The Northbridge Butcher was meant to be an urban myth. Now you’re coming round on the cold floor of his meat locker, the freezers are humming, and somewhere close by a blade is being sharpened for tonight’s dinner party.
In short: In Cannibal, remains on a William Street building site and missing tourists point to a copycat killer known as the Northbridge Butcher. After a night out you wake in his meat locker. He has gone shopping for his dinner party, and you have an hour to read his diary and escape.
It started with a construction site on William Street, where workers found body parts that had been buried in a hurry. Then came the missing tourists, a run of them, all last seen around Northbridge.
The WA Police Commissioner tried to keep a lid on it. The reports leaked anyway, and the word that spooked everyone was “skilled”. Whoever was doing this had a butcher’s hands. Before long the whole city was whispering about a copycat, someone borrowing from the cannibal killers of fiction.
You heard the rumours about the Northbridge Butcher and filed them under hoax. A big night out seemed like a better idea.
Now you’re waking on a slick concrete floor in the dark. The cold has got into your bones, industrial freezers drone in the background, and from the next room comes the slow, patient sound of steel on a sharpening stone. Chains. Hooks. A dining table laid for guests.
He keeps a diary, and in it is everything: his habits, his recipes, the way out. He has gone to fetch the last ingredients for tonight’s dinner party. You have one hour to decipher his notes and escape the meat locker, or you’ll be the one served with fava beans and a nice chianti.
The table is set. You’re the main course.
Cannibal moves from a cold meat locker into the killer’s own rooms: a butcher’s workspace, a dining table set for company and a diary full of his secrets. It’s one of the most demanding rooms Escape This runs.
Stills from the Cannibal set.
Escape This built Cannibal in Perth first, at Northbridge, then brought a second meat locker to George Street in Sydney.
Both rooms share the Butcher’s story and the same eight-out-of-ten challenge. Sydney’s version takes bigger groups and can tell the story in Simplified Chinese.
Butcher’s aprons, chef’s whites or your sharpest dinner-party outfit all suit Cannibal (fake blood optional). Whatever you choose, wear closed shoes and something you can move freely in.
Cannibal is an 18+ horror escape room made by Escape This. Your group wakes up in a copycat killer’s meat locker on the night of his dinner party and has 60 minutes to get out before you’re served. It runs at Escape This Northbridge in Perth and Escape This Sydney CBD, rated 8 out of 10 for difficulty, and a third kitchen opens at Escape This Brisbane CBD in the first half of 2027.
No, Cannibal has a villain of its own: the Northbridge Butcher, a copycat with a butcher’s skill. The films are an obvious influence, though. Escape This names Hannibal and Silence of the Lambs fans among the players Cannibal suits, and the room’s billing jokes about fava beans and a nice chianti.
Gory enough to be adults-only. Cannibal carries strong adult themes (butchery, body parts, a blood-slicked floor) and is strictly 18+. It’s built to unsettle rather than to gross you out for an hour, but anyone squeamish should read the Escape This content advice before booking.
Because you’re the main course. In Cannibal, the killer is hosting dinner tonight and has popped out for the last ingredients. When the hour runs out he’s back, and the worst dinner party of your life begins with you on the plate.
He’s the killer whose lair you wake up in. Cannibal’s story starts with butchered remains buried at a William Street construction site and tourists vanishing around Northbridge. The cuts were so expert that police feared a cannibal copycat. Everyone called the Butcher a hoax. He isn’t.
A night out that went badly wrong. Cannibal begins with you coming round on a cold, blood-slicked floor, memories of the evening blurry, industrial freezers humming and a blade being sharpened somewhere nearby. Nobody remembers getting there.
It’s how you beat him. Cannibal asks you to decipher the Butcher’s twisted diary as well as break out of his meat locker, so getting inside the killer’s head is part of getting out alive.
In the story, dinner is served. In real life, Cannibal’s hour ends, a gamesmaster opens the door and your group gets a few minutes afterwards to catch its breath and talk through what it missed.
Complex and a little sideways. Cannibal’s puzzles sit at the hard end of the Escape This scale, and reviewers talk about puzzle interactions they hadn’t met in other rooms, having to think well outside the box, and a final puzzle that is a real test.
Yes, as long as the drinks come afterwards. Escape This recommends Cannibal for date nights, buck’s and hen’s parties and work groups that like a challenge. Nobody under the influence is allowed in, so start the celebrations once you’re out of the locker.
Please do. Butcher’s aprons, chef’s whites and black-tie dinner guests all look right in Cannibal. Wear closed shoes and something comfortable to move in.
Yes. Cannibal shares Escape This Northbridge with The Haunting, Dracula, Buried Alive, The Possession, Asylum and more, so a horror double is easy. The Haunting’s ghost story makes a good contrast to Cannibal’s flesh-and-blood killer.
Escape This designed and built Cannibal itself, from the meat locker to the Butcher’s dining room, and runs it in Perth and Sydney. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory.
The Undertaker, villain of Buried Alive. In the Undertaker’s own comic diary, the Northbridge Butcher is one of his alter egos, and he grumbles that the Butcher writes recipes in his margins. The two diaries mention each other but are written separately, and Cannibal’s story stands entirely on its own.
Book Cannibal at Northbridge or Sydney CBD. Adults only, one hour, one very hungry host.
