JFI's The Willows - Recap & Reflections
(Found this as my oldest draft from 2018 😅😵💫🫠. Posting to clear it out! I'm assuming I wanted to turn some of the bullet points into more wall of text stuff before posting, but oh well! It's good enough!)
Original Event Date: 6/22/2017
I’m a bit late, but I want to recap this memorable experience that changed my life. (Actually, I incorrectly remembered having posted something only to discover that I never even made it to the draft.)
I’ll try and keep the tense consistent, but I may be reliving the memories in my head while writing this and accidentally switch tenses without realizing it. D: Also, please try and keep a suspension of disbelief all the while so I don’t have to add an overabundance of quotation marks indicating that such and such activity wasn’t really happening. Also also, since it’s been over a year since I participated in this wonderful event, I acknowledge that there may be errors and plot holes in my memory at this point! I hope it’s at least 90% accurate!
Being me, I arrived almost 15 minutes past the specified arrival time. (It’s not that I don’t take ETD times seriously; it’s that I’m terrible at judging how much time I need to actually meet an ETD.) Luckily, since they were shepherding participants from Point A to Point B via large passenger van, I arrived in time to silently catch my breath, silently sweat, and silently mouth apologies to my sister just as the second of two van trips was about to begin loading. Phew. Off on a blindfolded-van ride we went!
After a short and tense ride that set the mood at low-grade “heavy feeling in the pit of your stomach”, we pulled up to a magnificently eerie-looking house and grounds. We were greeted at the door by Lindsay, the butler (exceedingly polite, formal, and reserved but with a creepy feeling of secrets), and (Uncle) Ricky (genial and joking...which in a horror setting read as strange), just returned from picking up last minute groceries for the dinner.
Paul Anka’s Put Your Head On My Shoulder was playing subtly/quietly/gently in the background; the scratchy-sounding music invoked a sense of being in a time and place other than our own.
My sister had been given a tip to ask for the restroom because it gave us a bit of extra exploration time before the action proper. We were directed to a little restroom at the end of the hall and were treated to 1. an actual chance to use the restroom and 2. mysteries already beginning in the form of various photographs strewn on the floor of macabre/unidentifiable subjects and ominous messages written upon the photographs. Afterwards, we were directed upstairs to put our bags down and chanced upon a half-dressed Conrad (eccentric and boyish with a welcoming charm). He wasn’t aware that he was almost indecent and needed reminding that he wasn’t yet fully ready for company.
Although it seemed that Conrad couldn’t help but try and draw us into his little world, Lindsay seemed to sense that we were wandering about and came upstairs to invite us to drinks in the parlor. There, rather than being introduced, we had to introduce ourselves to an inebriated, catty, and distraught woman in black, Claudia, who turned out to be the Jonathan's widow, who we were beginning to realize would be a focal person that evening.
Dinner was weird af-I was terrified of Rosemary, who was sitting three or four seats away from me but seemed to have a sweeping gaze that caused many a deer-in-headlights moments when I bravely tried to stare back. I specifically remember her asking the question (I can’t remember if I was the questionee) at one point: “Would you slap your own mother?” There was also an incredibly strange moment when Angela and Conrad appeared to freeze into a trance that was noticed but ignored by Rosemary until some trigger released them. At this point, I can’t quite remember if it was a sound, phrase, bell, ?? At some point, Uncle Ricky disappeared but I hadn’t noticed bc he was on the other side of the long table. That’s why I didn’t make any connection when a “new” person joined the room (sparkly blue dress with a stocking over their face) until someone near me pointed out that it was Uncle Ricky in disguise. He was pretending to be his own absent wife...we never got confirmation on her absence/fate.....even though I tried to ask Conrad, who would not utter a word and was in terrible fear of this person.
When dinner was ending, “Uncle Ricky as his wife” beckoned to me to follow. We went to that same bathroom I visited at the start of it all. She gestured to me to unzip her dress, which I helped her with. She started to remove her clothing and indicated that I should look around the restroom. I again noticed the photographs and was trying to piece together whether they were messages from Uncle Ricky’s wife and the grim truth was that she had been murdered?! When Uncle Ricky was once again standing before me, he seemed confused as to why I was there with him. He took my stammered answer of “uh uh *panicked look*” as it was and started to put himself back together. He told me a story of how when they were young, he and Rosemary had a strange dynamic; he recalled a time when she had been wearing fishnets/stockings and he had hugged her only to get “excited”, to which she was harshly scornful and derided him for it. I think he mentioned he was 7/8 and his sister was much older and could I believe how she treated him even at that age. Ricky finished changing and brought me to the library to join Rosemary and a handful of other guests. I never did figure out if there was more to the scene than just adding character development and deepening the mysteries.
