NORTH BEND — “You need to ugly up your face — and don’t get any blood on that dress!”

It’s not often that directors say such things at Little Theatre on the Bay.

But this is just one sign that things are out of the ordinary as the theater prepares to open its first haunted house. Or “Haunted Theatre,” to be exact.

“It’s a haunted house with a theatrical twist,” said Jason Denton, the project’s technical director.

Of course, a haunted house is essentially an exercise in stagecraft. There’s an elaborate set, costumes, makeup, stage blood — hence director Theresa Erskine’s bizarre instructions to one of her young cast members.

There are about 30 performers involved in the project, most of them teenagers. Erskine said the idea for the haunted house came out of board discussions about how to get more young people involved in the theater and how to draw a younger audience. It’s also a fundraiser for ADA renovations.

“It’s our way of trying to get kids into our theater,” Erskine said.

The task of making them ugly falls to makeup artist Gordon Freid and assistant McKenna Spencer.

“They come in and say, ‘Make me a zombie,’” Freid said. “Well, what’s a zombie look like? The next one says, ‘Make me a vampire.’”

There are also a lot of special effects: strobe lights, black lights, a fog machine. And then there are the effects that came with the place — the creaks of an 84-year-old theater.

“This place is so old and grungy,” Denton said. “It looks haunted.”

Of course, some say it is haunted, but Erskine said she didn’t know enough about the local legend to explain it. But her performers might not be the only ones scaring visitors the next two weekends, beginning tonight, at the North Bend theater.

The most familiar part of the building, the auditorium, serves as a waiting room for Haunted Theatre. The seats are covered with artificial cobwebs and a screen on stage will show clips of old horror movies. The real action takes place backstage.

Beginning with “the graveyard” area and then the “hallway of doom,” a maze leads visitors through the backstage area and into the basement. At every turn, there’s something to look at — and a hidden surprise.

“The trick is distract ’em and startle ’em,” Erskine said. “That’s what we’re gonna try to do.”

From the zombies and vampires to rats and spiders to killers and monsters, the theater appears to have included everything on a Halloween aficionado’s wish list.

“They’re not going to come out of here not shaken,” Denton said. “We’re going to scare them to death. Hopefully nobody dies.”