WELLFLEET — A host of vampires will descend on Wellfleet next week, courtesy of the Nauset Regional High School drama club. Preservation Hall director Kate Ryan personally invited them in.

Ryan got the idea for the Nauset Players to stage their annual haunted house at the hall while sitting alone in the building one windy night last September, listening to its finnicky elevator ding.

“We do a family-friendly event every Halloween,” she says. That’s the Pumpkin Palooza — “but this year I thought we could kick it up a notch.”

NRHS theater director Ian Hamilton was more than happy to oblige. “Preservation Hall is a really lovely, welcoming environment,” Hamilton says. “We’ve definitely got some spookifying to do.”

The drama club has full run of the 3,767-square-foot building. Constructed in 1912, it was the town’s Catholic church before falling into disrepair and reopening as a community center in 2011. “We pretty much have carte blanche as long as we’re careful,” Hamilton says. “There are some really beautiful large hall spaces, perfect for some kind of vampire masquerade ball.”

Ryan isn’t worried about the actors damaging the hall. A former teacher, she says teenagers have a “surprising sense of responsibility and maturity.”

Members of the drama club gathered at Preservation Hall on Oct. 22 to walk through and write a rough script, and they hope to finish building the set sometime this weekend. Hamilton expects about 25 student actors to play roles in the haunted house, which will occupy all three levels of the hall as well as the grounds and an old equipment shed.

“We’ll give people plenty of opportunities to leave if it gets too scary,” Hamilton told the players as they contemplated dragging the vampires’ victims (portrayed by actors, of course) into the building’s basement.

If construction at the high school continues as planned, this will be the drama club’s last performance at an outside venue before the redesigned NRHS performing arts center is ready for use. Construction of the new stage began in 2022 and is projected to be finished by late November. The new auditorium is part of a $169.9-million renovation.

During the new performing arts center’s construction, Nauset’s theater department has relied on stages at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Cape Rep, and Nauset Middle School for its productions. “It’s been lovely to expose the kids to different performance venues,” Hamilton says, but he’s ready for the department to have a permanent home.

The redesigned auditorium will mean new lighting and sound equipment and will be tall enough to construct elaborate multilevel sets. The main area will seat an audience of 500, with 250 additional seats in a balcony. That’s 15 more seats than at the middle school, and more than at WHAT and Cape Rep combined.

“It looks terrific,” Hamilton says. “We’re itching to get in.”

If the projections are accurate, the auditorium will be finished just in time for the drama club’s winter production of Much Ado About Nothing. Hamilton selected the comedy because he noticed that his students were reading less Shakespeare in their English classes as curriculum standards changed. “It’s valuable for kids to work with incredibly difficult language,” he says. “But the play is also really, really funny.”

Hamilton says he also has a personal connection to the show, having performed as Benedick at Wheaton College’s rendition in 2018. He won’t say what the school’s spring musical will be, but he promises something “flashy,” making full use of the new stage.

For a haunted house, though, the club is more than happy to work in one of the Cape’s old buildings. Because the show is more focused on audience participation than a typical play, a traditional stage isn’t necessary, and the winding corridors of Preservation Hall lend themselves well to an engaging show.

This is the second time Hamilton’s drama club has haunted a historic space for its annual Halloween fundraiser. In 2022 they converted the Crosby Mansion in Brewster into an extravagant house of horrors. Ryan attended that performance and was impressed by the number of teenagers who showed up to support their friends in the theater. She hopes this year’s haunted house will do the same for Preservation Hall.

“We’re really excited to engage with high schoolers,” Ryan said. The hall is planning more programming for young people through its Art Sparks Joy initiative, a free art education program for K-12 students. The high school session offers open studio time on Tuesday afternoons and a photography class led by Robert S Johnson, which meets on Wednesdays.

Ryan received funding for the initiative from a $750,000 federal grant that senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren helped several Outer Cape organizations secure earlier this year. She’ll also be using some of the funds to secure props for the Nauset Players haunted house — probably big pieces of fabric to line the walls, she said.

The haunted house will run from 6 to 9 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 29-30. Admission is $10 for students and $15 for others. Proceeds will be split 60-40 between the NRHS drama department and Preservation Hall.