Live a Scary Story in the Dark with ‘ETERNAL’ (The NoPro Review)
Darkfield Radio’s first solo show will find you hiding under your covers
Your mind can play tricks on you.
Everyone knows this. It’s what magicians and truly great storytellers rely on to draw you so deep into a fantasy that you can’t find your way back out. And that’s just the scrupulous people we could talk about.
When executed at the highest level this even works when we know exactly how the trick works.
Which brings us to Darkfield Radio’s ETERNAL.
You see, I knew that the sounds I heard under my covers were in my earbuds, but my mind — and my racing heart — thought otherwise. At times the impulses in my body brought me to the brink of throwing off the covers, opening my eyes, and ripping out the earbuds to prove to myself that I was, in fact, alone.
But before we get there, we must start at the beginning.
ETERNAL is the latest from Darkfield, whose work with binaural sound has thrilled and chilled audiences around the globe. Once known for inviting a score or so of audience members to communally experience their immersive soundscapes in cargo containers, the pivot from IRL to URL has found them adapting to more intimate conditions.
Darkfield Radio is their app-based series of immersive audio experiences. Unlike most other podplays, these are meant to be heard at a specific time and only once, via the app. Which means that while you are alone, or just with a partner, at home that there are some untold number of people other there in the dark experiencing the same things you do.
Which can be comforting, in a way, as terror is often best when shared.
For ETERNAL, Darkfield asks you to head to the bedroom, close the door — preferably locking it — and then lay down on the bed. You’re told to close your eyes, and even put something over them if you think you may be tempted to open them. I buried myself under the covers, pulling the sheets over my head to ward off the cold and maybe keep the monsters away.
Small luck there.
Inspired by the work of Bram Stoker, ETERNAL… well to say it tells a story isn’t quite right. No. ETERNAL puts a man in your room. Sometimes in your bed. The sheets rustling as he goes to get up and move about the rest of the room. Searching. Asking questions. Trying to recall the sequence of events that led to him wasting away in this very bed. Pale and gaunt. Next to you. Inside your mind, and assuring you that the sounds in the room are quite real. Even if they shouldn’t be.
Which is all fine and good to type out so someone can read them and say “Well, that sounds creepy.”
But you don’t understand. You can’t. Not unless you heard it. Heard someone walking on the landing above. Or is that the neighbors upstairs? Someone on the roof? The broken glass, is that the show, or…?
Darkfield’s skill with creating spatial audio landscapes is almost unnatural, and for much of the 20 minute duration of ETERNAL it is possible to get completely lost in the illusion, especially with a good pair of earbuds. The wild part is when your brain fills in details. Like responding to the sound of someone sitting on the bed with the perception that the weight has shifted. Or is that you making room? Why would you make room? What is it about our fundamental wiring that makes these audio driven hallucinations possible? That would cause us to make room for something that shouldn’t be in our bed?
This is not my first run in with Darkfield as a company. No, that would have been the promotional tour that supported Universal’s Invisible Man at the top of the year. One of the last pre-pandemic things I got to do this year. That was similarly thrilling in terms of execution, but the intimacy of Eternal takes things up to an entirely different plane of reality.
Honestly, I’m trying to avoid the hyperbole here, but I can’t.
This is the third offering on the Darkfield Radio app. The first two were intended for pairs, and as someone who is riding out the pandemic alone I admit I was jealous. ETERNAL definitely brought some “be careful what you wish for” vibes to the mix, as I wound up going to bed later that night than I originally intended. I was too worked up out by what happened while I was hiding under the covers.
The app itself is noteworthy as well, as the interface and notifications set-up is very, very good. It’s not only clear that some money and effort were spent on making the thing in the first place, but Darkfield has really thought through the user experience of getting into the show.
One down note: on my night the app servers had a glitch, with the show cycling to the “show’s over” screen at the very second it was supposed to originally start. The upside? Darkfield’s customer service was on it, responding to the form email I filled out quickly and getting the show back up and running within 15 minutes. That communication happened via email, so it’s a good thing I didn’t just sulkily throw myself into a few hours of CONTROL but stayed alert instead. In the future, perhaps there will be ways for the team to handle all of that through app notifications, but I’m not a coder so I probably shouldn’t speculate too loudly. He might hear.
Still: the team was on it so fast, and so cleanly, that my initial disappointment was a distant memory by the time I got back out of bed. Checked the windows. Without looking outside. Then the other doors. Took a moment to remind myself that everything I heard really was just in my head.
Despite what he told me.
Darkfield Radio’s ETERNAL is currently available in the UK & USA, and was originally presented as part of the Bram Stoker Festival. Tickets are £5.00/ $7.50, with shows currently booking on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through December 12, 2020 in the US and January 1, 2021 in the UK.
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