There may never have been a Tes Scotland feature that was more fun to write - but the preceding research stage was, at points, terrifying.
The Denny High School zombie run - named, in pleasing fashion for film buffs, “Night of the Living Denny” - had become an annual rite of passage for senior students since it started in 2014. Essentially, the school would be transformed for one or two nights each year into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where flesh-eating zombies roamed round every corner.
Senior students ran the gauntlet of the undead, who were played by staff and younger students at the Falkirk school, now passing itself off as some sort of mysterious science facility in an emergency lockdown. Invited guests - presumably with some sort of masochistic streak - also subjected themselves to the nightmarish experience and, in 2019, their number included our own Henry Hepburn, who documented the stomach-lurching experience.
“A deafening siren goes off,” he wrote. “Suddenly, we are assailed. The undead pour into the room, all lurching malevolence and rasping screams. The scientists are done for, but there’s a gap at the door and we hurtle through it. I’m not ashamed to say I yelped like a puppy that’s had a door slammed shut on its tail.”
“It’s a strong shared emotional experience,” said headteacher Stephen Miller, who saw a lot of “social learning” in such an ambitious project that involves so many people. He also thought there was something healthy about the younger students being the zombies and chasing terrified S6s, overturning a school’s traditional pecking order.
The zombie run was the result of “six months of solid work”, said Alasdair MacKenzie, an English and psychology teacher and one of the three staff members who proposed the idea back in 2014.
MacKenzie said that building anticipation is “always a tightrope” where care has to be taken not to create undue panic: “freaky notes” in class folders and quarantine evacuation posters have been effective, but tannoy announcements are avoided as some students might not realise they are fake. It all requires a “huge, big risk assessment”, and staff would speak to more vulnerable students beforehand and ensure they knew where they are at any given time; only a small number would decide not to take part.
“Pupils build up what it’s going to be in their head, but they maybe don’t realise it’ll be quite as intense, up-close and frightening. You also get the people who go in very cocky and then freak out,” said MacKenzie.
“Not many schools do something like this - it’s almost like an incentive to stay on [to S6],” said one student, and staff confirm that some students might have left school earlier but for Night of the Living Denny. Staff and students alike said that it has quickly become a rite of passage for those in their last year of school, up there with the prom.
The run also proved to be a “wonderful” experience for pupils who were making the tricky transition into the first year of secondary school - they enjoyed the camaraderie with new friends and being coaxed out of their comfort zone. Some had never performed in a school show before and autistic students surprised themselves by playing key roles in an event that had become a local phenomenon.
What happened next?
The 2019 zombie run remains the last before Covid struck. There is a strange irony, looking back at the Night of the Living Denny plotline - a mysterious infection tears through the population - as only a few weeks later, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reported a cluster of pneumonia cases that led to identification of a new coronavirus.
But what does Covid mean for the long-term future of ambitious community events that involve a lot of close contact and movement around a school?
Alasdair MacKenzie, one of the teachers behind the Denny run, says Covid meant there was “absolutely no chance” of it running in 2020. He was initially more hopeful for 2021, but a local ban on extracurricular in-person evening events in schools put paid to that.
“I could conceivably have planned a stripped-down, distanced event that might have passed inspection, but I wasn’t prepared to dilute it like that - it would lose impact,” he told Tes Scotland.
“I’m hoping that next year the council will feel more comfortable with events like this. You saw what it brought to the school, particularly the S6s. This is the second year where S6s haven’t been able to have their zombie teambuilding experience, and the pupils are frustrated about it.”
However, the usual second night - where members of the wider school community and other guests run the zombie gauntlet - is harder to envisage. Given the unpredictability of Covid and its safety requirements, MacKenzie “can’t really conceive of how we’d be able to run that in the near future”.
Eileen Prior, executive director of national parents’ organisation Connect, tells Tes Scotland that parent groups are “desperate to get back to organising school community events”.
“Parents tell us they’re feeling disconnected from their child’s school life and that children feel many of the ‘fun’ aspects of school are gone,” says Prior. “Parents of P1-2s and S1-2s may never have been inside their child’s school or met any school staff face to face.”
Billy Burke, Renfrew High headteacher and a former School Leaders Scotland president, says that running in-school events in a pre-Covid manner - whether dances, parents’ nights or zombie runs - remains a distant prospect, but thinks they will eventually come back stronger than ever.
“These sort of things are hugely important, as they build culture and ethos,” says Burke. No less importantly, he adds: “We need to get the fun back in schools.”
Henry Hepburn is news editor for Tes Scotland
