Look out behind!

Coffins, ghosts, goblins and mummies are waiting for adults and children at the three haunted houses this Halloween in Portales.

These are just some of surprises in store for those who go to the Portales Recreation Center for the second annual “Spooktacular” is held inside the center with different themes.

Halloween enthusiasts will venture into the spacious recreation center and will have choices for the types of rooms that they will enter.

They can either go into the “Barney”-themed room, for the young children. Or, for the braver souls, a tour through a room that many say will give “Nightmares.”

“I had Michael Terry tell us last year, ‘give us nightmares,’” Johnny Ledbetter said when Terry brought his children to the haunted house the previous year. “His children were holding on tight to their dad in the instance where I came out from the dark, dressed in a costume to scared them.”

The tour reveals Frankenstein and ghosts hanging from the ceiling with a five-foot Dracula standing over a grave in the center. The further along into the tour, the deeper participants will go into the demented offerings from Ledbetter and his crew.

The haunted house uses the element of surprise in a unique way. At times you will see a body laying motionless for such a long time that you expect it to rise in an attempt to scare you. However, Ledbetter and company will have ghouls jumping out from different areas while you expect the motionless body to rise.

The cost for the haunted house experience is $2 which goes to the purchase of new equipment for the recreation center.

The 801 base housing is sponsoring, “The Red Barn” to attempt to awaken the fears children and adults have on Friday night. Adults and children will be treated to a carnival from 4 to 6 p.m. before the opening of the haunted house.

The carnival, which will be held at the tennis courts next to the red barn, will consist of cake walks, apple-bobbing, darts, a duck pond and food to name a few things.

“We spent the last two months putting it together,” Jessica Macfarlane, one of the organizers, said. “It’s going to be creepy and it’s going to be awesome.”

Kem French said the haunted house theme is insane asylum demons and what you are liable to see will tickle your senses. The cost will be $2 per child.

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity will also have a haunted house in the house that was involved in a fire in the spring which adds to the authenticity. The house has boarded-up windows with the inside walls, blackened near the top because of the fire.

“We have two different tours, one for the young kids and another for the adults and teens,” Michael Sanchez, a fraternity member, said. “We have codes that we yell to the people working in the haunted house to distinguish the group. We’ve had instances when we scared a group of girls so much that they would tear down (garbage-bag) walls and some of our decorations.”

The theme for the haunted house is “Fright Fest” and it starts at dusk on Friday and Saturday and ends at midnight or 1 a.m. depending on the amount of people who come out, according to Sanchez. The cost is $2 per person.