The Hidden Tragedy

The Torsåker Witch Trials
Girl running away in a Swedish forrest, key illustration for The Hidden Tragedy - The Torsåker Witch Trials.

Balancing history with storytelling

The Hidden Tragedy is a new mobile storytelling experience recently launched as a preliminary, soft-launch version in Sweden. Designing story experiences anchored in multiple locations is an approach to storytelling with particular demands in terms of context considerations. We are very proud of The Hidden Tragedy because of its multifaceted and layered creative strategy and story design.

It is a modular, non-linear tour where each location-anchored piece of the story adds richness and understanding to the total experience. Focusing on witch trials and the executions they resulted in during the 1670s could easily have become a dark tourism horror story. With Västernorrlands Museum overall responsible for the project, a multidisciplinary team has created a tour that balances the presentation of historical facts with storytelling, proving that good storytelling does not have to be fiction.