In which guests embark on a mystery seated in the heart of the dilapidated castle, one that will connect everything they’ve experienced in the strangest of ways.
Hello all,
This year I’ll be, over the span of the next thirteen days, describing a Halloween-themed amusement park that I got to develop with Surena Marie, for fun, specifically for 13 Days.
As a big old imagineering nerd, this is a dream project and I’m so excited to share it with you all. Please excuse the shoddy sketches that accompany the overly written descriptions.
Enjoy.

Everything goes dark.
Dark and quiet.
Not any bubbling of the nearby sweet swamps. Nor the shifting brilliance of lanterns. The distance crashing of waves or crackling of firewood or ringing of carnival bells.
Nothing.
Except for the sound of electricity. And the lit windows of a castle.
“Come find me.”
Guests will note that it’s an odd sight, a broken down castle in the distance. Not because it doesn’t belong, because it does, few things are as Halloween as a castle on a hilltop. But there’s something off about this castle. As if it doesn’t belong.
As guests get closer (assuming they decide to trek to through the dark and noiseless environment up to the castle), they’ll note that it’s fallen in on itself. The heavy stone walls seem to barely hold up the tiled roof. The turrets have fallen in on themselves. Chunks of the exterior wall are just completely missing. It’s a ruin. An empty ruin.
And yet, there’s electricity flowing inside. Like a mad scientist’s experiment bringing itself to life. Like a great source of energy, but one without direction or purpose.
Something has gone wrong.
Carefully stepping over a moat, guests will feel a puff of cold air, like the castle itself is in some sort of bubble. There’s an uncanniness to this all. In a world of scarecrows and newts and monsters and shadowthings, it’s here, it’s this exact location that feels foreign. There’s something alien about the castle.
And if guests ponder it enough, all will be clear: the world of the park is alive and thriving. Even when things are scary, they are as they should be. Filled with spirit. This… this seems devoid of spirit. This seems something unto itself entirely. In fact, if guests ponder it just a little bit more, they’ll realize what that puff of cold air is. They’ll realize what that bubble feels like.
It feels like the outside world.
There’s a vacuum here. A vacuum of magic.
And as guests venture forward just a bit more, just up to the castle, they’ll realize one thing more.
It’s all an illusion.
For the castle isn’t dilapidated.
It’s not a ruin.
In fact, those missing chunks in the walls, the patches of rooftop that look up into the starry sky, they’re all fabric and projectors. If guests reach out their hands to touch the gaps in the bricks, the spots that should have been caused only by erosion and history, their hands will touch brick.
This castle hasn’t fallen apart. It’s been built to look like it’s part of the landscape. That it’s always been here. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
It’ll take guests a while to find a door but when they do, and if they enter, inside they will find not a gothic relic but a contemporary laboratory behind the castle facade. Packed with turn of the century instruments, impossibly more recent instruments, and impossibly futuristic elements.
The disrepair of the outside is, like Hallow Manor was, a sort of ruse. Possibly by the same maker, guests might muse, as they look around discover a diary laying about, next to the flickering lightbulbs, shaking batteries and steaming vats of chemicals.
If they read, the diary will tell them:
I’ve managed to set up a station here so I might permanently reside without losing my physical form. The essence here is infectious, it changes the way I operate. Perhaps by supplying this small contained area with enough power, I can inoculate myself, enough to exist between the two realms. Perhaps I can set up an outside world here, in the inside world. Or is it the other way around? I’m having a hard time keeping track.
The pen keeps slipping through my hand. I’m becoming astral.
Experiments are requiring too much energy.
I must keep returning to the manor to maintain myself.
But I can’t leave here. It’s far too wonderful. Everything is possible here.
Except for my ability to stay.
To be a thing of this wonder.
Which makes the outside world feel so dreary. So cold. So unceremonious.
Pen slipped through my hand again.
I’m slipping again.
Not sure if I can pull myself together. I can only manage to control the metal in my writing utensil. I can’t return the lever. Worried the power in my lab will consume everything around me.
I’ve tried to stay but at what cost.
If you see this, I’ve disappeared. I’m in the air.
If you see this, flip the lever on the far wall. Next to the pumpkin sconce above the fireplace.
I can’t return this way.
I’ve cost too much.
Find another way.
Take my work to the book binder in the hamlet.
They can make sense of them.
The papers to your left. Those are my work.
The brown scraps of paper.
Oh how strange.
As I’m slipping, I’m finding myself in so many places.
Doing so many things.
How clever I am.
You will find me.
But only once you talk to the book binder.
And it’s not my work that will do it.
It’s our work together.
Come find me.
And at this moment, at the end of the diary, the castle will rumble. Shaking. Looking at the far wall, guests will see the pumpkin sconce above the fireplace. They’ll rush over and uncover the large switch. They’ll try to flip it. It’s heavy and stubborn. But they’ll try harder. And in the last second, it will give, flipping back to the top.
All the buzzing instruments will stop. And settle. As light returns to the world. As does sound.
Wind will rustle, a crisp fall air, that will make the stack of papers near the diary rustle. Guests will collect them and head out in search of the hamlet, in search of the book binder.
But first they’ll need directions.
And a break.
And a view.
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