Diaries / The Memoirs of 48 Lake Street
A century-old building’s account of becoming Escape This’s first venue: the pandemic, every tenant who moved in and out, and every sibling who came after.
Fiction. The building’s voice, the rivalry, the letters and the legends are invented. The dates are real.
January 2020
Somebody has started writing everything down. Every booking, every group, every escape. I approve. I have been standing here for over a century and nobody has ever kept proper records of me before.
I am, I am told, the first. The first Escape This venue. I have asked for this to be noted in the records. It has not been. I am noting it here.
Note to self: practise creaking. Visitors seem to like it.
2020
The doors are shut and the street is empty. Everyone in Perth is at home, and so, in a sense, am I. I have been through quiet spells before in a hundred-odd years. I did not care for any of them either.
I spent it listening to my own pipes and planning what I would be when the doors opened again. I decided on: frightening.
Sketch: the front door, closed, looking bored.
23 May 2020
A tenant has moved in downstairs, and he has brought hooks. The Northbridge Butcher, he calls himself, which I find rather presumptuous, as I was in Northbridge long before him.
Groups come down the stairs laughing and go quiet in the cold room. I hum to myself. I have found my calling.
Downstairs, step-free gate. The Butcher appreciates a visitor who calls ahead.
28 October 2020
A count has taken the crypt, just before Halloween, and he has views on curtains. I was not consulted about the blood moon either, but I admit it looks very fine through my windows.
Two tenants now, both of them horror. Word is getting around Northbridge. People walk past and look up at me and I creak at them, just slightly.
Dracula prefers groups of four or more. So do I.
19 March 2021
A family has moved into one of my rooms: a girl called Cathy, her toys, and something that does not want visitors to leave. I find this both flattering and unnecessary. I am perfectly capable of being haunted on my own.
Still, it takes twelve players at once, and the noise when they all scream together is the best thing I have heard in a century.
Biggest room in the house. I am very proud.
5 August 2021
Two coffins, side by side, and an Undertaker who fills in the grave. Exactly two players at a time, and they have to talk to each other through the dark. I have never heard so many couples learn so much about each other in an hour.
The Undertaker, I suspect, will be back. He has that look about him.
Two players only. Adults only. No exceptions, he says.
September 2021
Rooms have appeared on the books under Hay Street Mall, five minutes’ walk away. A basement. A basement! With pirates and pyramids and a Wild West gaol and, I am told, a great many families with small children.
I am delighted for it. I am. I have sent a card. The card said “Welcome to the family, I was here first.”
It has more rooms than me. This is fine. This is completely fine.
26 November 2021
Cathy’s house has a sequel, ten years on, and it has opened here first. Not in the Basement, not anywhere else: here, at Forty-Eight, where it belongs.
Other venues will get copies, I am told. Copies are fine. Copies are a compliment. But the original was mine.
Underlined twice: HERE FIRST.
26 December 2021
On Boxing Day a pirate moved in. A beach shanty, a parrot’s worth of rum crates and a Jolly Roger, in the middle of my horror house. The vampires were scandalised.
I have decided to keep him. Every horror house needs one room where a family can bring the kids, and the Basement has quite enough pirates already.
Up to ten players. The roomiest shanty in the family. Tell the Basement.
July 2022
The family has grown again, all the way to Sydney: a venue on The Corso in Manly, which was Room Eight Escape Rooms before it joined us. It arrived already grown up, with its own stories and a sea view.
I have never had a sea view. I have had a view of Lake Street for over a century, and Lake Street is very nice. I am not jealous. I am heritage-listed.
Sent Manly a welcome card. It sent back a photo of the beach. Rude.
2023
Bank Heist left in May. The President’s Briefcase, which had been here since August 2021, left in December. Rooms move on. Some of them go to my siblings, who send me photos of them in their new homes, looking very settled.
I keep the hooks where the old rooms hung their signs. Buildings are sentimental. Nobody tells you that.
Bank Heist now lives under Hay Street Mall. The Basement says it is very happy there. I’m sure it is.
31 October 2023
A new tenant on Halloween night: a padded cell, a set of restraints and a voice on the intercom. Asylum, they call it, and it is the Undertaker’s doing, as I suspected it would be.
I would like it on the record that I chose the date. Nobody will confirm this, which is exactly what you would expect a horror house to say.
Adults only, two to four of them. The voice on the intercom says hello.
2024
Zombie Apocalypse arrived at the end of May, and the zombie that used to pace under Hay Street Mall now paces here, where the lighting is better for it. The Wizard’s Chamber left in June and Pirates in November, off to their own homes across the family.
And in August, Sydney: a whole venue on George Street. It took copies of my favourite tenants. I was flattered. Then furious. Then flattered again. Imitation, I have decided, is a compliment, and Sydney’s ghosts do not creak like mine.
One pirate left: mine. Not negotiable.
20 March 2025
A laboratory crackling with electricity, and a creature that wants reviving before the storm passes. Frankenstein Resurrection, my youngest horror room, and the only horror room a thirteen-year-old can book.
It is good to have a room for the teenagers. They scream with such commitment.
13+, strictly. The creature checks.
August 2026
A new sibling in Melbourne, on Collins Street, and before long it had pirates, a magic university and a vampire hunter called Van Helsing, who has come all that way to hunt a Dracula who lives here, with me.
I have sent advice. A great deal of advice. None of it has been taken. I gather this is normal with babies.
Van Helsing has never been to Lake Street. The Count is relieved.
Today
Nine rooms, eight of them horror and one pirate, and a family that stretches from Perth to Melbourne, with Brisbane on the way. I have more siblings than I ever expected and more visitors than I can count, although somebody counts them for me.
I am the oldest and the first. Every other venue in the family is newer, shinier or closer to a beach. None of them has been here for a century. Come and visit. Wipe your feet.
Brisbane, expected first half of 2027. Jumper already knitted.
— Forty-Eight, 48 Lake Street (the original)
