Here’s the adventure those with ‘tell-tale hearts’ enjoyed during a spooky event

Halloween often sparks images of creepy houses and dark birds swooping down from the sky. Olathe’s Downtown Library took those images — as well as a few others made famous by Edgar Allan Poe — and ran with them for its recent escape room program.

Last year’s escape room featured the film “Hocus Pocus.” Elaina Finley, adult program specialist for the library, found herself running that one, even though she hadn’t seen the film before putting together the event.

This year’s theme found her more in her element with America’s famous Gothic fiction writer.

“I think there’s just kind of an enduring fascination with him because of how mysterious and creepy his works are, and his own life ended in a pretty tragic way,” Finley said.

Plenty of creepy Halloween themes were ripe for her to choose from when creating the escape room.

“I think he was writing at a time (when) people were becoming really interested in psychology and the psychology of the narrator specifically,” she said.

“And what does that mean to read from a perspective of someone who’s maybe not a very good person, who’s telling you about their process of hiding someone in a cellar and bricking them up in there? So it’s definitely spooky.”

Finley pointed to Netflix’s recent series “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a sign of the enduring interest in Poe, who died in 1849.

“There’s just something there with that Gothic theme that we really are interested in,” she said.

For the escape room itself, she pulled clues from “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven.” However, she didn’t want to make a deep knowledge of Poe a prerequisite for people to be successful.

“I didn’t want it to be unsolvable if you haven’t read the works, but if you have, the references should just add some enjoyment to that,” she said.

When designing an escape room, she likes to use a variety of puzzle types, such as alphanumeric and video-based.

“There’s this thing one of the characters (in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’) says about nobody striking his family with impunity, and that’s on their family shield,” she said.

She hid pieces of the shield throughout the room.

“Once they find the shield, that triggers a video clip, and the video clip is where they say the phrase in the first place. From there, they can look at the bricks that have the phrase on it and construct that, and that’s the first step,” she said.

The room even had special challenge in the form of a 3D anatomical heart puzzle.

“The 3D heart puzzle could be a little bit tricky. When you’re looking at this thing, you can see that there’s pieces, but it’s not really clear what part pops out. The heart puzzle is the last thing they have to get unlocked before they leave the room, so they’ll probably be dealing with a little bit of a time constraint,” she said.

Several people told her that the 25-minute time limit flew by quickly. Ultimately, Finley wanted people to have a good time but also feel like they accomplished something.

“My goal is that people can leave the room with a sense of satisfaction for the work they did. I hope that it bonds them with their friends and family. I hope they enjoy the atmosphere we’ve created for them with the decorations,” Finley said. “If it inspires them after that fact to read some of Poe or Gothic literature, great, that would be awesome, but it’s definitely not a requirement.”

Teams of up to six people could sign up for the program, and a total of 52 people turned out for the program across 17 time slots.

Given its popularity with the library’s clientele, Finley said she hopes to do another escape room next October.