After disappearing into the shadows last year, Screamboat — one of Steamboat Springs’ longest running Halloween traditions — will make its return in 2025 with all of its associated screams, shrieks, scares and suspense-filled moments.

“We didn’t do it last year, and I think it was missed,” said Ric MacNeil, who is creating this year’s Screamboat. “We’re hoping to get everybody back and, you know, scare some people and have a really good time.”

Held at the Colorado Mountain College campus in Steamboat in the past, Screamboat this year will move to a new location in Wildhorse Marketplace at 685 Marketplace Plaza, #C1 — where the Stonewall restaurant was located before closing last spring.

Doors will open at 6 p.m. Friday, and the haunted house will be open again at the same time Saturday and Sunday and Oct. 30-Nov. 1.

On Nov. 1, the haunted house will open an hour earlier for younger visitors, and the lights will be left on from 5-6 p.m.

Tickets are $27 and can be purchased at screamboat.fearticket.com.

A portion of the proceeds from the events will be donated to the Howelsen Hill Ice Arena to support the figure skating program, and possibly the hockey programs.

For the past several weeks MacNeil and a group of volunteers have worked to prepare the haunted house.

That group includes Paul McCudden, CMC professor and chair of Physical Science who has carried on the Screamboat tradition passed down from fellow professor Steve Craig. The Screamboat experience was the brainchild of retired CMC professor Jimmy Westlake who started the event on the local college campus a quarter-century ago. It continued at the site until its brief hiatus last year.

“The college decided they wanted to kind of move on from hosting the haunted house, so we were looking for a place all year,” MacNeil said. “We had a couple of other places, and one we thought we were going to land, but it kind of fell apart last-minute. We were able to secure this place just a couple weeks ago, and it’s been a mad dash to get it up and running.”

On Tuesday, MacNeil offered a tour of the maze that will lead participants through scary rooms filled with animatronics, sudden jolting sound effects and actors whose sole job is to surprise and scare the “bejeebers” out of all who enter.

“It’s a little different than the past and we definitely have some new things,” MacNeil said. “Since we used to be at the college we focused more on the students, and there were some student-oriented scenes. Here we are incorporating kind of the restaurant vibe into part of it with the kitchen. We’ll have some characters that would be in a restaurant, but there’s some new scares and new thrills.”

MacNeil said he was grateful for the college playing host for 24 years and is excited to open a new chapter in a new location that allows him to share his talents and passion to create this event in Steamboat Springs.

“I’ve been doing Halloween stuff for close to 30 years,” MacNeil said. “I’ve had a little bit of experience with everything including some home haunting to kind of semi-professional stuff — it’s more of a very expensive hobby than a job.”

MacNeil, now in charge of organizing Screamboat, said he hopes to make sure the experience will remain a spooky Steamboat Springs’ holiday tradition. He knows that the new location is temporary, but once this year’s haunts are repacked in boxes he will begin the search for next year’s spot.

“This is a new location completely separate from the college,” MacNeil said. “We are very thankful to the college, and they’re still letting us store some stuff over there, at least temporarily until I can find a new home for everything.”

MacNeil said CMC-Steamboat and JC Norling, the vice president and campus dean, have “been very amazing, and I would like to give a shout out to them for all that they have done.”

While the event will not be located on the campus this year, MacNeil said there are still strong connections and that many of his volunteers are currently students at the college.

He is also working with McCudden on the design, build and sets for this year’s haunted experience.

“It’s great that we’ve kind of handed it over, in a sense, to Ric,” McCudden said. “We do have students that are still involved, so that’s great too — but I think it’s all in safe hands, and I can’t wait to see it myself.”