Skeleton Key Adventures unlocks a dream for Joshua and Emily Kaster

By Maggie Fipps

When Joshua and Emily Kaster moved to Cedarville in 2012, Main Street looked very different. Lola’s Mexican restaurant did not exist, Orion Coffee and Tea went by Stony Creek and Double Dragon, a Chinese restaurant, inhabited the white building at 46 N. Main St. 

12 years later, 46 N. Main St. will now be Skeleton Key Adventures, an escape room the Kasters opened after years of pouring into the Cedarville community. 

The Kasters said they met in a Missouri high school play. 

“I like running background things,” Emily said. “I did stuff on stage too, but I was the stage manager and he was the light [guy]  and he just wanted to be in every yearbook photo.”

Even in high school, Emily said she enjoyed setting things up behind the scenes, and Joshua excelled in the technical. Their relationship blossomed, and Joshua and Emily got married in 2011. 

“We were really young, but we both knew what we wanted,” Joshua said. “We were really on the same page. And by moving here we have to build a life together, like the trees growing together idea.”

As Joshua worked toward an electrical engineering degree, Emily was also on campus, but not as a student.

“Yeah, it’s definitely hard being a custodian being nine months pregnant,” Emily said. “Getting stuck in places, that was interesting. We’ve seen the insides and outsides of these campus buildings.” 

Four kids and four years later, Joshua earned his degree and the Kasters moved back to Missouri, but Cedarville always tugged on their hearts. 

“Our kids have grown up here,” Joshua said. “There’s a lot of strong Christian families in the area, people that want to raise our kids in a tight-knit community

When Joshua had the opportunity to get his masters at the University of Dayton, moving back to Cedarville felt like coming home. Quickly, the Kasters got involved in village life. Emily began to expand Cedar Fest, Cedarville’s Labor Day extravaganza, by obtaining funding from the university, and instating new events in town, like an adult easter egg hunt. 

“It’s fun seeing adults chase Easter eggs in the middle of the night with flashlights,” Joshua said “It lets them unlock a part of their fun side that they don’t get to do.”

Emily’s fingerprints are already all over the village if you look close enough. She was Third Wave Water’s first employee, packing boxes with her kids running around the warehouse. She helped hire the first employees for Lola’s Mexican restaurant, and was a receptionist for ZCI Contracting when they first opened. 

“Just seeing the inner workings of business, we both felt pretty comfortable that we could get stuff done,” Joshua said. “And then I’m a systems process engineer, teaching you know, what’s the highest value thing to work on? How do you get this thing done? I think the life experience kind of led up to: ‘We’re excited about it, let’s do it!’”

Emily eventually planned elaborate birthday parties for friends and family, unlocking her creative side and passion for event planning. At one birthday bash, Emily hid a clue at the bottom of the pool, so the birthday boy had to dive down to retrieve it. 

“We set up escape rooms in our house,” Joshua said. “We had a whole third-grade class, which is a lot of eight-year-olds, to do an escape room, it was kind of chaos. She’s been doing this, I’ve been loving it as well for years now. 

After batting the idea around for a few years, Sarah Garrison, who is part of Revitalize Cedarville, prompted them to consider it. 

“There’s really nothing for college students to do in the village besides food,”
Emily said. “And I was like, ‘Well, I would be happy to open one up.’”

Even years after their school play, Emily is still behind the scenes, and Joshua excels in the technical.

“Me and my eldest daughter come up with all the crazy things and he brings us back down to Earth with the logical things that actually work,” Emily said. 

The Kasters hope their escape room improves the village they love. 

“We love the fact that our children’s best friends with two blocks from our house and they can walk there every day,” Emily said. “We just want our kids to realize that their life really isn’t all about them. If we go to the food pantry, they’re there handing out food to the cars, they’re active with us. We just really want our kids to see that there are other people in the village and how they can help and be a part of it.”

Skeleton Key Escape rooms is set to open on September 13th, with two room options. You can book a time at https://skeletonkeyadventures.com/

Maggie Fipps is a senior journalism student and the sports editor of Cedars. She enjoys playing the piano and thrifting, and you may spot her around campus sporting Packers gear head to toe.

Picture by Elizabeth Kollmar