If you’re walking down on the riverwalk near the Maritime Museum tonight and Friday after dark, don’t be surprised if you hear some blood-curdling screams coming from the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Steadfast.

There will be no shortage of blood, guts and bone-chilling terror over the next two days as Steadfast welcomes the public onboard for its annual Haunted Ship: Scare for Care event.

The 210-foot white-hulled ship has been transformed from its usual orderliness into a floating house of haunts, with spooks and kooks lurking among three of the ships’s decks. Instead of admission, donations of nonperishable food items and warm clothing will be collected for local charities.

“The crew has done their best to make it scary and fun, and it definitely will be scary. That’s the most important part,” said Seaman James Botticelli. He helped put together a gruesome display in the ship’s laundry room, complete with blood spray, severed limbs and a moaning creature trying to pull a hatchet from his ripped-open chest.

For years the Cutter Alert has organized the Halloween thrill, but this time, Alert’s undergoing a major renovation in the Baltimore Coast Guard Yard.

So Steadfast’s crew took the reins, borrowing many of Alert’s props to bring the gory and frightening scenarios to life.

For example, the ward room, where officers eat their meals around a large table, will be transformed into an operating room, with a poor soul undergoing surgery. The idea for that room wasn’t hard to come up with, said Project Officer Ensign Craig Nilson, the event’s main organizer.

“That’s what that table is anyway – a battle dress station,” he said.

Nilson said the crew is planning to use about 70 percent of the ship’s corridors and lightless rooms to spook the guests onboard the ship, leading groups of around 10 through a winding path.

Ensign Tom Mansour, the ship’s public affairs officer, said each group will be led in front and followed up in the rear by another Steadfast crewmember, just to make sure no one gets lost.

“We’ll take groups with younger kids on a route that’s not quite as scary,” Mansour said.