The Library is hosting another escape room, a new concept from JB Von Preysing combining riddles, mystery, and murder in a attempt to get out alive as you learn more about different authors throughout history.
The escape room is open for anyone to participate as of March 26. It will be open to students, faculty, and staff From this week until the end of the semester.
The escape room will be active until the end of the semester. anywhere between four and 20 people will be able to participate at a time.
The library hosts a yearly escape room in their art room over the library, where students have to escape from the room through various literary themes.
Last year’s escape room was a mash up of different acclaimed titles and characters within a dinner party, as they had to solve riddles involving the characters in order to escape a dinner party or die trying.
This semester is more author-centered, with three rooms centered around acclaimed and notable authors where players have to translate different codes and find poems in order to escape this murder mystery.
In order to escape, players will have to actually have to learn about these authors through reading brief descriptions about their lives and some of the accomplishments, while visiting various locations that center around specific authors.
“It’s called Literary Assassins. It’s a competitive educational escape room,” said JB Von Preysing seasonal public service assistant . “That means that not everyone will leave the room, but don’t worry. Everyone will get a special gift in case they don’t win.”
“We cover a lot of different writers, ranging from the gothic and romantic period, all the way up to the lost generation of the early 20th century,” said Von Preysing.
The escape rooms are a personal project for Von Preysing in order to increase student engagement in the library and hopefully make students more interested in actually reading and studying english. Basically every student worker pitched in at some point in order to complete the escape room. He and Danny Adams, evening recourse and public service assistant, helped with the actual planning and logistics of the room as a whole.
There was also help from both members of the football team and the members of Ferrum’s Theatre Arts program who helped with primarily props and will also help with running the escape room.
“It’s a library production that received assistance from different areas,” said Von Preysing.
“I am very proud of this escape room. This is the first one I have not had any creative process in, so watching JB really build it out with Danny’s help has been amazing,” said library director Rachel Walton. “Thank god someone else did it.”
Stanley Library attempts to host a different escape room every semester, creating it with the help of student volunteers as well as the directors of the library.
“If we do another one, for the fall, it would probably Leave No Trace again because it’s on a cycle every two years,” said Walton.
The escape room will run until the end of the semester. All students would have to do is talk to one of the library assistants in order to know when each game will begin.
