.

Daughter MacKenna, a high school freshman, said the haunted shelter was the perfect community service project for her Girl Scout Gold Award.

"At our house, we always do a haunted house in our garage, and I've always loved doing it, it's so much fun," she said. "I thought it would be a great idea if we could do it on a grander scale, that would also help people, so I decided that we should do it at a homeless shelter."

To bring in the most thrill-seekers, "Team Basore" created two haunted houses, including one built especially for smaller children with a cardboard tunnel maze and a haunted diner, complete with plates full of eyeballs, fingers, and other "gross food".

The Basores stepped up the "scare factor" for the second house, which had the theme of "haunted hospital" and included people jumping out at visitors hoping to elicit screams of terror.

Theresa logged more than 30 service hours planning, organizing and creating the "scare zones", and those who "survived" the haunted tour got a little treat with their trick.

"Every single group that came learned about the homeless shelter," she said. "They'd never been to the homeless shelter, they didn't know anything about it, and everyone we talked to didn't even know it was there."

MacKenna said the "haunted shelter" was a huge success - and plans are already in the works to do it again next Halloween.

"It was great, 'cause I'd been really stressed out about finishing it, and when it actually happened and people started coming, it was just so much fun and I think a lot of people had a lot of fun," she said.