Screams echoed through the Student Health Center on Oct. 28 as students made their way through the SHC's annual haunted open house.

The event drew people to the SHC, located near the Student Services Building, for a health fair. The event included an "Ask a Doctor" booth, an information table with UC Berkeley's optometry clinic and horror-themed games, such as a matching game with unwrapped condoms and their wrappers called "Condom Mate."

Many of the games were run by students in the Peer Educators Advocating Campus Health program, an organization that lets students focus either on nutrition on sexuality.

"My favorite game was the Little Box of Horrors," said 19-year-old Courtnie Everidge, an undeclared student. The sexuality PEACHes hosted the game, which they also used last year, to test students' knowledge on sexually transmitted diseases. People looked into little black boxes with gold curtains that covered photos of STDs and guessed which infection they were looking at.

"I didn't really get many right, but my roommate did. It was just interesting to really see how all that stuff looked," Everidge said.

"I just wanted to go to the haunted house but I ended up seeing all this other stuff. The games make getting the information fun," said 19-year-old Jasmine Williams, a theatre arts major and Everidge's roommate.

Prizes, in the form of a condom and lubrication variety pack as well as non-sexuality specific information on STDs, sexual health and the PEACHes, were awarded to students who played two or more games.

"As the flow comes out of the haunted house, we get a lot of people," said 26-year-old Alex Hickey, a dietetics major in her second semester as a nutritional PEACH. She and a colleague were manning "Nutritional Twister," which replaced the usual colors of the game mat to colors of nutritious foods, and a nutritional trivia game.

"Our goal is to test students' knowledge and educate them to decrease the risk of STDs and increase sexual health," said Ingrid Ochoa, a health educator at the center and the coordinator of the sexuality PEACHes. As an example she cited the booth "Lucy Lube" which allowed students to test different lubricants with gloved hands.

"Lube decreases the STD risk and increases protection because it's less likely for anyone to get tears that could spread an infection. It also increases pleasure," Ochoa said.

The SHC themes its open house for Halloween every year. This year preparations for the event started on Oct. 22.

"People like the theme and the staff get to dress up," said Albert Angelo, a health educator who helped transform the center's conference room into a haunted playground the day before the event. He dressed in a cape with a distorted, bloody mask for the event.

"It's good because it's nonreligious, so it doesn't have anything to do with Hanukkah or Christmas, though I suppose you could always offend someone," said the 42-year-old.

When students entered the house they were plunged into darkness, save for a television tuned to static. They exited near the business office, which had been transformed into the "Crone's Corner" for tarot card readings by Barbara Salge.

"Have you ever had your cards read before?" she asked 18-year-old undeclared student, Renee Quesada, who responded that she hadn't.

"Well, that's good, because I don't know what I'm doing," she said. Normally working in the SHC with Family PACT, a program that allows eligible California residents to get confidential reproductive health services free of charge, she said she enjoyed playing a tarot card reader despite her lack of experience. Armed with a print-out of what the cards meant, Salge spent her third year as the "crone."

"This event is to make students comfortable coming here. We're cool. We're not their parents and there are no judgments," Salge said.

According to Angelo, the event gathers roughly 500 students each year.

"We advertise on the Web site, on the campus memo and through lawn signs. We also have a lot of students who do outreach," Angelo said.

The event featured more than 15 different booths to educate students about what the SHC has to offer.