Everyone on Lake Street has heard the whispers about Atkins House. Now the door has shut behind you, a child’s rhyme is drifting through the rotten walls, and Cathy has decided you’re staying to play.
In short: The Haunting takes place in Atkins House, a decaying heritage home on Lake Street that Northbridge locals avoid. Inside, a nursery rhyme plays, a child laughs, and Cathy keeps a collection of broken toys. She wants new friends to stay forever. You have one hour to get out. It is the prequel to The Possession.
For years the locals have hurried past the brooding heritage house on Lake Street, trading stories in low voices. Strange sounds after midnight. A mist that seeps from the basement vents and never quite clears.
You never believed a word of it. That was your first mistake.
Inside Atkins House the wallpaper is peeling with mould, a nursery rhyme loops somewhere in the dark, and the laughter of a child echoes down corridors that should be empty.
The child is Cathy. She has been alone in this house for a very long time, and she has kept every plaything she ever broke: dolls without eyes, bears with their stuffing torn out, a battered old rocking horse.
She wants you to play with her. Forever. Work out her games without upsetting her and you might walk out with your mind in one piece. Fail, and you’ll join the other lost souls who never left these walls.
You are not alone, and Cathy wants you to play… forever.
The Haunting was built to feel like a house that has been rotting for a century: stained walls, boarded rooms, candles in the gloom and a little girl’s things everywhere you look. The fear is slow and atmospheric, broken up by the moments that make you jump.
Photographs and film stills from The Haunting at Escape This Northbridge.
The Haunting began in the Escape This studio, where the team wrote Cathy’s story, planned how her toys would lead groups through the house, and aged every wall, cabinet and floorboard until it looked a hundred years neglected.
Those same people run The Haunting upstairs at Lake Street, so your gamesmaster knows exactly where every scare is hidden.
Dress as ghost hunters, Victorian mourners or the cast of your favourite haunted-house film. Whatever you pick, wear closed shoes and clothes you can crouch and crawl in.
The Haunting is a 60-minute horror escape room at Escape This Northbridge in Perth. Your group is trapped inside Atkins House, a rotting home on Lake Street ruled by the ghost of a girl called Cathy, and has to solve its way out before she keeps you as playmates.
Cathy is the child whose laughter fills Atkins House. In The Haunting she has been alone for a long time, surrounded by the dolls and bears she broke, and she wants your group to stay and play with her forever. Anger her and you won’t like the result.
Atkins House is the haunted home on Lake Street where The Haunting takes place. In the story, Northbridge locals have whispered about it for years: noises in the night, mist around the basement vents, and visitors who came out with their minds in pieces.
Escape This bills The Haunting as set inside a real haunted house and inspired by its true history. The room plays inside a heritage-listed Lake Street building more than a century old, and the story of Atkins House grows out of that setting. Whether anything walks its halls at night is for you to decide.
The Haunting is the prequel to The Possession, another horror room at Escape This Northbridge. Play The Haunting first and the story carries on when you step into The Possession.
They belong to Cathy. The Haunting’s nursery is crowded with her mangled playthings, from eyeless dolls to a torn teddy and an old rocking horse. Working through her collection without upsetting her is the heart of the game.
Properly scary, in a haunted-house way. The Haunting has jump scares, confined spaces, periods of complete darkness, flashing light, smoke and strong adult themes. It’s tense, sometimes gory, and the strict 15+ limit is there for a reason.
Yes. The Haunting is built for groups of 4 to 12, and its puzzles are spread through the house, so even a big group finds that everyone ends up searching, reading or solving something in Cathy’s rooms.
Yes. The Haunting has a crawl space and other tight spots, so it may not suit anyone who is pregnant or has mobility difficulties. Have a word with the team before you book if that applies to someone in your group.
Go for it. Ghost hunters, Victorian mourners and horror-film characters all look the part in The Haunting. Wear closed shoes and something comfortable, because there’s crawling to do.
Escape This wrote, designed and built The Haunting itself, from Cathy’s nursery to the effects that bring Atkins House to life, and runs it at Northbridge. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory.
Desmond Crouch, an invented paranormal investigator who watches the window of The Haunting from across Lake Street with a meter that beeps at everything. He keeps case files of his own on the site of The Possession, the sequel set ten years later, covering many of the same nights from the footpath. The two never share a sentence, and neither gives away a puzzle.
Book The Haunting at Escape This Northbridge. Four to twelve players, ages 15 and up, one hour in Atkins House.
