3. XANADU

What if consciousness outlives the body? What if there was an experience of being dead?

You are dead. Your eyes do not react to light, in fact all your reflexes are absent. And that is because you are dead. Even if you were to briefly sit up, like Lazarus, it wouldn’t alter the fact. And they are burying you in the ground because you are dead. Hell, it turns out, is simply disembodied life.

Content Warning: Death, Injury, Dead bodies, Medical procedures, Confined spaces, Strong language.

THE BBC AND DARKFIELD PRESENT AN UNNERVING TRILOGY OF IMMERSIVE BINAURAL EXPERIENCES. MEET YOURSELF IN THE DEADHOUSE.

DEADHOUSE is a trilogy of immersive audio horror shorts, all for a single listener, lying down, with their eyes closed. Headphones are essential. The listener becomes the subject while the binaural sound surrounds and creeps towards them. Their familiar environments slip away, to be replaced by other, less comfortable, worlds that feel unnervingly real. Each episode is for the cold and the callous amongst us, and takes a look at the separation of mind and body.

DEADHOUSE was created by DARKFIELD for BBC Radio 4.

Episode credits: ARTISTIC DIRECTORS: David Rosenberg & Glen Neath ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR: Matthew Blake CREATIVE PRODUCER: Victoria Eyton WRITER: Glen Neath SOUND DESIGNER: David Rosenberg PRODUCTION COORDINATORS: Sara Codrington & Mario Ruiz SOUND ASSOCIATE: Anna Sulley CASTING: John Cannon EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Michael Salmon PERFORMERS: Kenneth Cranham as Death; Amit Shah as Diener; Nathalie Armin as Mother; John Dagleish as Porter/ Ferryman; Kathryn McGarr, Mia Jerome, Nigel Barrett, Mercy Ojelade, Linden Walcott-Burton, Jun kim, Matthew Blake, Lanna Joffrey, Rakhee Sharma and Walles Hamonde as hospital staff, mourners and all other characters.

Special thanks go to Samuel Booth, Premises Studio and Karolina Jedrezejczyk from Sound Disposition.