Escape From Dr. Frankenstein’s Library

I LOVE designing Escape Rooms. If I didn’t also love helping kids find books that will spark their love of reading AND reading stories out loud AND doing fun crafts/activities I might consider a career change. But I DO love all those things, so I think I’ll just keep designing escape rooms as library programs. Best of all the worlds!

So we leaned heavy into the “One State/One Story” program that Indiana Humanities sponsored and put on this year in my state. They did a ton of Frankenstein programs and events because this year (2018) is the 200 year anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”! So we decided to design our 2018 summer reading program around Frankenstein to follow suit. I learned very quickly that it was hard to get ahold of Frankenstein things (decor, reading prizes, etc) in the middle of May, so it quickly turned into Frankenstein/Monsters with the title “Frank-ly, Reading is Fun!”. Overall it was cool and different and we did a ton of awesome monster programs.

For that SRP, I decided that I wanted to do an escape room for families with children that are the age we serve (under 12). So I set to work on my research (mostly Pinterest) and got one all figured out! It was a smash! I had 20 groups go through in June, on two different days. I actually had to turn people away because we didn’t have enough time slots available. 😦

Because of this, I decided to run the same program again in October during fall break so that people could participate and it would be close to Halloween and kind of spooky! But apparently now that fall break is so long, people actually go on vacation, SO I ended up with 8 groups who were able to participate this fall.

I don’t think I am going to run this program again, so I am going to post pictures of the room and of the clues with a little explanation in case anyone wants to do a similar one or recreate it at home/another library!

*All paper props/clues were made by me using my Cricut crafting machine, with the exception of the crazy letter sheet, which I made on the computer*

The Hallway: 

We had them enter into the hallway outside the library to wait, then go do the escape room, and then leave the library out a side entrance so that groups did not cross paths. That eliminated any spoilers!! In the hallway, I had one other staff member working. It would have been VERY hard to do this alone, and I recommend having at least 1 other person, depending on what kind of setup you have.

There were tables in the hallway, and while they were waiting, they were asked to read the rules and the scenario sheet.

The Room:

So there were a few different little places we had things set up in the library.

We had Dr. Frankenstein’s Desk:

We also had a couple of tables with decorations, a coat rack with lab coats, and a fake pet tarantula in the story pit!

Last but not least, we had what I called “The Clue Table” with all of the clues they were given at the beginning to start them off. My intention was also for them to have a place to put materials when they found clues, so things weren’t just scattered everywhere.

So they started with this. I’m going to go down each clue path and work my way through the room for you all to read/see!

*All of the decorations were borrowed from Sycamore Friends Church, and they were AWESOME. I had so many people ask me where I got all the stuff, and I was so grateful to the church for helping me create such a cool lab!*

Basic Breakdown:

In the end, they needed to find the briefcase and put in the code to unlock it and get the secret monster plans. To get them there, they started with 4 clues, all of which lead to a puzzle piece. When the puzzle pieces were all found and put on the puzzle sheet, the code was clearly visible and the briefcase could be opened! They were allowed to solve the following puzzles in any order, they just had to do them all to get the code!

Puzzle Sheet:

The puzzle sheet (bottom middle, looks like the base of a puzzle) was really a guide to make sure they got the pieces in the right place. Each other clue on the table lead them eventually to a puzzle piece, and the pieces spelled out the clue to open the briefcase at the very end.

“Read Between the Lines” Sheet:

So in theory this clue led them to the pencil cup on Dr. Frankenstein’s desk, where there was a UV light invisible pen in the cup with many other types of pens. The pens I bought are here. There are quite a few in this pack but some of them were $$$ for only 1 pen and I was worried it would get broken or walk out so I bought the pack. They do have one of those tabs to pull so they should last awhile!

When they figured that out, and shined the light on the page, it did this:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If you don’t want to wait for the slideshow, it says “find the next clue under the rug”.

So that leads them to the rug under the rocking chair in the photo way above. They find the puzzle piece and put it on the puzzle sheet and voila! That clue is finished!

