The investigators discover an old house in the woods. It has no roads leading to it, and there is no obvious reason why it is built where it is. When they walk around the house they discover it is completely a mirror of itself. Both the front and the back look like they are the front of a nice building.

Possibilities

1 The house was built by an old man who loved making bizarre jokes on his family. He made the house to leave in his will to his family, but it was never discovered in the family papers.

2 The house is under a spell. Both entrances look like an ordinary house, but when the investigators find a door that leads them to the “mirror”-side, bad things starts to happen. In the mirror side, they find duplicates of themselves lying dead, having been brutally murdered - and there’s no way to the outside. The only way to leave the mirror site is via the door they entered, and when they do, they find that they can’t get out. And then killings start . . . exactly as described in the mirror side.

3 One side of the house seems more “dead” than the other - it appears to older and more weathered. Entrance can be gained into the house from either side, and if the house is left via one of the other doors the investigators find themselves 100 years in the future or the past (depending on which door they left).

© Truls Osmundsen

An old friend calls them for help. He had heard about their interest in paranormal activity but dismissed their interest for a new-age fad. Until now. The friend has recently acquired a mansion, but since he has moved in he has had terrifying experiences.

Image by Artflow.ai

Possibilities

1 The mansion is not haunted - it is the building itself that causes the terror. The mansion’s inner design, room layout and architecture somehow causes subconscious fear in the minds of those who dwell in it. Whether this is by accident or design is not clear.

2 The mansion is not haunted. There is an underground pocket of gas beneath the mansion which sometimes leaks into the basement and permeates throughout the mansion. The gas has no smell but stimulates the part of the brain controlling emotions and amplifies them. Given the mansion is a bit spooky, that spookiness combined with the gas becomes terror.

3 The mansion is not haunted, but the neighboring house is. In that house dwells an evil entity, trapped by ancient magic. The creature still has some limited power and feeds on the life force of those nearby his prison - such as the mansion owners. The life force drain causes anxiety and panic attacks.

© Nicolas Dao Phan

The investigators are asked to look into the strange goings on at a local mansion. Their friend, a struggling real estate agent, informs them that no one will buy the house due to its dark history of murder, insanity and disappearances. He gives them the address and a huge ornate key to the place, telling them that the last eight owners have either been murdered, gone insane or vanished inside its walls.

Image credit

1 The key is not just for the mechanical locks on the doors. It serves as the critical component in the summoning of byahkee: it is a summoning whistle.

2 The house is actually a giant conduit for wind to be channelled through its bizarre architecture. When the “key” is placed in the correct position, well hidden in the wall, the wind will blow through the key like a whistle, causing random summoning and horror.

3 The house sits upon a witch’s burial place. Her disturbed and violent spirit has been driving all occupants insane leading to murders and mayhem.

© Matt MacAdams

Once a lunatic asylum, it stands high on empty moorland, desolate and long since abandoned, the huge mansion of an eccentric billionaire. The perfect haunted house, and Sir David Luxely has decided it should become one. He bought and then reconstructed much of the house to make it into a terrifying haunted house. He charged admission to the house with the promise of a huge cash prize if anyone could make it to the topmost floor.

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As yet, no one has. A great many have tried, and most have given up. Some have come out screaming, or trembling... or, so Sir David claims, not come out at all.

Possibilities

1 Nothing supernatural is happening in the house - it is simply a clever maze of very scary special effects. It is not possible, however, to win the prize - all the ways to the top floor have been blocked by brick walls. Sir David is sure to win his bet.

2 Sir David is far older than he seems. The original owner of the house, he is an undead entity kept alive by feeding on the energies in the emotions of living humans - and fear is best of all. He actually resides on the top floor of the house (entering and exiting by a well-concealed hidden shaft) and is able to absorb the fear of those attempting to navigate the house to sustain himself. His power does not harm those he feeds from, but gradually fatigues them, making the challenge to reach the top floor very difficult.

3 Sir David is quite insane. He has constructed the house to further his and others delight for death and murder. The whole structure is fitted with hidden cameras that allow him to watch the suffering of those who get past the scary (but harmless) lower floors. He was once a mythos sorcerer and has used his knowledge to turn the higher floors into an inescapable non-Euclidean labyrinth, populated by unspeakable shambling monsters that he has summoned.

© James David Beard

It’s a clay bottle, sealed, marked with an inverted cross: a ghost bottle.

Possibilities

1 This ghost bottle was recently created. The craft of constructing an effective ghost bottle is now known only to a few practitioners, and this one was constructed by Thaddeus Henge, of Henge & Croup Professional Services. (Their mark is stamped on the bottom of the bottle.)

The Burnett family hired Thaddeus Henge to help with a problem at Bellforth Hall. Peregrine Burnett, owner of Bellforth Hall and powerful occultist, had used a restless spirit to guard his extensive occult collection. With Burnett’s passing, the spirit had turned feral and Burnett’s descendants turned to Thaddeus Henge, modern exorcist, to deal with it.

Henge trapped the spirit in the ghost bottle, which now rests on the mantlepiece in Bellforth Hall’s entrance hall.

2 The bottle is part of a collection, one of twelve. Three bottles are sealed, two are broken and the others are all unused. The collection is secured within a fine oak box with a handles for carrying; the lid contains detailed instructions, annotated by its last owner, Chester Beale.

Beale was a 17th century occultist and, so it now seems, part-time exorcist. The collection was found during restoration works in a hidden cupboard in Hobford Grange, Beale’s Wiltshire home.

3 The bottle arrives in the post, securely wrapped. Accompanying it is a note:

Dear J——. I write to you following our long conversations last summer during which you expressed interest in Uncle Johann’s sudden interest in the occult during the summer of 1964. As you will remember, this obsession lasted no more than a few months, starting when the old De Monteford mausoleum was disturbed and ending in September of that year when Uncle Johann visited Keswick in the company of the singular Cordon Paine. Since then I have learned more about Cordon Paine and discovered that he was well known in the London alternative ‘scene’ and created quite a stir by hosting the most surreal and disturbing dinner parties. From what I understand, Paine was retained by the family to ‘cure’ Uncle Johann. Paine believed that Uncle Johann was possessed by a malign spirit released from the old mausoleum, and promised to rid him of it. To this end, they travelled to Cumbria and participated in some kind of ritual in the Castlerigg stone circle, above Keswick.  That was in September 1964, after which Uncle Johann mostly returned to his old self. I found the accompanying artefact, which matches the description of a ‘ghost bottle’ that Paine refers to in the Castlerigg ritual, while clearing Uncle Johann’s attic. I can only assume that this bottle contains the malign spirit that so possessed Uncle Johann and drove him to his obsession. I confess that since finding the dreadful thing I have not enjoyed a single night of unbroken sleep, and have suffered quite vivid dreams full of graves, cobwebs and horrid scratching noises. As you know I suffer from an overactive imagination, and given your interest in things outré I thought that it might find a better home with you. I trust you and yours are well. Best wishes, K——