Unforgettable Escape Room Moments #1: The Hug of Doom
- mehmet akif bahadır
- Sep 20, 2025
- 3 min read
Weekend Bite: Every weekend, we’ll share a real story from our escape room adventures—short, fun, and just the right size for a weekend read.
Before opening my own escape room, I spent three years working as a manager at Junkyard Escape, the very place where I first discovered my passion for this industry. It was during those years that I experienced one of the funniest (and most unexpected) moments of my escape room career.
The game was called Berserk Hotel. My role was to enter the room as a live actor at a specific point in the story. The scene was designed to be eerie but brief:
The lights cut out, plunging the players into total darkness.
Dressed in a long black cloak and a ghostly white mask, I would silently slip into the game space.
I carried a remote control to trigger a strobe light, giving the players just a terrifying flash of my masked figure.
Then, as quickly as I appeared, I would vanish back into the shadows.
It was supposed to be a smooth, spooky routine. But escape rooms always have a way of surprising even the game master.
That night, a large family of seven or eight people was playing. Normally, when the lights go out, players freeze in place. That gave me the freedom to sneak to a corner safely before making my entrance. But in the pitch-black room, as I was moving toward my “hiding spot,” I miscalculated. Instead of the wall, my hand brushed against one of the players.
She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with the kind of strength you wouldn’t want to test in an arm-wrestling match. In that instant, she must have thought I was her husband. Before I could react, she wrapped me in the tightest bear hug I’ve ever experienced in my life. Her arms locked around me like steel cables. I could hardly breathe, let alone escape!
For 5–10 agonizing (yet hilarious) seconds, I squirmed helplessly in her grip, completely trapped in my own horror scene. My grand villainous entrance had turned into a desperate struggle for air.
Finally, with my hands pinned and my lungs begging for mercy, I managed to hit the strobe light.
⚡FLASH!⚡
The room exploded with blinding bursts of light. My white mask was inches from her face. For one surreal moment, we stood face-to-face in a frozen tableau: her holding me tight, me staring back with hollow eyes behind the mask.
Then came the scream. A blood-curdling shriek that could have shaken the walls of the hotel itself. She shoved me away with surprising force, and I stumbled back several steps, arms flailing, fighting to stay upright. Somehow, I managed not to fall flat on my back, but I must have looked like the clumsiest monster alive.
I killed the strobe, slipped out of the room, and brought the lights back on. The tension broke instantly. The family erupted into unstoppable laughter, the kind that fills a whole room and makes it hard to breathe.
After the game, I apologized for the mishap, admitting that I had accidentally made physical contact. But they assured me it was one of the most memorable parts of their adventure. For them, the “Hug of Doom” was both terrifying and hilarious, exactly what escape rooms are all about.
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