Behind the doors of the old Welch’s grape juice processing plant in downtown Kennewick, something sinister stirs.

Jeff Schreiner and Jason Patterson, the creative duo behind It’s Alive Productions, have transformed the Public Market at Columbia River Warehouse into a spine-tingling spectacle for the month of October. To bring their creepy vision to life, they’ve built an immersive multi-room haunted house and three escape rooms designed to plunge visitors into the heart of horror.

“Halloween is the second biggest holiday in the world and there’s a market there. Harvest festivals, farms … they’re all looking for the types of things we build,” Schreiner said.

A large part of It’s Alive’s success is the unique, hand-crafted, high-quality facades, sets, props, animatronics and more that the team builds from the ground up.

“We can build stuff for anyone – whatever they want, whatever their vision is,” Patterson said.

Halloween and beyond

The self-proclaimed “monstrous minds” behind It’s Alive previously ran a haunted attraction in Pasco and the haunt at the annual Scaregrounds event formerly held at Benton County Fairgrounds until the Covid-19 pandemic ground their haunted attractions to a halt.

But they’ve since come back bigger than ever and look forward to the new experiences they want to bring to life for the Tri-Cities community.

What started as a hobby has grown to the point that both men are committed to the enterprise full time and they’ve expanded beyond their Halloween offerings.

“We’ve done stuff for the city of Richland; we designed and built the Santa house they use,” Schreiner said, adding that even local churches have used their services for building sets for plays. “We don’t just do scary stuff.”

Visitors won’t find what’s in It’s Alive’s haunts at mainstream stores. The business offers one-of-a-kind experiences created by seasoned artisans and their up-and-coming assistants and volunteers.

For example, the It’s Alive team makes molds to cast resin base pieces that are then textured and painted to resemble metal or stone as well as carving sculptures from clay, then casting that original sculpture to replicate the element where needed.

“There are not too many people in our industry that do the caliber of things that we do as far as the creative part; you would normally have to go to someone who does movie sets to get what we do,” Schreiner said.

In addition to their local projects, the duo has traveled across the country for some of their commissions. One notable trip was to St. Louis, Missouri, to install a giant Frankenstein at Creepy World’s monster mansion in Fentonville.

“In our industry, people are looking for props, bodies, animatronics, masks, costumes … We’re getting ready to sell a lot of animatronics and things we do ourselves on an online store. Hopefully that will launch in March,” Schreiner said.

From backyard to warehouse

Schreiner and Patterson met through their daughters’ soccer team and during a team barbecue at Schreiner’s house, realized they had a shared love of going big for Halloween.

Disheartened by the lack of trick-or-treaters in his neighborhood, Schreiner started holding a haunted house in his garage.

He kept expanding on the concept each year until it grew into a haunted maze that encircled his house.

“We were buying shopping carts full of candy and still running out, and we’d have lines down the street … people looked forward to it every year. It was my way of giving back to the kids,” he said.

The company he was working for in the early 2010s had an empty warehouse in Pasco and his boss told him he could use the unused part of the warehouse if the proceeds went to charity.

With the help of their girls’ soccer team, their families, family, friends and many others, they constructed Project 13.

Each year the attraction drew more attention and over three years they were able to donate more than $175,000 to Camp Patriot, a nonprofit that works to empower wounded and disabled military veterans through outdoor programs, Patterson said.

In 2015, they brought their haunt talents to Scaregrounds.

And they envision doing more beyond the Halloween season.

Glowing red eyes add to the creepiness factor of this display for the haunt at the Public Market at Columbia River Warehouse in Kennewick.

| Photo by Laura Kostad

“We foresee doing a twisted Christmas attraction, maybe one or two weekends around the holidays that would feature Krampus, Bad Santa, the Grinch,” Schreiner said. “Also, a ‘My Bloody Valentine’ type of deal in February.”

It’s Alive also wants to add a more kid-friendly escape room to their lineup and start renting out their escape rooms at private events since they can be disassembled and transported.

Next year, the duo hopes to offer a Santa village where kids can visit Santa’s workshop and make a simple wooden toy kit or bake cookies with Mrs. Claus and other activities.

“I think Tri-Cities needs that … it makes family memories that they can take home forever, a lifetime,” Schreiner said.

Pure Evil haunt

Pure Evil is the name of It’s Alive’s haunted house attraction at the public market.

It features a Project 13 Klowns of Carnage display, which some Tri-Citians might remember from past haunted attractions around town.

It is accessed by way of the ramp on the building’s east side. The haunted house is located in between the public market vendor space on the south end and Ice Harbor Brewery on the north end.

“We played into the history of the building in the haunt’s storyline,” Schreiner said.

Public market officials have said they hope the introduction of more events like Pure Evil inject more life into the 3-year-old market.

It’s Alive also has constructed three classic escape rooms that involve completing a puzzle to escape. Each is geared to last five minutes.

The escape rooms are named Grave Escape, Van Helsing’s Crimson Circle Escape the Bite, and Project 13: Escape the Zombies.

On Oct. 24, local car clubs have been invited for a Halloween themed show and shine, as well as two locals who own hearses.

It’s Alive is working alongside the public market to line up bands to play that night as well as the other weekends in October.

“We’re trying to make it as much of an event as we can, where people can go through the haunted house, get some food, something to drink, hang out and watch a band,” Patterson said.

Project 13 and the escape rooms will remain permanent fixtures, while the haunted house is subject to change thematically.

If you go

The Pure Evil attraction will be open on weekend nights from 7-10:30 p.m. through October at the public market, 10 E. Bruneau Ave., Building C, Kennewick.

General admission is $25. Escape room experiences are an additional charge. Add-on packages, including a behind-the-scenes tour the day after Halloween, are also available.

Go to: pureevilhaunt.com.

It’s Alive Productions: 509-572-0043, monstrousminds.com.