The Young and The Restless | Reality warped in pitch darkness

With warnings that it might not be suitable for people with neck and back injuries or heart conditions, or those who are claustrophobic or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, among others, I had questioned why I couldn’t just ignore I’d ever seen promotion for it.

I couldn’t shake the temptation (well done, marketing geniuses) and, in the end, FOMO got the better of me.

I consulted the kids before booking, just in case their response was a flat-out no, and was met with noncommittal yesses, conditional to me explaining further.

So, I did the best I could to gently persuade them without knowing exactly what it was myself.

The website says of the installation that it “is an unsettling journey in complete darkness, using Darkfield signature 360-degree sound design inside a custom-built shipping container”.

It continues: “Strange worlds unfold” with the use of “sensory effects and striking sets to place you in the middle of intense narratives that will leave you questioning reality.”

Revealing its secrets in a blow-by-blow description now makes no difference, given the season for both Darkfield’s Flight and Séance (also inside a neighbouring shipping crate) ended at the weekend, to no doubt be replaced by new offerings.

So, we arrived, scanned our ‘boarding passes’ and entered the shipping crate.

Inside, it looked just like the interior of an aeroplane.

We fastened our seatbelts, fitted a headset, read the safety cards inside the seats’ pockets and watched a kind of spooky vintage-looking pre-flight video that kept subtly glitching.

The air hostess talking on screen switched briefly between conversations and outfits, setting our confusion in motion.

Then, we were warned the lights would be lowered for ‘take-off’.

It was pitch black. Kind of stuffy. There were subtle vibrations.

Through our headsets we heard scurrying, whispers, distant phone tones that had us questioning whether it was part of the experience or if there was a guest there who hadn’t listened properly to the instructions when we’d been told to switch our devices off.

There was a racket.

Then there was calm.

Like the racket hadn’t just happened.

The captain told us in his dulcet tones that there “are several realities in which this plane lands safely”.

In not so many words, he (or the recording) told us if we crashed and all died, we wouldn’t be aware of it anyway. We’d just emerge in a different reality.

I’m not gonna lie, he almost had me at peace with accepting my own impending death, whenever that might come.

The air hostesses’ voices grew ruder; the overlapping dialogue in our headsets more confusing.

Then a voice so close whispered in my left ear and I got chills, certain someone was about to touch me.

I leaned away from the voice.

Then someone whispered in my right ear.

I had to remind myself that this wasn’t reality; it was a simulation designed to bend my mind.

I took a quick mental break to ignore the theatrics and bring myself back to Earth.

That’s when my own thoughts started to betray me.

With slight paranoia, I wondered that if a crazed guest had entered the crate with us and started panicking and swinging, would we even realise we were in real danger or believe it was all part of the experience.

Shying away from those somewhat scarier thoughts, I refocused on the simulation for its remainder.

The whole experience lasted just 22 dizzying minutes, but felt like a hallucination without a hallucinogenic.

At the risk of sounding like a stoner, it was trippy, man.

The kids and I looked at each other a little perplexed when the lights were raised.

Their expressions screamed, ‘What the hell was that?’, but no-one was too visibly shaken.

We emerged from the dark ‘plane’ into the bright afternoon sun of a summer afternoon in Melbourne and again I questioned myself.

Maybe I shouldn’t have booked the red-eye for our next real-life flight.

Where the sky (and the plane) will be dark and we’ll hover somewhere between our dreams and reality as our sleep is broken for hours throughout the night.

So long as no-one whispers eerily in our ears, we should be right.

I did have a little laugh, however, at the irony of being warned to tread carefully if you have PTSD and then being given a solid dose of it anyway, offering the very definition of ‘getting more than you bargained for’.

A take-home souvenir for free, if you will.

Regardless, I’d dare to enter again.