Sleep No More
Last night was my birthday. Two of my very close friends took me to the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea to see a play. I had no idea what I was getting into.
The McKittrick Hotel was built in 1939. Six weeks before the scheduled opening of the hotel and two days after the onset of World War II, the hotel shutdown due to loss of funding. The hotel has remained in tacked and untouched for decades. The theater company, Punchdrunk, is currently hosting a sophisticated interactive haunted house version of Shakespeare's Scottish Tragedy, Sleep No More.
We lined up outside in the rain eager to be let in. They opened the door and directed us in to a dark hallway. We followed the candles up stairs into a 1920’s themed lounge. A flapper-cocktail waitress served me a shot of Absinthe, which I proceeded to drink the rest of the night. We were all given a card from a deck. I got the three of clubs. Both of my friends got diamonds. The host assembled people according to their cards. When they called diamonds, I was not happy about being separated from my friends. Then my card was called. A group of twelve of us filed into a small black room. The host gave us white masks to wear and told us not to talk. There are two rules, keep the mask on and keep quiet. A 1920‘s lady of the night continued the introduction and guided us into the elevator. The elevator operator let a few people off on each floor, further dividing up the crowd. The operator said “fortune favors the bold.” The idea is to get you by yourself. I was in the back of the elevator, so I got off last. Last stop was the basement. I walk out into almost complete darkness. I saw a few people going towards a hallway. I didn’t want to follow the crowd. I saw a ramp going further down into what I think was a subbasement. I ended up in a giant room full of Christmas trees. It was cold, smoky, and smelled like pine. I was immediately transported into a lucid dream. Once I realized that no one was going to jump out and scare or hurt me, I became adventurous. I walked between the trees and through a doorway into a parlor. There was piano, a few couches, and a library. I saw a small bar with amber colored liquid in bottles. I took a glass and poured the liquid in it. I took a whiff but it was odorless. Then one of the black-masked guards took it out of my hands. I turned a corner to find a man, in a fit of insanity, walking on the furniture and pulling black cloths off dozens of clocks. I continued to walk around and stumbled into a murder scene. A man suffocated another man with a pillow, there were feathers everywhere. The people watching ran behind the murderer, but I was more interested in the body. I took the pillow off his face and picked the feathers off of him. I waited for him to wake up, but he stayed in character. I wondered into a large room surrounded by French doors with a bath tube filled with bloody water. A bed stands in the corner surrounded by trunks filled with dirt. I walked through the French doors out into ruins of an ancient city. A maze of crumbling stone walls encasing large standing statues and falling columns. Soon after, I found a restaurant that smelled like salt and pepper. On the shelves were at least twenty crosses made of spoons and forks in piles of salt. There is a large heap of salt in the back of the restaurant with a stuffed deer standing in it.
After that, I stumbled into a cobblestone alleyway with small shops where I found my friends. They were closely following the story line of the play. I wondered off into the little shops. There is a funeral parlor where I found an album of the dead, a tailor shop, a photography lab with jars of preserved animals, and a candy shop. I ran down a long narrow dark hallway and ended up in what looked like a grave yard. There were piles of dirt and tiny white crosses with an empty baby carriage. This path lead into a ballroom full of chairs stacked in spheres. I’m sure I was on the fourth floor by this point. I saw children's‘ rooms, headless floating dolls, studies, doctor’s offices. There is a room full of boxes with a pool table, a room of crates with lights in them, old telephones booths that still work. I found a taxidermy shop, an apothecary's lab, and a room of skeletons in glass cases. I went up a set of stairs and found myself in what looked like an orphanage. A room of small beds and a room of bathtubs fill the fifth floor. I also found the bathrooms too, or what I thought were bathrooms. In the room of bathtubs, a nurse jumped out the window. Following her brought me to a labyrinth of bare trees encircling a stuffed goat. I opened every door, went down every hallway, and opened very drawer and cabinet. I came to an iron door which led into a office with a pentagram carved in the table. The next room filled with hanging stuffed birds and green lockers. I found dead birds every where.
I stepped through a curtain and I was suddenly back in the lounge some how. This was very disorienting. I went to the bar and told them it was my birthday and they gave me absinthe on the house. I sat and listened to the band and a couple of amazing singers. I talked to the host for a while and he gave me a tip. He told me to go up to the 4th floor at 9:28pm and to follow the music. One of my friends appeared from a different curtain and equally disoriented. I told her about the tip, and we ran upstairs. We followed the music into the room of boxes where we found my other friend. A possessed man was tossing himself all over the room. A woman came out of no where and shoved him in a box. I opened the box and he hit my hand. She pulled him out of the box and they were all over each other. They ran into the chair-filled ballroom where two men and two women conducted a ritualistic sacrifice. There were strobe lights and techno music. They put a rams head on one man and covered him in blood. Then there was the birth of a demon child. They all ran down stairs into room of Christmas trees, where there is a table set up with all of the characters in a last super scene. All of the story lines come together. The performers moved in slow motion for this last scene. They drink and then hang one of the men. The room goes dark and we are guided back to the stairs which lead us back to the bar some how.
This was an amazing and unique experience. It is best to explore the hotel alone and periodically meet your friends back at the bar.
-NR
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Thursday, September 22, 2011
