The Story of Cryptid Escapes

Hello all, my name is CharLee and I am one of 4 owners of The Eureka Room and Cryptid Escapes. I started in escape rooms in 2018 as a host/game master. Since then, I’ve added game designer, CIO, and “idea guy” to my list of titles. The Eureka Room has been operating since 2016 and has had a total of 5 escape games in Downtown Bellingham. Currently, it runs 2: Backstage Breakout (updated) and Out of Orbit. Each has a different theme and difficulty. Cryptid Escapes is newer and has launched 2 games as of today: Robotic Resurgence (6/22) and Murder Mystery (11/22) located in Historic Fairhaven. 

It’s been a journey these last few years for the others and me and we’re excited to continue sharing our passions with this community. It took a while to get to where we are and it’ll take longer to get to where we’re going; so here’s our road so far. 

The Eureka Room’s Origin Story

Jesse Stanton opened the first escape room in Bellingham on February 12th, 2016. The first room was called The Eureka Room and players would have to stand on a certain spot with a newspaper under their arm to enter the game. It was located across the street from the location it resides in today. Jesse’s love for puzzles and the community grew and so did The Eureka Room. In November of 2016, he opened the company’s second room: Captain’s Secrets in the Herald Building. 

Each location brought new awareness of the magic of escape rooms to Bellingham. Jesse and the couple of gamemasters he hired would run games for anyone interested in this weird trend of locking yourself in a room for an hour.

Puzzlers, Assemble!

One of the earliest hires of The Eureka Room was Eileen Lee. Starting out running groups of players through Captain’s Secrets, Eileen learned the struggles and joys of being an escape room gamemaster. Soon after their beginnings at The Eureka Room, Eileen witnessed the start of Backstage Breakout’s open at the Crowne Plaza in December of 2017. While going to school at Western Washington University, Eileen managed to bounce from one location to the other often and continued to be a top-notch host in the process. After graduating with a degree in Graphic Design, Eileen continued working for The Eureka Room in a managerial role while expanding her photography business. 

Eileen wasn’t the only one wearing multiple hats: Jesse grew The Eureka Room while also teaching on the side and playing for his multiple local bands (including No-Fi Soul Rebellion, The Wyrds, and The Moving Hats). Now, he’s teaching more, raising his kids, rocking out, and writing for Cascadia Daily News. 

After the new room at the Crowne Plaza was opened, Jesse started to look for more gamemasters to fill the increased bookings. Thus, during Autumn of 2018, CharLee Bethje was brought on board. Having only played 2 escape rooms in their life, CharLee was up for the challenge. Once they got a hang of hosting Backstage Breakout, Jesse worked with a couple friends to make a family winter-themed escape room called Winter Wonderland in December of 2018. While that room was growing, Captain’s Secrets was closed at the end of 2018; establishing the Crowne Plaza as The Eureka Room’s headquarters. CharLee mastered games at The Eureka Room all through their time at university and graduated with a degree in Marketing and minor in Theatre. As soon as they graduated, CharLee went head-first into learning how to build and operate escape rooms. 

Rocketing into New Galaxies

With the addition of a couple brave gamemasters, the team was riding through the months: Jesse was working on a new room, Eileen was taking hold of their manager duties, and CharLee was taking every chance they could to figure it all out. In the diminishing winter days of 2020, The Eureka Room launched its most ambitious game yet: Out of Orbit.

The launch of Out of Orbit was anticipated by the team for months leading up to its release. Weeks and weeks of grueling work by friends Chelsea, J. Scott, Ryan, and Jeremiah, several testing sessions, and hours of training lead up to its first group on March 4, 2020. While the team was working on this mass of a technical project, the world had something else brewing. Due to a global set of circumstances, the big release of Out of Orbit was cut short. 

