Thus it was on Halloween last Saturday night that hundreds of children of all ages with their parents went to the clubhouse to see the spirits come alive and take possession of the building for one bone-chilling night.

The weather played havoc with the organizers’ efforts earlier in the day. High winds blew down a large banner they had strung out on Sherbrooke Street. An inflatable Casper the Friendly Ghost, placed up on the clubhouse roof also didn’t survive. However, the setup inside made up for it.

For some reason, perhaps having to do with the side effects of anaesthetic, nurses and surgeons strike a spooky chord with people and are a favourite as inhabitants in Halloween haunted houses.

This was at least the second year such characters could be seen at the clubhouse, albeit this time with an even more horrifying twist: at least one of the ladies assisting at a rather gruesome surgery was a guy in drag (in the semi-darkness it wasn’t obvious at first).

“I’m not sure where those nurses came from,” said Virginia Elliott, Westmount’s assistant community events coordinator. But she acknowledged they were police technology students from John Abbott College who were recruited as volunteers by members of the Westmount Public Security Department staff.

The show in the clubhouse was actually a little less spooky than in the past. “There’s more gore,” said Elliott. “It was hard before, when we noticed a lot of little kids who were getting scared. The gore intrigues, but it doesn’t scare as much.”

‘Doctor’ Peter Trent turned up earlier in the evening and showed himself very willing to operate on those fearless enough to go under the knife. “Not only was he cutting taxes, but taking an arm and a leg as well,” quipped Elliott.