10 Oct New horror bar opens with drink prices determined by visitors’ heart rates
This Halloween The Kraken is opening a unique horror bar where the price a visitor pays for drinks is determined by their own heart rate. On arrival, guests will don heart rate monitors and be thrown into an immersive gauntlet of relentless horror as dark as The Beast’s soul – scientifically designed to test people’s resilience to fear. The more a guest’s heart pounds, the more pounds they’ll pay at the bar. Welcome to Screamfest VII: Shock Exchange.
The Shock Exchange bar can be found at the terminus of a truly terrifying underground experience in London. Guests descending into this heart of darkness will find themselves in a twisted testing ground – an arena of terror designed to discover if they are brave enough to receive The Beast’s benevolence by way of lower priced cocktails.
This immersive prelude to the bar has been designed by The Kraken in consultation with The Recreational Fear Lab: a research unit dedicated to the scientific investigation of fear. Dark, suspenseful and heart-thumping-out-of-the-chest frightening, it has more scares per minute than the best horror movies and is designed with one aim in mind: raise heart rates.
Once through the gauntlet guests will find themselves in the relatively safe embrace of The Beast’s bar, where they’ll discover just how much they were able to control their BPMs – or not. Those with lower heart rates will have their bravery compensated, while those who let fear take over will be charged incrementally more.
Mathias Clasen from The Recreational Fear Lab said: “An increase in heart rate is among the most well-known physiological indicators of fear and research has identified a range of stimuli that reliably induces fear in the average person. It is this knowledge that hosts of Screamfest VII have used in an event designed to heighten fear, and, by extension, heart rate. Hearts don’t lie, even in the presence of masking smiles.”
Tickets for Screamfest VII: Shock Exchange cost £10 and include a cocktail. All subsequent drinks will be priced in line with guests’ heart rates. But the price of cocktails is nothing to fear, racing hearts won’t pay more than £7 and resting hearts less than £3. The experience is running from 26th – 28th October at Clerkenwell Catacombs (2 Sans Walk, London EC1R 0AS).
Screamfest VII: Shock Exchange will also be available as a VR experience at bars in Glasgow, Birmingham and Leeds. Here, guests will put on heart rate monitors and VR headsets, which instantly transport them into the very same gauntlet of terror where The Beast will test their heart rates. After removing the headsets, Kraken fans will discover whether their hearts betrayed them and what prices they’ll pay for their evening’s cocktails.
