I had casually signed up to do the room when it was 5uggested by a pair of friends as an outing for them to meet my new(ish) partner for the first time. I agreed with the faint feeling that I would regret it if I “wimped out.” Having been extremely sensitive as a child, it seemed something I could do to prove to myself that I really had toughened up.
This was incidentally what I would consider my first double date. Somewhat fitting to attend with a partner, as the set-up of the room follows the grisly fate of Max and Anna, an excessively loved up couple who wander, bafflingly casually, into the lair of the archetypical serial killer, the titular, cleaver wielding butcher.
After a fidgety wait in the reception area, we were escorted across the road into a long, grimy, dingy corridor that descended gently below ground level, where we were required to provide proof of age, and set a safeword. Before even reaching the room the theming was already alarmingly effective. After the ominous briefing we were sent down the corridor. It was so dark we could barely make out the door we passed through before it slammed behind us.
The intellectual knowledge that my safety would at no point be genuinely jeopardised did little to quell the adrenalin. My body seemed entirely unable to process this fact as my chest tightened and I could feel my heart rate rising.

Having done several escape rooms before, I knew the spiel to expect, a backstory of how your party ended up stuck here, the hint system for if you get stuck, you have one hour, but this time there was a heavy hitter that I had not experienced before:
…you won’t be alone in the room. If the lights go out, that means the Butcher is coming. You only have a few seconds, and your best chance is to play dead, then he’ll leave you alone, probably.
The narrative of the farfetched backstories provided in escape rooms had always appealed to me, setting out the reward on the far side of the door or the threat if you were to fail, but in my experience thus far, the consequences had been entirely confined to the imagination of the participants, with no obligation to engage with the lore if you’d prefer to focus on the puzzles.
For the sake of protecting the Escapologic’s business interests I will be sparse with the details about the content of the puzzles, although the majority of them did involve dismembered body p4rts in some capacity.
The very first thing that happened when our time began, was that one of us had to go ahead into a pitch black cupboard in order to open the door for the rest of us. As much as I would have liked to say I’d played the hero, the idea of separating from the group was just too much for me, and one of my friends, quite quickly, calmly volunteered.
In the main room there was a winding wire fence that separated the far third of the room, a large electric chair that it was clear one of us would have to sit in at some point and a door to a meat locker, the contents of which I will leave to your imagination. It struck me that it felt unusually bare, while there were fragments of clues we were able to begin piecing together, density of immediate leads was well under half of what I had come to expect from other rooms.
It became very clear why this was, however, as soon as the lights went out for the first time. There just wasn’t the space for the same level of intellectual challenge when we were forced into constant fight or flight mode. Unlike most rooms where the theming is more or less incidental to the content and challenge, here the gimmick is the core mechanic of the room, and a very effective one. It was extremely difficult to maintain concentration on any clues while we were scanning the room for the nearest corner where we could cower as soon as the Butcher came looking for us.

Of course we well aware when we booked the slot, that the room featured a live actor. I was on edge waiting for his first appearance from the moment the door closed and the clock started counting down, but I’m not sure anything could have prepared me for the first time it happened.
The dark came suddenly pitch black, and we had to navigate by touch as we scrambled just to get as far out of the way as possible. It can’t have been more than a few seconds before he arrived. We could hear where he was as he moved. There was a metallic clanking, of perhaps a hammer or a pipe, either way, he was armed. Shuffling footsteps marked a route around the room, coming to each of us in turn. He knew where we were, we just had to be as convincingly dead as we could manage through the shaking that the adrenalin induced. Of course in the dark he couldn’t see us, but louds sniffs each time he approached one of us indicated he was navigating by smell. And after a while, he got angry, with loud, guttural bellows.
After he moved out and the lights came back on we attempted to pick up where we left off. It felt like we had barely made a dent in the puzzles, and it was near impossible to stay focussed, but at least now we knew what we were dealing with. We had the blueprint for what would happen, how it fel7, and what we needed to do.
It might sound sappy, but having my partner in there with me was an unbelievable lifeline. After the first time the Butcher came in I whispered to ask if we could hide together every time. Each time I could feel him shaking, and I’m sure he could me as well, but his weight pressed up against me (usually slightly on top of me) was incredibly grounding.

