Eternal – a hair raising, body tingling, audio experience that’ll have you sleeping on the couch tonight.
From the creators of unique sensory deprivation experiences, Séance and Flight, comes Eternal, a truly innovative way to scare the absolute shit out of you from the comfort of your own bedroom.
Eternal is a live event hosted from the Darkfield Radio app with simple instructions: go to your bedroom, close the door, dim the lights and lay down on the right side of your bed. Headphones essential for optimum sound and effect.
I must admit, I was a little scared, and a little bit excited.
With five minutes to starting time, I said goodnight to my housemates and pottered to my room to set the scene. Lacking a light dimmer, I did a thrifty spot of redecorating with a bedside lamp and an old scarf before plugging my headphones in, laying on the right side of my bed and pressing play.
A timer counted down to the event and I braced myself for some kind of alarming noise but none came. Instead, I was welcomed by a computerised female voice. The voice checked my audio, preparing me as if for a space mission before giving me a last chance to back out of whatever laid ahead. Naively, I decided to stick it out so I shut my eyes and hoped for the best.
“You have been chosen and we thank you for you sacrifice. In return we offer you the opportunity of morality”.
Oh dear, here we go…
…I hear birds and footsteps, door closing, and papers shuffling. The noises are around me, 360 degrees and the scene is a jumble in my head before I get my bearings. A character emerges; he seems a little anxious, pacing and self-narrating his movements in the room. He wants to talk to me about the “strange noises in the house”. Layers of sound dance around me while a ticking clock stays constant. The sharp rap of knuckles on wood suddenly enters my right ear making my body jolt in its assigned position on the right side of my bed. The door opens with a creak and a figure appears at the end of my bed. The dark figure moves over me, the sound of its movement is heavy and I desperately want to open my eyes. The loud whisper in my left ear is hot – too close. My skin crawls. The left side of my bed is no longer empty…
Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this surround sound audio thriller challenges the audience, playing on everyday fears of strange noises in the night, monsters under your bed and strangers lingering in the shadows. The story cleverly weaves in the prospect of immortality. Given the option of eternal life, would you take it? What would you do to live forever? This experience plays on your senses in a way that is mystical and energizing at times, but mostly creepy and unsettling – I loved it.
Eternal is the third installation of the immersive at-home audio experiences on Darkfield Radio produced in Australia by Melbourne-based company Realscape Productions using 360 binaural audio technology. Following the success of “multiplayer” Visitors and Double, each set in a different room of your house, Eternal is a solo experience being launched on 3 December 20202. Darkfield Artistic Directors Glen Neath and David Rosenberg admit, “with the launch of Eternal we hope we’ve managed to unsettle you in most of the rooms in your house “. Well, they certainly achieved that!
This is the perfect experience for anyone who isn’t quite ready to rejoin the physical world after the ‘Great Isolation’ of 2020 and anyone who is looking for new ways to get freaky in the bedroom. Jokes aside, this is seriously good, clean, heart pumping, entertainment that’ll awaken your senses and leave you wanting more.
Cancel your night out and check out the whole trilogy.
ETERNAL runs every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 9:30pm AEDT and 9:30pm AWST.
VISITORS runs on the same days at 9pm AEDT and 9pm AWST, and DOUBLE runs just before at 8:30pm AEDT and 8:30pm AWST.
Recommended for 14 years and older.
ETERNAL costs $11.40 per person.
Tickets to ETERNAL, VISITORS and DOUBLE are available at darkfield.com.au/radio.
