Westfield, pop. 9,214
HAUNT GRID
HOUSE
A haunted-house tycoon for iPhone.
Westfield Community Gym · doors 7 PM · $4
Coming soon — App StoreBuild the house
Lay rooms on the grid, one dreadful square at a time. Every corridor is a choice.
Run the night
Staff the crew, cue the scares, and keep the line moving until the last group is through.
Survive October
Thirty-one nights. One ledger. The town is watching, and so is something else.
Volume I & II
The Anatomy of Fright
Twenty-nine rooms, each drawn as a plate in a shop-class anatomy folio nobody will admit to printing. Common to foil. Your house is a binder you walk people through.
Hand grabs an ankle
Something takes an ankle and lets go. They tighten up.
PLATE II · SIGHT · 16s · 1 crew
Infinity room
They lose the exit. Two minutes in a room the size of a van.
PLATE VI · SIGHT · 38s · 2 crew
Through the wall
He comes through the wall. Not the door. The wall.
PLATE XVII · SOUND · 36s · 2 crew
26
MORE IN THE HOUSE
The binder holds twenty-nine.
You have to walk to the rest.
Photographed October 1987
The Company
Twelve performers on the books. Each one raises the house — each one has terms. Read the fine print before you post them.
SIGNED · ROOM
Dolores Vane
Doubles the room’s dread, zeroes its startle.
She does not move. That is the act.
Nobody has seen Dolores arrive or leave. She is in position when the building is unlocked, which would be alarming if she weren’t so professional about it.
GILT · ROOM
Marty Fisk
+40% startle in a tier‑3 room.
Four nights running, then he needs one off.
Twenty-two years on the drop panel. The number was twenty-two last year too. He checks the ceiling of every room he enters. Every room.
SIGNED · ROOM · 2 CREW
The Kessler Sisters
Doubles dread. The reflection is a second person.
Two crew. They will not be split up.
Booked as a pair, paid as one. In their portrait, one of them casts a shadow. The booth offered a reprint. The reprint was the same.
Twelve portraits, one flash, one chair. Each has one wrong detail. The game never says which.
One card a night
The Shift
Between groups, the crew has a night of its own. Thirty-three shift cards — drawn one a night, kept in the log, and not all of them are good news.
DRAWN TONIGHT
The pizza night
Somebody brought pizza to B2. Nobody knows who paid.
PERFORMANCE +6% · CREW CONDITION +8
DRAWN TONIGHT
They found the rhythm
Forty groups in and nobody is thinking about it any more.
PERFORMANCE +3% · CREW CONDITION +2
DRAWN TONIGHT
The kid in the crawl
The work light does not reach the end of the duct. It is nine feet.
PERFORMANCE −5% · CREW CONDITION −11 · DREAD +10
Kalb Bros. Theatrical & Novelty · Marion, Ohio · est. 1891
The Market
Eight commodities, priced nightly, burned nightly. Gerald circles things in every catalog. Orders arrive by morning. The invoice is dated next Tuesday.
graveyards and mirrors, 3 a room
FOG JUICE · BY THE GALLON
one a night for every crewed room
LATEX KIT · BY THE KIT
tier-three rooms only
SERVO · BY THE UNIT
Kalb Bros. once sent a sympathy card. It was addressed correctly. Nothing had happened.
The other investor
Uncle Rick
There is no photograph of Uncle Rick. There is only the note. Ten thousand dollars opened the doors, and every morning it is a little more.
OCT 1 — ten thousand, even. The doors open.
EVERY NIGHT — five percent. His five percent.
OCT 13 — he names a number. Half of what you owe.
OCT 21 — the number is due. He comes by either way.
NOV 1 — whatever is left is yours
He is not asking. And when you pay him off — and you might — he will not say thank you.
Free, every year
October Comes Back
OCTOBER 1 — EVERY YEAR
The doors open again.
A free seasonal event, each October. The town shows up. The Company sits for new portraits — same booth, same wrong details, one step further along. And the house remembers who ran it last year.
Support
Questions, bug reports, or anything strange in the house? Write in — a caretaker reads everything.
support@hauntgridhouse.com