Visitors to the Wang Middle School in Lowell later this month will encounter some frightening scenes.

They may, for example, see a skeleton emerge from the grave; be startled when a zombie suddenly sits up; or cringe at the sight of blood running down the face of a skull.

These and other gory sights will be the creations of 14 youngsters in grades six through eight who are learning their frightening skills in Doug Prime’s Design Lab Program in Pasteur 106.

Amanda Phakonekham, center, and Abigail Lasa, right, are working on a Halloween project that will cause "blood" to run down the front of this skull. The two Wang School students are in the Design Lab Program directed by Doug Prime, left.

“They’re a great group of kids,” says Prime, who provided the 10 girls and four boys with a variety of Halloween props – skulls, axes, skeletons and other items – and challenged the youngsters to make the props come to life, so to speak.

At the heart of each of these projects is something called a “handy cricket,” a mini computer powered by four AA batteries. The cricket, which is only about three inches square, was designed by Asst. Prof. Fred Martin of Computer Science when he was a graduate student at MIT.

The cricket enables the students to operate lights, voice recorders and motors that make their creations move, blink and utter ghostly sounds.

The students have only eight two-hour days in the lab to complete work on their projects, a schedule that Prime acknowledges is pretty tight.

The finished products will be set up in a Haunted Classroom at the Wang School on the evening of Oct. 28. Prime says he hopes to videotape the students ahead of time as they explain how they devised each scary prop. If the videotaping is successful, parents and other visitors to the schools will view the production after they have visited the Haunted Classroom.