Backwards clue: 

This clue is above in the photo, right behind the skull, so it is difficult to see. This is a better photo of this clue!

Okay! So some of my kiddos were old/intelligent enough to read the top part backwards on their own! Eventually I started telling them to read the bottom part first. Once they did that and remembered that a scientists coat would be a lab coat, they went to the coat rack pictured earlier and started rummaging through the pockets. Eventually they found a mirror, which would help them to read the backwards part (once they figured out how to hold it correctly; that part required a lot of parents help!)

Once they did, they could see the writing says “your chance of escaping swims with the fishes!”. Setting up a fish tank in the library was one of the first things I did when I started this job, so its still new-ish and exciting for most of them. A few tried to tell me we didn’t have any fish in the library, but most of them got it right away. When they got there they found a puzzle piece taped to the side of the tank!

Two down, two to go!

Code clue: 

This clue (very middle, below the skull) was by far the hardest and most time consuming. Better photo below:

So, to know how to find the book “Frankenstein” in a library, you have to know the author. A good handful of people (some kids, some adults) knew who wrote the book! So they moved straight to finding it on the shelf.

Others who didn’t know were given the clue “If you don’t know who wrote the book, there’s a clue on Dr. Frankenstein’s Desk”. If you remember from above (or need to scroll back) there is a framed photo on the desk (of the author), and a little note slipped in behind it. The note looks like this:

So, if you don’t know, now you know!

Once they found the “Frankenstein” book on the shelf in the S section, they opened it up and found the symbol code sheet:

Using scrap paper and pencils provided, they got to work decoding the symbols that were on the original sheet they were given. I will say, I messed up here. The solved code reads “Im hidden in a ‘prize’d place”, emphasis on the PRIZE because this puzzle piece was hidden in the bucket of summer reading prizes in the summer, and in the prize box treasure chest in the fall. But because it’s all symbols already, adding the “” to my original code was very confusing. Almost everyone spent time looking for the quotation marks on the code sheet, and they weren’t there. Eventually I started telling people to ignore the quotation marks until they solved the clue!

SO like I said, the clue was in a different place in the summer than in the fall, but both places were where prizes are kept!

Crazy Letter Sheet:

This one was my favorite clue. There are lots of Pins on Pinterest about how to make this clue, but essentially I did it myself. Firs thing I did was type the clue 3 times in a medium blue on the page in Microsoft Publisher (Publisher is important because you can turn text boxes so things are going sideways)  and print it out. Deleted that blue text, then typed up a ton of random letters and printed them out on top of the blue, in yellow. Then I erased everything again and did something similar (not identical text!) with orange, and then with red. The trickiest part was making sure the paper was fed the right way into the printer to print on the correct side. Every printer is different so you may have to just test it and see!

There’s a little paper that goes with this one that says “To solve this clue, look for the decoder in a very electric place.” This one tripped a lot of people up!

I somehow didn’t get a photo of it, but as decoration for SRP (and for the Escape Room in the fall) I had one of these lights at the checkout desk:

So that was the very electric place!! And underneath the light were a few of these spy decoders! When you hold the decoders over the crazy sheet, the red acetate blocks the red, yellow and orange ink and the blue is all that’s left!

So the next clue was under the biggest wooden chair! And that was the final puzzle piece, so at this point the puzzle sheet looked like this!

There really is no significance to “378” but that was the code to open the briefcase! It was one of those with the dials where you have to turn it to the right numbers to open it. The case needed the code twice, so two kiddos could spin the dials at once!

Once they got the briefcase open, they found the secret monster making plans!

And that’s it! I wrote up a funny blurb about monster making to go inside the envelope but really that was the end! And like any good escape room, I had props to hold to prove they had escaped! Here are a few of my favorites from this fall!

If anyone is interested in knowing more about library escape rooms in general or this one specifically, please feel free to email me @ megan.williams@eastern.k12.in.us