The weirdest, trippiest haunted house I’ve ever experienced stands in an old bowling alley in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that was purchased byGeorge R.R. Martin and transformed into an ambitious interactive art display/multi-dimensional non-linear mystery narrative/jungle gym/children’s museum.
Inside, my family and I meet creatures from another dimension, chat one-on-one with a multiversal self-help guru and harass overbearing representatives of “The Charter” as they slowly melt down “Footloose”-style.
It’s Meow Wolf’s “House of Halloween,” taking place this fall inside the “House of Eternal Return.”
Arts collective Meow Wolf creates “immersive, multimedia experiences that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of storytelling.” Its first permanent home opened in March with the backing of “Game of Thrones” mastermind Martin, a major benefactor of the arts in Santa Fe.
The author purchased the abandoned Silva Lanes bowling alley and had construction crews gut the building before letting more than 150 artists take over to create “House of Eternal Return,” a permanent exhibit that’s sort of like an epic interactive work of speculative science fiction.
“I promise you, you’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Martin wrote in a blog post at the exhibit’s opening. “Our hope is that Meow Wolf and the House of Eternal Return will be one of Santa Fe’s premiere attractions for many, many years to come.”
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So far, the crowds have come as Martin hoped — over 5,000 on opening weekend and thousands more since. After just a few months, the exhibit had to be temporarily shut down for a few days so repairs could be made due to the high volume of traffic through what’s basically a 20,000-square-foot, $2.7 million work of immersive art.
If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. It’s hard to grasp without experiencing it multiple times.The sci-fi story you enter when you pass through the doors into the exhibit deals with a family that’s figured out how to travel between alternate universes. You can walk around the family’s house; sift through their books, papers and diaries; watch old home movies; and sneak through secret passages that transport you, apparently, to those other universes. That’s the part where it gets trippy, with rooms reminiscent of a 1920s cartoon or a treehouse filled with multi-color eyeballs or the inside of a musical mammoth ribcage.
Meow Wolf sells annual passes for families to return and keep exploring. Even then, there’s probably still more to unravel. Easter eggs are everywhere, like the tiny stuffed hamster in a small corner display that’s a big part of the story, and so are hints stuffed into the mailbox, toilet bowl and even on the dining room ceiling. You can also find clues online, a movie is reportedly in the works and special events like the “House of Halloween” also provide an opportunity to get extra pieces to the puzzle.
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Source: CNET