We can’t reveal all the elements of our escape room before the program starts, but here’s a sneak peek at our “Escape from Frankenstein’s Lab!” on Tuesday, October 9.  There are six half-hour sessions to choose from between 1-4 PM that day.  Tweens and teens in grades 4-12 are welcome to register for the session they’d like.  Call (812) 949-3528 or visit our event calendar to do so.

A handy resource in any escape room creator’s tool kit are ultraviolet flashlights. Purchase a set of those and some UV markers and you can write hidden messages that can only be seen when the light shines on them.  Lock those away in a locked box with a combination lock and you’ve already got one component of your puzzle created.

We haven’t used our UV flashlights since last fall, during our Egyptian-themed escape room.  The trouble with using them again is that this particular escape room is based off of Frankenstein’s lab in the late 1700s, and while certain liberties will be taken and some suspension of disbelief is required, this would require making the UV flashlight look like something that could be invented by Dr. Frankenstein in his time period – a steampunk version – or the 18th century equivalent.

So I turned a UV flashlight into Dr. Frankenstein’s crystalline spyglass.  We purchased a cheap spyglass as a prop for the Lemony Snicket escape room last spring.  After I took out a layer of the spyglass the flashlight fit inside fairly well and it was only a matter of extending the button through the end of the spyglass, which was done simply enough using a pencil and some duct tape, after which I re-glued the end of the spyglass over the new button.

Now that I have a functional and old-looking UV flashlight, the next step is to draw up some blueprints to add to the atmosphere.  I printed a parchment background on regular paper and then sketched out a design with a permanent marker (if you wanted to be really authentic, dyed paper and a quill and ink would be best).  The supposition is that – since the device can’t run off of electricity – it is instead powered by a rare crystal found in the Swiss Alps.  We hope you’ll visit the library on October 9 to use the crystalline spyglass and solve the other puzzles in our “Escape from Frankenstein’s Lab!”