It’s 10:10pm and my heels are sinking into the mud as I heave a wooden box from the depths of a duck pond. I pull at a rope until at last it emerges; my companion rushes forward with a key he found hidden in a picture frame behind a photo of a dog. The key turns in the lock – at first, it is too dark to see what sits within. And then a torch cuts across the darkness, illuminating a human skull.
This is not a normal Saturday night. Mere hours ago, I got my hips stuck in a genuine 17th-century “priest hole”, a hiding place once used by persecuted Catholic clergymen. The hole was built inside some stairs; its trapdoor was hidden beneath a paisley rug. I went down there to find a hidden clue (and yes, OK, to take a picture for Instagram).
This is The Key of Dreams, a Lovecraftian immersive experience set inside Treowen, an imposing Jacobean manor in Wales. You’ve probably noticed that almost every event is “immersive” these days – famous paintings are no longer displayed in frames but instead projected around you in 360 degrees; Secret Cinema and Punchdrunk are household names; for £50 or so, you can “step into” TV shows such as Bridgerton and Stranger Things. It’s hardly surprising, then, that some people are taking things further. Overnight, 24-hour immersive experiences are on the rise.
While Disney might not have started it, the company certainly ramped things up. In March 2022, it opened Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a two-night immersive experience set in outer space (real location: Florida). At $5,000 (£4,000) per stay, this was luxury live-action role playing – guests could roam the spaceship, interact with aliens, solve puzzles and sample intergalactic cuisine.
Elsewhere in America, the Wild Heart Ranch in Joshua Tree offers “an immersive escape room you live in” while a Holiday Inn in West Virginia has been home to an overnight excursion led by “Dr Jeremiah Pickman”, a paranormal investigator solving the mystery of three ghostly guests. Closer to home, The Escape Room Cottage in Tewkesbury is a holiday home filled with hidden clues – but there are no actors. The Key of Dreams combines these elements – it’s the UK’s only 24-hour event featuring elements of live theatre, scavenger hunts and escape rooms – plus a fancy dinner.
“We are trying to appeal to people looking for a different kind of experience,” says Ivan Carić, a 50-year-old telecoms worker turned immersive event designer. After his father died on Christmas Eve 2020, Carić took time off work and “re-evaluated” his life – he realised he “wanted to do something that would be a bit of joy, it sounds cheesy, but a bit of delight”. He created the experience with his partners Laura Langrish – who wrote and devised the elaborate plot – and Marianne Wilberforce, who hand-crafted the intricate wooden props and puzzles (the three are in a polyamorous throuple).
The Key of Dreams is inspired by 19th and 20th century horror literature, particularly the work of HP Lovecraft. When guests arrive, they’re told the manor is haunted by a strange creature – the owner, Wyn Haffenden, has invited you to help figure out why he’s having bad dreams. (The actor playing Wyn, Rik Sowden, was so convincing as a bumbling proprietor that my friend and I believed at first that he genuinely was the owner of the house.) Guests use clues that have been hidden in bookcases, stuffed in puzzle boxes and tied to trees in order to unfold a central mystery and figure out which of the actors they can trust. There’s the opportunity to join a cult, perform a ritual and even “duel”.
I shouldn’t describe the plot further but the truth is I also couldn’t. There’s lots of information to absorb when you arrive, and things can quickly become confusing – Carić plans to ease guests into the experience better in its next run. Yet even when you’re a little confused, you can’t help but be thrilled – like when I identified a fellow member of an underground society with a coded question and received the secret response.
Those who get stuck can ask the actors for help – the five who make up the show are not only constantly improvising, they also have to serve dinner (and deal with guest allergies) while staying in character. A standout is Matthew Wood, a professional ghost storyteller who has previously performed at the Tower of London. Wood plays the Collector, a mysterious figure in a waistcoat and furs who asks for guests’ real stories in exchange for secrets. My enthralled friend and I found ourselves grinning from ear to ear when he spontaneously quoted the entirety of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven from memory.
The truth about most immersive experiences is that they’re not actually immersive – a better word would be Instagrammable. Often, you can see the pipes, wires and exposed ceilings behind the scenes – everything is designed to fit inside a picture or video, and actors even tell you when to start filming before something starts smoking or flashing. Many of these experiences are glorified conveyer belts herding guests from set to set. This is not the case with The Key of Dreams. After all, 22 guests really are sleeping in a Grade I-listed manor, with genuine creaking floorboards and woodworm, plus lambs and bats outside. From midday Saturday to midday Sunday, I don’t see a single other person on their phone. As the weekend winds down – and an actor takes a piece of metal from my hands and starts smelting it in a ladle in a fireplace – I realise this isn’t immersive: it’s real!
But all good horror stories need a twist, and this one might leave you gasping. It can cost as much as £700 per person to experience The Key of Dreams (tickets start at £400 and guests can stay off site, but costs creep up if you sleep in the manor).
“People spend £300-£400 to go to a football match,” says Carić. “So it’s a question of what is worth it to those people?” For the price, guests get the experience, accommodation and four meals, including a six-course evening banquet – yet lunch is just soup and there’s no shower gel or shampoo in the bathrooms. Rough edges like this need to be polished if a couple wants to feel comfortable paying £1,400 for the weekend.
Who, so far, has proved willing to pay? Guests include escape room enthusiasts, live-action role-players (LARPers), and lovers of immersive theatre – actor Neil Patrick Harris even attended Carić’s first show in 2023, The Locksmith’s Dream. But the real answer seems to be: Americans. “There is a huge passion for immersive experiences in the States,” says Carić, who believes Americans are also enticed by the opportunity to stay in an old country house. “There’s a lady who has come three times and she says this is what she saves up for during the year.” One of the people I meet has flown all the way from California for the experience, although there are still a few homegrown guests.
“If I worked out how much it would cost me to pay for 18 hours of escape rooms, is this cheaper? Yes,” says Sarah Dodd, a 41-year-old doctor from London who attended the event. “But would I want to squeeze 18 hours of escape rooms into a weekend? Well, actually, for me that is also: yes.”
Dodd has played the most escape rooms in the western world (2,526 to be precise). Eight years ago, she began seeking them out as just that – escapism after work. “I think in terms of the amount of content and the hours they give you, it’s an entirely fair and reasonable price,” she says, although she admits that while she’d like to return, she may not be able to afford to.
The Key of Dreams resumes in September – in December, Carić and his team will host four Christmas-themed shows in the manor. It is heartening to see the success of a small independent company hosting an immersive experience that isn’t capitalising on an existing popular movie or show. Yet it remains to be seen whether overnight immersion is the future – Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser closed permanently in 2023, not even two years after opening. Disney representatives simply claimed: “It didn’t perform exactly like we wanted it to perform.” Online, some guests complained of feeling ripped-off and disappointed by the experience’s reliance on an app.
Dodd says “there is an appetite” in the puzzle community for longer experiences and it’s hard to imagine that Carić’s work won’t inspire copycats. Still, Dodd believes this kind of thing will remain niche. “I don’t think it’s about to become a new entertainment form,” she says. “It asks too much of the players and the people creating it. I think it will remain as a special, one-off, fantastic thing that a few companies do.”
