The Three Furies

The Three Furies torturing Orestes.

You may not know about the Three Furies because these powerful female archetypes are mostly hidden today. But when you face their wrath in the Steampunk Haunted House, a part of you, deep down, will understand. Their anger is ancient.

This powerful triumvirate has appeared, in some form or another, in myths since before the Greeks, who gave them the name Erinyes. This name translates to “the angry ones,” and these demons were greatly feared. Some believed the three were born out of the blood of violence, and thus represented vengeance. Others thought they were the offspring of Nyx (the goddess of Night) and embodied the anger of the dead, restless in the dark.

They were also known as the sisters or counterparts of the Fates, representing the bleakest part of the inevitable future—for example, death and retribution. The Fates’ number was always three: one Fate spun the thread of life onto a spindle at a person’s birth, another measured the thread and decided the life’s events, and the third cut the thread, determining the time and manner of the person’s death. The Fates and the Furies were equally feared, even by the gods. Because they controlled destiny, their power was unmatchable.

In Aeschylus’s Eumenides, Orestes is driven mad by the Furies, who ruthlessly punish him for killing his mother. They haunt him with visions of his mother’s ghost and the scent of her blood. In the Steampunk Haunted House, the Furies take on yet another form. Here, they represent how the unconscious mind haunts the conscious. They are causing the perpetual nightmare that ensnares and torments the audience.

“Man knows not Fate’s approach, but onward fares, till on the scorching fire his foot treads unawares.” (Sophocles, Antigone)

Consider yourself warned.