New escape room based on Devil's Tramping Ground opens Friday

The experience at Raleigh Room Escapes tasks visitors with sifting through a replica Devil's Tramping Ground. As the story goes, the site sprung up in the lab after technicians collected earth, flora and fauna in an effort to solve the mystery of the land through science. During the experiment, the room went dark and when the room was finally broken into, the samples had grown, flowered and festered. Visitors have to comb through the site for clues to help them escape.

"It's about as immersive as we can get," co-owner J. Robert Raines said Thursday. "It creates anxiety over time. That tension is more so built up in this room than any other."

While communication is always key with escape rooms, Escape The Devil's Tramping Ground's sensory manipulation makes communication crucial to escape.

"The world shifts and changes around you and evolves around the group depending on the group's strengths and weaknesses," Raines said.

Raleigh Room Escapes is the brainchild of Raines and Rebekah Carmichael, trained actors who worked for years with Room Escape Adventures in Washington, D.C., which offered the popular "Trapped in a Room with a Zombie" experience.

When it came time to start their own company, the two wanted to bring it back to their home state - North Carolina. They also bought the rights to use the "Trapped in a Room with a Zombie" experience for their first room.

Raleigh Room Escapes opened the "Zombie" escape room in June 2015. Soon, they opened their second room the Formula of Escape.