This nifty little treasure came through the shop last week, so I took the chance to get some closeups!
“Haunted House” was a board game produced by Ideal in 1962, and gave four players a tour of a ghostly mansion full of traps and spooky surprises. By modern standards, the fright factor is laughable, but the sculpting and presentation still make it a very interesting piece.
A closeup of the box art promises both THRILLS and CHILLS!
In a clever twist, rather than using a set of dice or a typical spinner for randomizing board movement, Haunted House includes an owl spinner that hoots when the lever is pulled.
The game winning gem goes into its hiding place so the game can begin.
Game pieces in their starting positions.
The green player triggers a door with further instructions!
In another interesting twist, some of the doors have a slotted mechanism that only sometimes triggers them to open. The player would enter the slot at the near edge and push their game piece forward to either pop the door open, or rotate the slot one notch, adding a random element to movement instructions.
For those without a GPS, here’s the full route through the Haunted House.
All in all, Haunted House is a relatively mediocre game, but gains cool points for how it looks and the interesting wrinkles Ideal came up with for board movement. If you’re interested in looking over the full Haunted House photo gallery at much higher resolution, feel free to click through to our Facebook Gallery or our Haunted House gallery on Flickr.