Document text
Narrow escape Zayanna Toler, left, Shahar Miles and Kina Hill work their way Wednesday through a mystery at Baffled Escape Rooms at Rogue Valley Mall. [Mail Tribune / Jamie Lusch] Monday Oct 16, 2017 at 12:01 AM Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune Herded into a dark bedroom with a pair of old twin beds, dozens of creepy dolls and diary entries that offered clues to the demise of a dead twin girl, two Medford moms and five teen girls admitted to being mildly creeped out when the lights flipped off inside one of three new “escape rooms” hosted by Baffled Escape Rooms at Rogue Valley Mall. The Dollhouse room — alongside the Saving Wonderland and Kidnapped rooms — was a good fit for Medford moms Kina Hill and Krista Schasteen, who were focused on helping the five girls escape the Dollhouse in less than 60 minutes. “We finished by the skin of our teeth!” Hill said at the end, noting that one of her daughters waited outside to avoid the dozens of haunted-looking dolls and grinning clowns. “It was full of more surprises than I anticipated.” Within minutes of entering the room, the backstory was provided to the group by a voice coming from overhead, with the sound of slamming doors and laughing children in the background. Their job was to collect a series of clues, piece them together and offer a winning answer in hopes of surviving the haunted dollhouse. Informed that they’d inherited an old mansion from a long-lost aunt they didn’t even know they had, the group was told their friends had decided to spend the night and explore the old estate. What’s more, they’d opted to “check out the creepy upstairs bedroom!” A twist to the story was that aunt Agatha wasn’t an only child. A twin sister, Christine, had died unexpectedly during childhood. While they attempted to escape the room, the voice informed them that one twin would offer help while the other would vie for a “forever” playdate. The girls huddled together, marveling at scary dolls and eerie furniture as Keith Zimmerli, owner of Baffled Escape Rooms, wished them luck, offered a few pointers and smiled as he set a timer. Anything not nailed down, he noted, could be a clue. For 57 of their 60 allotted minutes, the group rounded up clues, debating and frantically searching for answers, and they were greeted by a handful of scary “surprises” that garnered panicked outbursts. The eerie-looking dolls and grinning clowns offered spontaneous laughter while nursery rhymes played unexpectedly. After the group pieced together more than a dozen clues, including diary entries, black lights and a handful of puzzles, they escaped with three minutes to spare. Shahar Miles of Medford said she enjoyed the puzzles and the complexity of the clues. The dolls? Not so much. “I like how some of them seemed really simple, but a lot of thought was put into them. Everything really correlated with the story and the theme. Everything screamed ‘creepy dollhouse,’ ” said the 13-year-old. “The dolls made it really scary, which made it harder to focus on what we were doing.” Mckenna Cook, 14, said the creepy songs and dolls that made noises fit the theme of the escape room. “It really felt like we were in a haunted house,” she said. “The dolls … they just made it super scary.” Zimmerli said the three rooms at the mall, open since Sept. 29, have been well received and were a nice addition to two rooms opened more than a year ago at the Jackson County Sports Park in White City. Having five rooms between the two locations, Zimmerli said, should keep fans busy for quite some time. At the sports park, visitors can choose between rooms themed DaVinci’s Secret and Dragon’s Lair. At the mall, the Kidnapped room features a creepy warehouse with a bomb that must be deactivated, while Saving Wonderland involves a secret garden, a white rabbit and lots of black light. Thrilled to have escaped the dollhouse, Katelyn Schasteen, 14, said she was impressed with how complex the escape room proved to be. “I couldn’t believe how scary they made it. I also thought it was going to be way more simple to figure out. I thought, ‘It’s the mall, it couldn’t be that frustrating!’ ” Schasteen said. “But the dolls really scared me, and it was really, really fun to try and get through. It really looks like a bedroom that has a dead twin. It was fun to try and solve the clues with creepy clowns and dolls everywhere watching us do it.” Baffled Escape Rooms is open daily from 2:30 p.m. until the mall closes. A series of special Halloween bookings are planned, with live actors inside the rooms. Prices range from $16 to $28. For details, see http://baffledescaperooms.com/ — Reach freelance writer Buffy Pollock at [email protected]