Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Scare for a Cure is a non-government, nonprofit association that raises funds for local charities, which include Breast Cancer Resource Centers. Every year, the organization stages an extreme, full-contact, interactive horror adventure set up in a haunted house, which runs for 45 minutes to one hour. The concept of combining a haunted house adventure and interactive games was conceived by Richard Gariott at his first haunted attraction, Brittania Manor, which opened in 1988 and ran every one to two years until 1994. Keith Wing, Britannia Manor’s former construction manager, then took over and continued the operations in Wild Basin’s Haunted Trails every year for nearly ten years.

What makes Scare for a Cure a unique horror destination is its one-of-a-kind performance medium that puts emphasis on a story and script that is quite similar to being in a play, but with interactive constituents such as asking the audience to play a character and doing physical contributions like running, crawling, sliding, climbing and even swimming or rowing. Volunteers from all around Texas come together to stage this highly elaborate performance which usually runs during the last weeks of October. Its entire crew is made up of teams from Austin Art Institute, AmeriCorps, Office Max, Sonny Online Entertainment, Cole Rehabilitation Center and Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

In Scare for a Cure’s inaugural haunt in 2007, the organization was able to raise more than $5,000 to support the patients suffering from breast cancer. By 2008, it raised over $10,000, which was used for scholarship funds given to four students affected by cancer. In the following years, Scare for a Cure was able to raise as high as $20,000, and again donated the money to the Breast Cancer Research Center.  The people behind the Scare for a Cure have a deep passion not only for scaring but for caring, and do this to give back to the community that has made the organization extremely successful.