Inside, stylist Graci Hanson applied liquid latex to the chin of Ashley Paris, a student at Tacoma School of the Arts.

“It’s pretty itchy,” said Paris.

That, and somewhat scary – which is the point.

For the second day of a show that runs through Halloween, a few dozen volunteers worked to create characters who inhabit Freighthouse Square’s first entry into the realm of the haunted house. In this incarnation, the lower level of the Dome District shopping center contains several rooms meant to portray the spooky and festering innards of something called Black Lake Asylum.

The year is 1940, and the asylum has suffered a fire, a riot and the subsequent takeover by patients and a staff gone mad.

For $13, guests have a chance to see the work of famed neurosurgeon H. West, who, according to designer Ben Isitt, “somehow ran amok with bizarre medical experiments.”

As Saturday’s volunteer performers were given scars, lacerations, amputations, carbuncles and pustules, and as blood (composed of corn syrup, chocolate sauce and food coloring) was poured on their clothing, Freighthouse Square events coordinator Kate Malady led a brief tour.

The asylum is a place of beheaded heads and random severed limbs, of skulls, rats and skeletons. Cobwebs (composed of hot glue shot by compressed air through a nozzle) linger in every rafter inside the mortuary, at the cemetery and within the “spider room.”

Nearly 200 people attended Friday’s opening, Malady said.

Jesse Carasella, a student in marine biology at the University of Washington, became a demented janitor – after spending Friday as a werewolf.

“I got screaming, I got jumping, I got hands thrown up in the air,” he said.

Kyle Sinclair, a religion and theater student at Pacific Lutheran University, became a crawling contortionist. “It was really exciting to see the reaction,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen. It’s a surprise for everyone.”

On Friday night, Ryan Norton and Cooper Inveen, both students at SOTA, were caged psychopaths – and won $10 Freighthouse Square gift certificates for providing the night’s scariest performances.

“Tonight we’re zombies,” said Norton.

“It’s what people are afraid of, and it’s fun to expose that,” said Hanson, the stylist. “Last night, there was one guy, 30 years old, he was screaming like a little girl.”

After spending 15 minutes inside the asylum Saturday evening, visitor Maria McBride of Olympia was among the first to escape.

“It was worth the money,” she said. “The scariest was when the guy was crawling on the ground.”

That would likely have been Sinclair, the religion student at PLU.

C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535

Black Lake Asylum

Where: Freighthouse Square

When: Oct. 17, 18 and 19; and 24-31

Time: 6 p.m.-midnight

Tickets: $13 cash only, available at the door

Featuring: Rain City Hearse Club

Donations: Save $1 by donating a food item to My Sister’s Pantry charity.

More information: www.freighthousesquare.com