Concept Package · Original IP
A town that puts its witch trials on television, and the coven that has been living underneath it the whole time.
The Concept
Westlake, 1987. The trials go out live on Channel 12 every night, and the town is certain it is doing the right thing. It is also completely wrong about who it has caught — the real coven has been under the graveyard since before the town, and it has watched the entire run.
Television exists in exactly two rooms — a pub where the trial plays on sets above the bar while nobody looks up, and the studio where the same two anchors are live, three metres away. After that there is no camera anywhere. The courtroom, the village hall with its dunking tank and gallows, the graveyard: the town does all of it without being filmed, which is considerably worse.
Then a grave has collapsed into something older, and the guest goes down — out of magnolia and parquet and into stone, root and standing water, where every surface burns with UV sigils. The reveal is the geography. Nobody tells the guest the coven is real. They walk into it.
Look & Feel
Two languages, three hundred years apart. Above: 1987 municipal — magnolia, wood veneer, parquet, sodium streetlight. Below: total UV — pink, acid green and cyan sigils blazing on wet stone.
The Guest Journey
Room by room
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01The Bar
The trial is on the television. One drinker glances up. Nobody comments
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02The Studio
The same two anchors, live — and something about them is not quite right
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03Holding Cages
Welded mesh bolted to painted breeze block. Somebody has done the accused's makeup
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04The Courtroom
A reserved card on every empty seat. No cameras, no crew
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05Dunking Stool & Gallows
A village hall that hosts a coffee morning on Tuesdays
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06The Graveyard
One plot has given way into brickwork far older than the graveyard above it
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07The Undercroft
Iron cages on chains, and every surface alight under blacklight
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08The Hex Lab
Where the coven actually works. Wax, hair, bone, jars
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09The Drowned Church
The old chapel, half-flooded. One ring of ripples, spreading
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10The Neon Coven
The finale — and the people on the slab ran the trial
Moments
The Cast
Anchor — Channel 12, played completely straight
Anchor — nothing you could name is wrong
The Accused — innocent, in camera makeup
The Matron — authority through restraint
A witch — the trials hanged men too
A witch — UV paint over sacking
A minion — further gone
Design Notes
The uncanny brief
Channel 12 is played completely straight. The wrongness is in the performance: blinks slightly too slow and out of sync, smiles held after the sentence ends, an eyeline a fraction past the lens.
Where the money goes
The upper level is deliberately cheap — magnolia, carpet tile, strip light. Almost the whole build budget sits below the graveyard, exactly where the guest's attention is by then.
The witches
Women and men both — the real English trials hanged men too, and almost every witch attraction forgets it. Earth, sacking and hide, with sigils that only exist under blacklight.
Concept imagery generated with AI from the author's written design direction. Story, world, route, cast and design are original work.