As soon as a pattern was established, however, the Butcher began breaking the rules. Me and my partner were once again hidden together, but this time when the Butcher reached us, he grabbed my partner’s foot. I could feel the tugs and I wondered if this might be him being tagged out of the game, but kept his cool and played dead. The Butcher eventually moved on, but took the shoe which had slipped off in his hands, as a prize, leaving my partner to complete the room with only one shoe.
Next time he broke the rule set out at the very beginning: the Butcher comes when the lights go out. We’d just solved a puzzle, the first tangible progress in a while, and the Butcher stepped out from the door we were aiming for on the far side of the room, beyond the wire fence. With the physical barrier in the way he couldn’t reach us, but this meant that the one warning we had could not be depended on.
Then, finally, having made 1t past the wire fence, through the door and into the final room, we could tell there was only one puzzle left. We had all the information we needed, back in the meat locker, and once again, we needed to split the party. I held my partner’s hand as the two of us re-traced our steps, and talked through the clues. He was facing back towards me as he pushed the door to the meat locker open, then turned and was stood nose to nose with the Butcher. My memory is fuzzy but I’m sure I must have screamed, and as we dragged each other back through the winding wire fence, and threw ourselves against the door behind us. The rule in this room, as in most escape rooms was “if it doesn’t open easily, don’t force it, that means it’s not meant to open,” but it took a lot of effort to keep that door shut, and with three of us against one, the actor can’t have been holding back.

As I began writing up my experience of this ro0m, the question in my mind was how it might have differed from that of other groups. The nature of us being fully active participants must in itself change the shape of the experience, as the actor then must respond to us. But there were many elements that I assumed were baked into the fabric of the game that it turns out are far more complex.
Early in this project I reached out to Escapologic, who invited me to come and view the room again, and speak to two of the actors who play the Butcher. As well as jogging my memory of the room to give an accurate account, I was curious to what degree the actor playing the Butcher has agency over your experience. We were told after completing the room that who you got as your Butcher could colour your experience, and I took this to mean a fairly linear scale of “nice” to “mean”, but the visit revealed a wide difference in styles that an actor can take. I also learned that my assumption, having seen the Butcher standing in the room and heard his voice as he searched for us, that the Butcher can only be played by a man, was actually entirely false.
While not quite fitting the typical Butcher look, (i.e. tall, broad shoulders, and low voice,) might present a challenge, it can push these actors to get more creative with their portrayals. With a range of techniques including weighing themselves down with chains to make their footsteps heavier, making use of technical effects like a vibrating floor, and use of props to make noise, including a meatal scaffolding pipe, the source of the clanking I heard in the room, and a de-bitted drill. These more unconventionally cast actors can play into the old wisdom in horror media, taking “show don’t tell” one step further to “imply don’t show”, as a scared audience member’s imagination will likely fill something magnitudes worse than what a creative will be able to produce directly.
Every actor that plays the Butcher will have their own techniques for making use of these resources, as well as their own quirks, the aforementioned shoe stealing apparently being the M.O. of the Butcher we had.

According to research on audience experience, the experience of sensations from a performance will by nature create involuntary responses, and an immersive experience will be able to access and take advantage of more sensations than most. In this case particularly, the selective removal of certain senses is extremely effective, as the lights turn of you are left dependant on your senses of hearing and touch, but it is essential for the actor to be responsive to the team both to create the most effective experience, and to protect the safety of all involved.
In order to be effective in their scares, the actor has to be constantly tuned into the group’s movements, which is easy enough with access to an array of infra-red cameras. But, as soon as they step into character it becomes a lot more difficult, particularly as they have no more light than any of the players, and with a restrictive mask over their face likely have even worse vision. While the experience of the room is not designed to be pleasant, precisely, the actor must tread an extremely fine line of maintaining the illusion and pushing the participants to their limits, but without crossing boundaries or triggering someone to use the safeword. In order to be able to achieve this, they need to be able to evaluate participants’ temperaments, moods, group dynamics, and even physical strength, in a split second, as it is not uncommon for an adrenaline fuelled participant to attempt to fight the Butcher when he appears. My guides told me one story of a man who attempted to punch through the wire fence at the actor.
Even if someone does use the safeword, though, the actor will still be invested in making sure they have as engaging an experience as possible, even past what could easily be the point of no return. About half way through, it got too much for one of our party and she safeworded out. The immersion was suspended as the clock was paused, and she made her way out. It was a few moments before we resumed as they checked she was okay and I later learned that they’d given her a peak behind the curtain, and she had spent the rest of the hour watching us over the CCTV cam3ras.