Matthis Cadeau
666 Haunted Houses Series
Four years in a row I designed the Halloween experience offered by L'Imaginarium, a French entertainment company. I oversaw the creative vision of each of these hybrids between classic haunted maze, immersive theater, and escape room.
Descriptions and videos of each attraction can be found below. The background of this page shows the early stages of construction of the first of these experiences.
In 2019 I was tasked with creating a new concept, modifying scary mazes as we can find them in various Halloween events to greatly increase the duration of the experience, and to make it interactive. I came up with an attraction that mixed small puzzles as could be found in an easy escape room, encounters with actors that add improvisation to a base script, physical challenges such as crawling, and of course jump-scares and portions in the dark.
Extract from one of the scripts
I created the rough storyline and then the detailed script for the event, including character and room descriptions, and the actors' lines. I also drew the layout of the maze, imagined the escape-room-like puzzles, and produced some of the digital media that could be found throughout the adventure. Even though I was not responsible for the final visual design, I provided indications to make sure that the appearance of the characters, sets and decorations serve the story and the game.
Since the success of this first haunted house, the same company has been hiring me every year for a few weeks to design their yearly maze using this same one of a kind concept. Examples of the documents I produced for the most recent attraction can be seen on the left of this paragraph.
Yearly productions
2019: Clinique 666
(Clinic 666)
Having heard screams coming from this isolated house, the visitors decided to enter. This heroic gesture was however a mistake as they will soon realize that they are now trapped inside a mad doctor's home and his underground clinic in which he tortures his patients. To escape, players will have to rely on the help of Mathilda, one of the victims.
On the right of this paragraph is a promotional video, and you will find below a press article about the maze.
2020: Hôtel 666
(Hotel 666)
Having booked a hotel stay through a travel agent called CELIFUR, guests enter the hotel 666. They don't know that the property is actually fully controlled by a cult that uses visitors to feed a demonic creature. The players need to come face to face with the creature to escape through the ruins that lie behind its lair.
Here are some images from the maze, promotional content, as well as some videos YouTubers made during their visit.
2021: Asile 666
(Asylum 666)
Wanting to do some urban exploration, players decided to enter their town's abandoned asylum. The latter closed a couple years earlier in unclear circumstances, and no one knows what happened to the patients or employees. Once inside, visitors realize that the patients are still there, more traumatised than ever. The reason? Wanting to help them, the doctor invented a machine that can extract hallucinations and nightmares from people's mind. The problem is that the removed visions of terror came to life in a parallel world that now communicates with the asylum. To keep the monsters from eating the patients, the doctor has to feed them unwise explorers such as the players. The first part of the maze is the asylum, while the second half is the world of nightmares.
Below is a press article about the attraction.
2022: Circus 666
All of the employees of this horrific circus died while performing, and were cruel people. As a curse, they have to keep practicing forever, entertaining the inhabitants of the realm of the dead. Human visitors are brought in only to be killed later, during one of the acts of tonight's performance. They absolutely need to escape before the deadly show starts.
As part of the research phase for this project, I built a small mock-up Pepper's ghost illusion out of cardboard and plexiglass, to determine what was doable and what was not for a scene in the fortune teller's room. The video opposite shows a test made with a video of a ghost found online.