-Library-played a very innocent->dark version of Simon Says. There is a commotion after which we all rushed out. Deidre had dropped and broken a plate. Let slip that Rosemary was her mother. BIG GASP.
-Back to library but only Conrad was there. He led us to secret notes and poems from Jonathan to him. References to incestuous feelings/actions and impending suicide. Caught by...Ricky?...Conrad extended his hands to me and one other woman to slip out a side door rather than be corralled back to the main group.
-Porch swing swaying as if just vacated
-Up a back staircase and through a hallway of slamming doors - very Haunted Mansion-esque but still scared me silly and I grabbed the hand of the stranger I was with.
-Rushed us to hide under the bed together while he hid somewhere else in the room. Claudia tromped in with another person and went to the restroom. Heard water running then a loud sound and a “what the fuck!” before somebody went running out (the guest). Some moments later, Claudia walked out as well.
-Looked out the window and Conrad was doing a signal/creepy dance with Deidre?
-Tried to run away out another door only to come face to face with a hooded figure-Jonathan!
- Was instructed to play dead next to the corpse-was convinced it would move but a clear-headed thought managed to pierce the foggy veil of unrealness that had taken hold of me...and I thought that if this person hadn’t moved in the 30+ minutes we had been there, then they were either realllyyy good at staying motionless or very likely...the corpse was not actually a person waiting to jumpscare me. Lindsay came in and made some creepy comment about it being a shame that we were all dead?!?!?!?!>?!>#? I think he touched my leg?!?!?!?! But then I think Conrad couldn’t contain himself and gave us all away. Lindsay told us it was time and we all had to join them downstairs....
-Visceral look of terror on his face - as if a horrible terrible no good fate was about to befall us all :( Led down to the parlor all the while Put Your Head On My Shoulder is now BLARING. Did as we were bid and danced slowly with my head on Conrad’s shoulder and tried to process everything that had led up to that point.
-Blindfolded and walked around for a while. After the blindfolds came off and the lights turned back on...the family was arraigned on the staircase with paper bags over the heads...and Jonathan was behind them all...They removed their bags and they all had dental equipment spreading their mouths into wide smile-like grimaces.
-New Jonathan to be picked. We were all rushed out the door with maybe well-wishes? And Lindsay continued to stand at the front door until it closed for good. We waited for the van and all spluttered in disbelief/worry/confusion/adrenaline. After being returned to Point A, we all excitedly swapped stories while eagerly awaiting the return of the guest chosen as New Jonathan. We waited a good 20 minutes or so and he never returned, so we slipped away into the dark in ones and twos.
-Being my very first immersive experience, it was AMAZINGG and I have been on board ever since. If I could, I would be constantly doing immersive experiences. Like the high I get from escape rooms and karaoke.
-There aren’t enough articles or blog posts about why old-timey music is SO effective at setting an appropriately eerie mood. Record hisses and pops seem to unsettle and feel equally insidious as white noise.
-I didn’t get to interact AT ALL with Angela or Deidre?!
-Didn’t realize how easy it is to feel a connection with a character especially when given flesh and blood in front of you. Already empathize with characters in traditional media, but to be able to touch the characters in real life makes them FEEL (literally) real. It took me a while to realize that I hadn’t gotten to care for the real actors so much as the characters themselves. When the actors give such powerful performances, it can be hard for me (at least me...won’t generalize for others) to separate actor from character.
-Fully sensory experience - interestingly, listening to the song can still bring back sense memory of that night. Being led blindly while lots of things are happening around me seems to be a very scary thing to me as I was terrified and couldn’t stop shaking. (This was also a very frightening element for me of Alone: An Existential Haunting.)
-Did after so long finally finally meet someone who had been chosen as New Jonathan. Woot. No spoilers about that here because it happens to such a select few guests and, as such, is a rich treasure of a grand finale that I’d hate to reveal something other than my own experience because I feel I haven’t earned that right (yet).
