New on Oct. 22: Before you read this, here's the backstory on how the Vault of Souls came to be.
For two years, guests to the Vault of Souls had the chance to discover every nook and cranny as they wandered the rooms, looking for clues and learning the stories and subplots contained in the Vault. If you missed something the first year, you had a chance to delve deeper the second. Not so this year: They've completely revamped the storyline — and how you navigate it.
This year, the delightfully talented Scott Swenson and his staff of creatives have taken the soul of the Vault of Souls — an almost claustrophobic sense of psychological terror — and morphed it into something more interactive, if that's possible. Other than the location (a gorgeous old bank building with an actual vault) and the pre-show (elegantly ghoulish artists — a ghostly ballerina, a haunting couple in dancing, the creepiest mime ever — appear and disappear throughout the night) while you wait for The Tabulator to call you to one of four experiences (preselected by you when you buy the ticket) and sip on cocktails in the exquisitely cavernous, almost-all-white lobby.
Those experiences are part Sleep No More, part escape room — except neither of those things really does justice to the entire experience. In years past, you would wander through different live plays, silently seeking clues while wearing a creepy anonymous white mask. You could spend as much time as you liked anywhere in the Vault, but once you left you couldn't return. This go-round, you get to choose your experience, and to leave the experience you must complete your mission: to find a way to release the soul of the ghost trapped inside the rooms. Yes, rooms — the individual experiences aren't necessarily limited to one room. How do you complete your mission? You must solve a series of puzzles. Gone are the masks and the vow of silence, and each small group heads into the vault with a bank teller who may or may not channel the spirit of the soul wishing for release. Your teller will offer as much or as little help as you need to find the clues to release the soul.
"We want everyone to have a good experience," Swenson said.
And we did.
I shied away from The Child, the experience where John Roberts waits. John Roberts, you see, died as a child for reasons only described as mysterious, and, for whatever reason, his parents stored his soul in the vault for safekeeping (as one does) — but, like all the other souls wanting release, after 95 years in the "paranormal purgatory" (although I dearly wish I'd written that phrase, that's actually what they call it), the souls become the property of The Exchange National Bank. So, this young dead child is looking for playmates to play with him and release him. It's also the room with the decaying child/doll, which is a step further than I'd like my terror to go (I think I played The Seventh Guest one too many times in the '90s).
The Dominatrix mission — which none of us experienced — looks intriguing; although it immediately evokes images of haunted S&M.
We had hoped to release The Doctor's soul. Dr. Truth — a practitioner of what they call "dark psychology" — is trapped reliving his own dark practices. However, it sold out for the night we experienced the Vault of Souls' new format. Fast. Apparently, Dr. Truth is fascinating, and, according to others who experienced that particular room, also quite attractive.
And so we released the soul of Mr. Plutus, the bank guard. His soul resides alongside some of the coolest of the bank's physical objects, and I was immediately struck by how much this option felt like where Indiana Jones' soul might wait for final judgment. You can pick up and touch anything you like, but you may not disassemble or remove anything, lest you anger the soul you're trying to help — or any of the other wandering souls. (And about that: As you go through your mission, you will see no other living creatures, except for your teller. You will run across the odd soul. Talk to one of them, or in any way react to them, and your teller may think you're seeing things.)
As for the puzzle, even without the creepy dead baby/doll room experience of John Roberts, our experience reminded me a great deal of The Seventh Guest, actually, only an immersive version: We had to solve the puzzles in one room to get to the next, and there was a persistent sense of foreboding about what was going to happen next. While I knew there was no real danger, the experience does unnerve.
The teller perfectly blended her craft with the atmosphere and created the exact type of experience we wanted. When we struggled with a clue and she offered help the first time, we welcomed it. The second time, my fiancé mumbled (in his delightful "cranky boat captain" way), "We're being led too much." She either heard him or sensed that we didn't want much help, and she backed off, which allowed us to solve the puzzles and make our own discoveries.
Here's where we made our mistake: We only made reservations for one room, and, even though our group consisted of three people, we finished in 12 minutes (they set a soft 20-minute limit). Since the evening cost half of what it did last year, we should have booked two experiences. While I'd like to tell you to book one experience at the start of the evening (7:30 p.m.) and one at the end, the two remaining weekends are close to sold out, so they're asking folks not to do that.
I would suggest you book before the after-dinner crowds arrive, because the longer the night goes on, the more, er, lubricated people are when they get down the solve the puzzle, and the longer it takes them. Despite the best efforts of the Vault tellers and organizers to avoid running behind, we actually waited over an hour (we had an 8:45 p.m. check-in) because, as the creepy, giggling elevator operator explained to us, "people are drunnnnnnnnk." Get there early and avoid that. The pre-show dancers, musicians, haunted buskers and vibe delighted us, but even with four experiences running simultaneously, it's hard to keep to a schedule when people don't want to leave the experience.
If you can't get an early booking, ask them if your experience is running behind when you check in, and by how much. If there's a significant wait, perhaps pop next door to the Gin Joint, which has softly opened as an all-the-time restaurant and bar (as opposed to its former incarnation as an annual Vault of Souls-only after-party experience), and if the block of Italian white cheddar cheese they allowed us to sample while waiting to go down to the Vault is any indication, the food will make the wait more enjoyable.
After you release your soul, your teller will take you upstairs, where you can share a drink with friends, watch the aerialist, mingle with spirits and meet the soul who, thanks to you, has escaped spending eternity in a bank vault.
The Vault of Souls
611 N. Franklin St., Tampa.
Through Oct. 28: 7:30 p.m.-11:15 (final release puzzle departs)
$50 per room
