This famous Beaufort home is offering kids a chance to spend Halloween at a real haunted house

The Castle in downtown Beaufort’s point neighborhood has long been the subject of ghost stories and tales of things going bump in the night. This Halloween though, according to Eat Sleep Play Beaufort, the historic home will transform itself into a haunted house of a different sort.

The owners of The Castle, Elizabeth Locke and John Staelin, are enlisting the help of volunteers from the Beaufort community to create a haunted extravaganza, Eat Sleep Play Beaufort reports.

Actors from the Beaufort High Drama Club will be involved, as will Plum Productions according to Eat Sleep Play Beaufort. Savannah based Capital A Productions will provide lighting and sound.

The goal, according to Staelin, is to provide a special Halloween experience for kids that they won’t forget, Eat Sleep Play Beaufort reports.

The event will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. Halloween night, and local children are invited to join in the festivities with or without parents or guardians, Eat Sleep Play Beaufort reports.

In addition to trick or treating inside the home, kids can experience trees full of spiders and all manner of goblins, ghouls and ghosts wandering the grounds outside, according to Eat Sleep Play Beaufort.

The festivities will begin with mild spookiness for younger kids during the first hour, then ramp up to more frightening fare in the second. According to Eat Sleep Play Beaufort, themes will include Jekyll & Hyde, Dracula and Frankenstein.

Locke stressed in speaking with Eat Sleep Play Beaufort the one factor underpinning the evening that should up the creepiness factor for all involved. The home is supposedly actually haunted.

It was used as a military hospital during the Civil War, with its outbuilding used as a morgue, and the grounds of the home may have been used as a graveyard according to Eat Sleep Play Beaufort. Ever since then, various unsettling sights and sounds have been reported.

The Castle is located at 411 Craven Street in Beaufort.

This story was originally published September 23, 2017 at 3:07 PM with the headline "This famous Beaufort home is offering kids a chance to spend Halloween at a real haunted house."