Having spent most of my teenage years at boarding school, where we would have regular “scary movie nights,” engage in prank wars, and swap ghost stories about the hundred-year-old boarding house we all lived in, I like to think I’m uniquely qualified to judge scary experiences. So, when the opportunity arose to immerse myself in two of Darkfield Realscape Productions’ terrifyingly innovative experiences, I eagerly signed up. With a reputation for blending technology with theatrical storytelling, Realscape Productions is known for pushing boundaries, and they certainly didn’t disappoint.
About Realscape productions
Realscape Productions is a Melbourne-based company that specialises in tech-infused, experiential productions designed to captivate, confuse, and occasionally make you regret your life choices. Led by Amy Johnson and Nathan Alexander, their work includes DARKFIELD’s mind-bending projects, the Australian run of the West End’s Ghost Stories, the award-winning Mummy’s Milk, and the sci-fi dance phenomenon Future Cargo by Requardt & Rosenberg.
Their mission? To ignite imagination and transport audiences beyond traditional theatre spaces into immersive realms that feel unsettlingly real.
Finishing up it’s season in Melbourne the next stop for these incredibly immersive experiences is Adelaide.
Seance: A Journey into the darkness
Stepping inside a transformed shipping container, I took my seat, but comfort was never an option. SÉANCE plunges participants into pitch-black darkness, relying on binaural 360-degree sound to create a reality-bending experience. This 20-minute journey isn’t about cheap jump scares. It plays on the psychology of belief, suggestion, and the fine line between perception and reality.
At first, I was hyper-aware of my surroundings—every breath, every rustle. Then the medium’s voice filled the space, guiding us into a shared experience of conjuring the unknown. The room felt alive. Light bulbs shattered, metal groaned, and a creeping sense of presence built with each passing second. The table vibrated. My ears rang. Goosebumps spread over my arms as I gripped my friend’s hand so tightly that I couldn’t imagine doing the experience solo. And remember…this was all in pitch darkness. We could not see a single thing.
At one moment, amidst the shrieks, there was a silence so deep it felt even more terrifying than the screams. I could swear I felt someone whispering directly into my ear, and the sensation of someone sitting right next to me was downright chilling. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it. I wasn’t sure if I was experiencing a paranormal event or just a high-stakes ASMR session gone rogue.
As someone who relies on closed captions, I was initially worried about missing crucial moments. However, aside from one misheard instruction (“take your hands off the table” instead of “who took their hands off”), I followed everything seamlessly. The experience was so immersive that despite the darkness, my eyes were clenched shut. Reality was no longer a safe space.
Do you believe? By the end of SÉANCE, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Flight: A mind-boggling trip through time and space
If SÉANCE was psychological horror, FLIGHT was like hopping onto a plane, only to find out that reality has lost your luggage and decided to take a holiday without you. Again, seated in a pitch-black shipping container, we were instructed to remain seated, stow our belongings, and prepare for a journey unlike any other. But this wasn’t about destination—it was about dimensions.
Inspired by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, FLIGHT doesn’t just simulate turbulence; it simulates the unsettling possibility that in some universe, somewhere, you made a slightly better life choice than sitting in a dark box questioning existence.
At one point, an announcement offered two chances to leave if needed—a hauntingly final “final call.” The feeling of movement, the crackling intercom, and the distant sounds of alternate realities made it feel like we were truly shifting between worlds. I could feel someone walking beside me, and the whispered voices were unnervingly close. Every moment felt like it was teetering between reality and something much, much stranger.
And then, the cat scream. A soundbite so unexpected and bizarre that I nearly jumped out of my seat. A nod to Schrödinger, obviously, but also an incredible reminder that reality—like any good story—has its twists. The experience was deeply immersive, playing tricks on my senses in ways I didn’t think possible.
The sound engineers of these two experiences did a fantastic job. I couldn’t believe how realistic the whole thing was. I swear I could almost feel the bubbles of a soft drink that was opened and passed to the non existent passenger sitting next to me. Something so real, and somehow doesn’t quite translate the same way in a POV horror game. Perhaps because in a video game, we have the safety of being behind a screen, where as, sitting in these shipping containers in pitch darkness…there was no escaping, no safety of being slightly removed behind a screen.
TLDR
Realscape Productions has mastered the art of immersive horror, crafting experiences that go beyond simple frights. Both SÉANCE and FLIGHT left me questioning not just my surroundings, but the very fabric of reality. They weren’t just terrifying—they were thought-provoking, laced with dark humour, and delightfully disorienting.
For those seeking an experience that blurs the line between performance and personal terror, I highly recommend stepping into the darkness. Just be warned: once you do, you might not return the same. (Or at least, not in this particular timeline.) And if there’s an alternate universe version of me that didn’t do FLIGHT? Yeah, she’s probably sleeping soundly at night.
10/10, would get psychologically wrecked again.
