You rang the number on the sticker because you were locked out in the cold. He came quickly, smiled, and offered you a seat in the back while he worked. Now the van is moving, the inside handles are gone, and you have one hour before it stops.
In short: In Murder Van, the Undertaker’s newest persona, a killer the papers call the Night Locksmith, answers late-night lockout calls and drives off with anyone who accepts a seat in his van. The inside handles are gone, a scanner crackles in the cab and an earlier passenger left tally marks in the floor. You have one hour.
The papers call him the Night Locksmith, because that is all anyone knows for sure. He answers late-night lockout calls, he turns up faster than any honest tradie, and the people who climb into his van are never booked in anywhere again. What the papers have not worked out is the man under the overalls: the Undertaker, trying on a new face.
He is careful in small ways. He works only after dark, keeps a police scanner tuned on his dashboard, and has unbolted every inside handle from the cargo doors. He does not need to lock anyone in. He simply took away the way out.
Behind the cab, a pegboard holds rows of keys, each one hanging from a numbered paper tag. Cable ties sit in a coil on the floor. Through the grille you can see his road map, folded open on the passenger seat, with circles drawn on it in red marker and some of them crossed out.
The drive to wherever he is taking you lasts about an hour. That is your clock. Every bump, every slowing at an intersection, every crackle of the scanner tells you how close the van is to stopping for good.
And there is the floor. Groups of tally marks have been gouged into the steel by someone who sat exactly where you are sitting. They are not counting days. Whoever left them was trying to tell the next passenger something, and it might be the only reason anyone ever walks away from this van.
He never locks anyone in. He just took the handles off.
The premise is set: a serial killer’s van, a group trapped in the back and one hour to escape, in a room that is claustrophobic, scary and intense. The Night Locksmith, the keys, the map and the scratched floor are the story as it stands today, and Escape This may sharpen any of it as the room is designed.
Murder Van joins Buried Alive, Asylum, Cannibal and Meat Grinder in the Escape This serial killer series, the rooms that orbit the Undertaker and his other faces. This time the Undertaker has swapped his shovel for a locksmith’s overalls and a friendly smile. It is the series’ first lair that comes to you, and it is headed for the same Lake Street venue as Cannibal’s meat locker.
In Murder Van your group is trapped in the cargo hold of a serial killer’s panel van while he drives. You have one hour, the length of the trip, to find a way out before the van reaches wherever he is taking you. It is a concept horror escape room Escape This is developing for Northbridge.
Murder Van’s concept begins with a lockout. Your group calls the 24-hour number on a sticker, a friendly man in a white van arrives within minutes and offers you somewhere warm to wait. The sliding door closes, the engine starts, and the game begins.
The Murder Van concept fills the hold with the killer’s working kit: a ribbed steel floor, a coil of cable ties, a torch, a pegboard of keys on numbered tags and a grille looking through to the cab, where a police scanner crackles beside a road map marked in red.
Because the Night Locksmith unbolted them. In Murder Van’s story he never bothers locking passengers in; he removed every inside handle from the cargo doors, so the only latch that works is on the outside. Getting those doors open is the puzzle at the heart of the room.
That is Murder Van’s central mystery. Groups of marks have been scratched into the steel by an earlier passenger, and they are not counting days. Escape This’s concept treats them as a message left for whoever is thrown in next, and reading it may be your only route out.
The Night Locksmith listens to the police so he always knows where they are not. In the Murder Van concept the scanner on his dashboard is both his alarm and your clue: whatever it picks up during the drive is worth hearing.
The Night Locksmith is Murder Van’s killer: a man who answers late-night lockout calls in a white panel van and drives away with whoever accepts his help. Nobody has a description of his face, only of the van and the words painted on its side.
No. The Night Locksmith was invented for Murder Van as a new face of the Undertaker, a fictional villain, and is not drawn from any real crime, killer or victim. His van, his map and the town it shows are fiction, and the lettering on the van is not any real locksmith business.
Murder Van never says outright. Each key on the Night Locksmith’s pegboard hangs from a paper tag with a number on it, and one hook is empty. Work out what the numbers mean and you learn a great deal about the man driving.
It is the Night Locksmith’s road map, folded open with circles in red marker, a few of them crossed out and joined by string. In the Murder Van concept it shows where he has been, and perhaps where this drive is meant to finish.
Yes. In Murder Van’s fiction the Night Locksmith is the newest mask of the Undertaker, the killer who buries players alive in Buried Alive and hides behind other faces in Asylum, Cannibal and Meat Grinder. The van is his latest game, and he has been writing about it in his diary.
Murder Van is part of Escape This’s serial killer series, alongside Buried Alive, Asylum, Cannibal and Meat Grinder. That series circles the Undertaker, the villain of Buried Alive, and the masks he wears in the other rooms. Murder Van is the Undertaker’s latest game, and the first chapter in which his lair has wheels.
No. Murder Van is a standalone chapter with its own van, its own clock and its own mystery, so nobody needs Cannibal first. Fans of the series will enjoy pairing them, though, and Cannibal already plays at Escape This Northbridge, the same venue Murder Van is heading to.
Probably. Murder Van’s whole premise is a cramped cargo hold with the doors shut, and Escape This calls it claustrophobic by design. Anyone who struggles in tight, dark spaces should wait for the full room details and talk to the Northbridge team before booking.
Murder Van’s concept leans on confinement and dread: a locked hold, a stranger at the wheel and a clock you can feel through the floor. Escape This has not released content details yet, so read the warnings when tickets go on sale.
No. Murder Van will be a purpose-built set inside Escape This Northbridge, designed to feel like a moving van’s cargo hold. Nobody climbs into a working vehicle or leaves the building.
Escape This is designing Murder Van in-house. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory in Australia, and was named Escape Room Operator of the Year at the APAC Insider Australia Business Awards in 2025 and 2026.
Leave your details on the Escape This coming-soon page and you’ll hear before Murder Van sessions are released.