TWO NIGHTS. Halloween weekend, October 30 to November 1, in a small town in the American West that you will not find named anywhere on this site.
THE HISTORY IS REAL. The town is real. The hotel is real, and old, and has been collecting stories for longer than anyone alive can verify — some of which the staff will only tell you after the second drink. Everything that happens over the weekend is built on documented history: real events, real records, real names. We adjust the truth for play, but we invent as little as possible. The frightening parts are frightening because they happened.
TWO DINNERS BY CANDLELIGHT. You'll dine twice, once at a single long table, with around three dozen people you've never met. You'll be given reasons to distrust some of them.
GAMES AND GHOSTS. There are games with real stakes, a score kept all weekend, and a winner. There's a town that seems, at times, to be participating — pay attention to what the locals won't say directly. There's a letter that reaches your home before you've packed a bag. And there are rooms in the hotel where things have been reported — a bed shaking at three in the morning, a knocking from inside a bathtub — that nobody has explained, including us.
WE KEEP YOU IN THE DARK. We tell you almost nothing in advance, and that's design, not coyness. Every returning guest says the same thing: the not-knowing is the experience. You'll be told enough to arrive, enough to dress, enough to get through it. The rest reaches you piece by piece, and by Saturday night you'll understand what you've been part of — including the number thirty-nine, which is not arbitrary, and which we won't explain here.
YOU ARE SAFE. The entire time. Nothing touches you without your consent, nothing follows you home, and anyone who wants out can walk out — the bar stays open and so do the doors. We are strict about the boundaries precisely so that everything inside them can feel boundless. You will spend much of the weekend convinced something has gone wrong. Nothing will have.
THERE IS DAYLIGHT TOO. Saturday afternoon comes with wine. Sunday morning is for coming back down: a sound bath, pastries, coffee, and the final scores read aloud.
HOW WE GOT HERE. For years, this weekend didn't exist. Not publicly. It ran once a year, privately, for a small circle of people, in a different town each time. No photos were posted. No reviews were written. Guests were asked to keep it to themselves and mostly they did — but people talk, and word traveled the way it always does, one dinner party at a time, until the waiting list outgrew the event. This year, for the first time, we're letting strangers in.
IS THIS FOR YOU? Come if you like mysteries, or being frightened in good company, or weekends you can't summarize afterward. Stay home if you need everything explained, or if you're the kind of person who reads the last page first.
Most people who find this page will close it and go on with their lives. A few won't.
For them, we keep a place at the table.