AUBURN — Behind the scenes at the Community Little Theatre’s “Shadows on Stage” haunted tour, 13-year-old Evie True is putting on her makeup.

She’s experienced these types of walk-through haunted attractions before, but always as a visitor; always as one who gets startled by the various ghosts and ghouls who come lunging out of the dark to frighten their guests to near paralysis.

This time, decking herself out in the style of Moaning Myrtle of Harry Potter fame, Evie True is doing things differently.

This time, she’ll be the one hiding in the dark, waiting for unwary guests to wander by so she can scare the daylights out of them.

“I like being on this side of things way better,” Evie says, as the last of her makeup is dabbed on. “I like making people scream. I don’t like being the one who gets scared.”

As it turns out, this theater kid has a lot of talent for scares.

I don’t want to tell you exactly where or exactly when, but at one point during the “Shadows on Stage” tour, Evie made me jump so badly, I’m not sure my feet have come all the way back to the ground just yet.

And by the time Evie got me, I’d already been menaced, terrified and startled beyond repair a good half-dozen times during my walk through of that creaky old former school at 30 Academy St.

Scare for scare, the CLT’s “Shadows on Stage” is one of the best haunted attractions I’ve been to in recent years. And who should be surprised by this?

For one thing, this show is being put on by a couple dozen or more men, women and teens whose main passion in life is the theater. These are people who know how to elicit strong emotions from their audience.

And for another thing, let’s be honest here. The theater building is a near 200-year-old former school — a giant block of a three-story building with long dark halls, strange sounds and unsettling shadows that gambol every which way, even in the bright light of day.

The former Lewiston Falls Academy has been reputedly haunted for so long that professional ghost hunters come calling every single year, hoping to gain access to the building to seek out the spirits of the long dead.

Danielle Eaton, co-executive director of the theater, explains why adding haunts to this building is almost redundant.

“So, this building is old,” she says with emphasis. “And has a lot of history, especially with many generations of children having walked these halls and played in this park. Anyone from CLT will tell you that the building is haunted. We’ve all heard sounds, felt like we weren’t alone, and had the hairs stand up on the back of our necks.”

Eaton was once the box office manager at the theater and would contend with ominous sensations while locking up the old building at night.

“We’ve all got stories,” she says. “We’ve come to learn to co-exist with the spirits that inhabit our space. We like to think that they enjoy our performances and having visitors come through, and on the stage we always keep the ghost light on.”

For years, patrons of CLT have been clamoring for some kind of Halloween season attraction, something that would allow the public to experience the whole, vast space in all of its sinister glory.

So now there’s “Shadows on Stage” and right from the start, the building’s caretaker — played to spooky perfection by theater man Tony True — warns visitors just how many ghosts may be cavorting among them on their tours.

He has special warnings about the old theater itself.

“Going back to 1835, actors and performers and crew have wandered the labyrinth of these halls and performed tragedies and comedies,” the caretaker says at the start of the tour. “Tonight you may come across some of the spirits that have remained here.”

True’s haunted eyes dart from one visitor to the next as he tells them, in a low, sad voice: “You may also come across some of the remains that they’ve left here.”

‘Terror waiting in the dark’

I wish I could tell you precisely where I experienced my first heart-stopping fright during my tour of the building but to do so would give too much forewarning to the next guy.

The fact is that every single step along that tour is fraught with unease because these theater folks took such good advantage of the darkness and of the setting.

With that oppressive dark all around you, you’re never sure where the next menace will come from. Is that skulking ghoul just around the next unseen corner? Or creeping up behind you even now out of that terrible darkness?

And the tension of that horrible anticipation lasts throughout the tour, which meanders up and down stairs and down the long halls of the old building.

At some point, the former school and longtime theater starts to feel like yet another character whose main ambition is to scare you witless.

“That building is already creepy on its own,” says Jaime Lyn Allie, who took the tour last week, “but the ‘Shadows on Stage’ team really took it up a notch. The tour brought us everywhere, from the stage to the third floor and down into the basement, and the scare-actors were perfectly placed. There were a few moments when I actually ducked behind the person in front of me! It was scary in all the right ways, and I’d absolutely do it again.”

David Smirles of Auburn experienced the attraction with his two daughters and one of their friends. During their uneasy tour of the building, you could see them clutching on to one another as they rounded corners and ascended stairs, every one of them desperate to know from which direction the next terrifying encounter would come.

“It was great,” a slightly winded Smirles said at the end of the walk-through. “Really great. I had no expectations going in, but it was all well spaced out and everything. They did a great job.”

I asked Smirles if one scare in particular had given him the biggest fright.

“There was one that really got me,” Smirles says. He starts to say more but then kind of smiles and shakes his head. “But I don’t want to give it away.”

Like me, Smirles is adamant about this. Let the next chump to take the tour find out for himself or herself where the really bad scares are. We guarantee they’ll know it when it comes.

There’s one scene in a classroom, for instance, where … and when you get into the basement of the old building you best prepare yourself for …

But I fear I’ve said too much already.

The last chance to experience “Shadows on Stage” is this coming weekend, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 17 and 18, at Community Little Theatre.

Tickets are general admission. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Purchase online at laclt.com.

“This is not a guided tour—this is your journey into fear,” warns the official introduction to the tour. “Follow a marked path through the theater’s most haunted spaces. Beware: scare-actors and unexpected jump scares lurk around every corner. No one can shield you from the terror waiting in the dark.”