Take a wander down Eastgate Street in Gloucester between now and November 3, and you’ll notice something a little unusual beneath the trees outside the city’s 19th-century Guildhall.

It’s a large shipping container, much like any other you may come across – in ports, awaiting travel to another country, or festooned with fairy lights at trendy community hubs across the land. What you will notice about this particular container, though, is that it has the word ‘Séance’ emblazoned across each side. Immediately your curiosity is piqued.

For within these impenetrable steel sides another dimension awaits the curious… or possibly foolhardy. An experience that will have you questioning exactly what it is you have encountered, never wanting to utter to another soul what you felt and heard, for fear they may have experienced just the same.

What will be your experience?What will be your experience? (Image: Darkfield) Could it be that each of us has the ability to commune with beings – possibly once human – who are waiting just the other side of a very thin veil? Perhaps all it takes is pitch blackness, heightened senses, and the utter belief for there to be something outside this realm to make it happen.

The very mortal David Rosenberg and Glen Neath – of immersive audio pioneers Darkfield – have discovered the key that can open the portal to that other dimension, and they’re keen to show you a glimpse. With previous much-lauded binaural and immersive shows to their names – such as Arcade and Ring – they know what they’re doing. They have the psychology, they have the technology, and they have the twisted imaginations to take us far from the humdrum and open up those parts of our brains that many suggest have been dormant for millennia. And, I promise you this much, you will feel the ‘tingle’… you may not like it, or you may even love it, but you will feel it.

Dare to enter the Séance in GloucesterDare to enter the Séance in Gloucester (Image: Candia McKormack) What is particularly interesting with this show is that, in many ways, Darkfield could be seen to be recreating what the Victorian ‘spiritualists’ of their time did. We so desperately want there to be an ‘other’ that, with the right cues and the casting away of the trappings of our day-to-day lives, we become fully immersed. That’s when we question what is reality and what is the creation of our fertile imaginations that are too often smothered by spreadsheets and supermarket runs.

You won’t find any spoilers here. I’ll not tell you exactly what I experienced… but is that because nothing happened, or could it be because I’m afraid you’ll experience the same thing, too?

Séance is for ages 14+ and runs until Sunday, November 3, 2024, at Gloucester Guildhall. Visit gloucesterguildhall.co.uk or call 01452 503050 to book tickets.