Even after the reopening, Out of Orbit is famous amongst our team as being the most difficult room to master. In fact, it’s almost a rite of passage for incoming employees. When it was starting up again, a first solo run of the room as a gamemaster was signified by the host receiving their own alien mask.

The Student Has Become the Gamemaster

With all the challenges of running a business under his belt, Jesse was ready to move on to new things. Not wanting to say goodbye to his creation, he offered two almost-college-graduates the opportunity to buy The Eureka Room at the end of 2020. The first answer? No way, dude. Eileen and CharLee were just figuring out what their post-university lives would look like and the idea of running a new business right out of the gate was intriguing, but oh was it intimidating. They had grown into their positions with new duties and job titles, but were they really ready to run the place? 

This is when Adam Hockemeyer and Hugh Wichman entered the scene. With experience in the game design industry, these two were looking into expanding from board and card games, to physical spaces. You know, like escape rooms. However, neither of them had spent extended time in the escape game industry. But you know who had? Their friend Eileen. Who, in turn, recruited CharLee to this group of nerds. After meetings and brainstorming how to open an escape room company, they realized something: they didn’t need to start from scratch.

So, after thinking it over, the four of them came to Jesse with a new answer to buying The Eureka Room: Hell. Yes. 

The rest of the turn-over during the year of 2021 was tedious and boring, so we’ll skip over the details. The day came, though. In the first room Eureka opened in the Crowne Plaza - Backstage Breakout - documents were signed and on February 1st, 2022, The Eureka Room was under new ownership. 

Currently, our team stacks up like so:

• Hugh, Co-owner, CEO

• CharLee, Co-owner, CIO

• Eileen, Co-owner, COO

• Adam, Co-owner, CFO

Alongside a few amazing gamemasters, Cryptid Escapes is set.

We cannot thank Jesse enough for the opportunity, guidance, and patience he’s offered us. He will always be the original owner of The Eureka Room and we’re honored to continue its legacy. 

Bigfoot’s Debut Album

The misfit team hit the ground running to share their love of escape games. In March of 2022, they found a beautiful office suite in the Historic Fairhaven district of Bellingham and set to work. Naming the place Cryptid Escapes, they wanted to make a welcoming space for all and build their very own experiences. With their team of awesome employees, Cryptid Escapes was beginning its journey.

Not having any experience in building physical rooms, they started with purchasing props from an escape company that was shutting down in Las Vegas. This decision turned out to be a dud, but that was part of the learning process. With some of those props, the team worked to open their first room. The building process of Robotic Resurgence was intense. We reworked the props to our use, learned a year’s worth of coding and wiring in the span of a few weeks, and constructed and painted our hearts out. Then finally, during the Fairhaven Festival of 2022, the first room was open for testing. After a few wrinkles were ironed out, Cryptid Escape’s debut room opened for bookings in June of 2022. 

Meanwhile, a mystery was hiding just below the surface: during the turn-over, Eileen and CharLee were cooking up an experience they could use everyday props for: Murder Mystery. It was originally going to replace the Winter Wonderland game at The Eureka Room, so it had to be adapted to the bigger space at Cryptid, but once it was ready, we began building. 

Now, one thing anyone who builds an escape room will tell you is that the room you come up with almost never ends up being the final product. So, the building of the second game at Cryptid Escapes took even more intense hours of learning, reworking, and constructing before its final release in the fall of 2022. 

The Journey Ahead

Since Murder Mystery’s release, the team at Cryptid Escapes has been working every project they can get their hands on: making take-home games, partnering with summer camps, partnering with other local businesses, making video games, building virtual escape experiences, building a third room, increasing online content, and everything that comes in between. 

It’s been a blast so far and we hope we continue to share our passion with this community for as long as we can. 

If you’d like updates, behind-the-scenes content, event announcements, and promotions, join the adventure on our socials.

**This blog was written by someone paid by The Eureka Room and Cryptid Escapes. While intended to be informational, it also acts as promotional material. Thank you for reading and staying media literate. :)