You, and The House is a game that I designed after playing the heck out of Anna Anthropy’s Princess with a Cursed Sword and listening to Jacob Geller’s essay about haunted houses. It is a solo journaling game that encourages you to tell a story about moving into a new house that turns out to be haunted, through the use of a six-sided die and a tarot deck. To start, the game directs you to answer a series of questions, provides prompts for each of the different suits of cards, and then helps you wrap up your story with thoughts about an epilogue. Digital copies are available on my Itch.io page, along with all my other games.
Content Warning: Language, haunted spaces, the concept of places that should be safe (but maybe aren’t), and general unease.
What does the house look like?
The house is unassuming, set back from the road by a gravel driveway that fades into a lawn that’s grown a little too long this summer. It is a small, two-storey building with a bright red front door nestled in the center of the white stucco wall and hunter green trim. Inside, the hand-laid brick floors in the kitchen and dining area are colder than you’d expect. The living room has a plush cream colored carpet, and a deep reddish-purple accent wall. The staircase has bookshelves all along the right hand side and a small landing at the top. Directly at the top of the stairs is a small bathroom with an angled ceiling; it makes showers a little uncomfortable, but the black tile is really quite elegant. On either side of the landing is a room: to the left, the master bedroom; to the right, an office. Each of these rooms has a small window along the flat wall under the apex of the roof; the bedroom looks out onto a deep pine forest, while the office looks down onto the overgrown front yard. There are no curtains, yet.
What is the building’s history?
Until recently, this house was a small family home. Both rooms in the second storey were bedrooms; one master bedroom and one children’s bedroom. The backyard had a swing set and treehouse, as well as a flourishing vegetable garden. When the last family moved away, the house was sold as a fixer-upper; and some folks from the nearby city decided to flip it into a quiet woodland hideaway for busy, overworked people. The swing set was removed from the yard, but the treehouse can still be seen from the bedroom window. It has sat unused for a while, until I moved in.
What does the spirit want?
The spirit who haunts this house is lonely. With no children to play with or adults to have coffee with, it’s grown restless and demanding.
Who are you?
I am an author (she/they) who fell in love with the look of this home, and was fortunate enough to be able to purchase it. It is the perfect place, away from the hustle and bustle and distractions of the city. All I need is some quiet in my new office, and I’m sure that I’ll be able to finish this new book I’ve been working on.
Game Mechanics:
Now, it’s time to figure out how long we play the game for. Rolling the die, I get a four (4); per the instructions, we add one (1) to that, for a total of five (5) encounters with the spirit that lives in the house. We shuffle the tarot deck, and begin to tell the story of You, and The House.
Encounter One: Moving In
Tarot Card: Four of Cups, Reversed (Negative) - Room: Bathroom
”This is THE LAST BOX!” I shout into the empty house, hauling a fairly light cardboard up the stairs and unceremoniously dumping it on top of the closed lid of the toilet. Mumbling to myself about lunch as I pull a towel from inside, I turn to face the sink as I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. The tap on the left continues to turn with a high pitched squeal, and hot water begins pouring from the tap, the steam billowing up and coating the gold framed mirror. Slowly, letters start to appear in the condensation: “You’re very loud.”
Dropping the towel to the floor I stumble backward, forgetting just how tight the bathroom is. The back of my calves hit the edge of the tub, sending me falling backward past the sliding glass door. As I land in the bottom of the bathtub, my knees kick up over the edge out into the room, and my head spins from hitting the tile wall. Struggling to sit up, I gently touch the back of my head with a wince before grabbing the edge of the tub and pulling myself upright. As I stand the room swims, and new letters form on the mirror: “Are you okay?”
This time, I pretend not to notice, slowly going about the business of unpacking the box. Turning once more toward the sink with my hands full of toothpaste and medications to go inside the mirror, I gently twist the hot tap off and notice how quiet the house is without the sound of rushing water. “Time for me to fire up the record player,” I whisper to myself, opening the mirror and setting things on the shelf inside. When everything is in its place, I swing the mirror closed to find one more message: “I like Coldplay, personally.”
Encounter Two: Naptime
Tarot Card: Seven of Wands (Positive) - Room: Bedroom
They say it’s never a good idea to go to sleep when you’ve hit your head, but nothing sounds better than taking a nap on my brand new bed. The room itself is directly under the roof of the house, with a slanted ceiling angling down over the headboard of the bed to the left and the large dresser on the right. It doesn’t take long for me to change into an oversized tee shirt and crawl onto the fluffy comforter covering the bed, despite the bouts of dizziness I keep experiencing.
Propping myself up on one of the pillows, I lean over to the nightstand and grab my phone, tapping open the notes app and setting myself up with a to-do list for after I wake up: Get record player going; Late lunch; Setup desk in the office. I nod, satisfied, and set my phone back down. I’m asleep before I get a chance to even close the app.
Waking up a few hours later, the sun is shining warmly through the west-facing window and I snuggle under the blanket. Taking a moment, I look down and then sit bolt upright: I definitely wasn’t covered with a blanket when I fell asleep earlier. And I definitely wasn’t using the throw blanket from the couch downstairs. I look around wildly for a moment, trying to figure out if maybe I was sleepwalking or if someone else had been here. Picking up my phone, I tap the unlock code and see a new note: “You looked cold, so I got you a blanket. Hope that’s okay…”
Encounter Three: Washing Up
Tarot Card: Knight of Cups, Reversed (Negative) - Room: Bathroom
Slamming into the bathroom again, I twist on the cold water and splash my face. “Of course, it would be just my luck,” I mutter, “Finally able to afford a house, and it turns out to be haunted. Can’t even get a roommate who can help pay the mortgage.” Taking a small towel from a hanging hook I aggressively dry my face, wincing at the scratchy terrycloth. I sigh, looking at my face in the mirror.
When suddenly, the face in the mirror is no longer just mine, but overlaid with the face of another person. Their features soft and inviting, they give a small smile and a nod, and I see a wave in the corner of the mirror. I wince and pull open the mirror; nearly scraping my nose with the edge of the frame as it goes by. Heaving deep breaths into the bowl of the sink, I murmur: “You can’t do that, okay? If you’re going to stay, we need to work out a system. You can’t just put your face over mine in the mirror any time you want.” My hands gripping the edges of the sink are nearly white.
I wait a few minutes before I close the mirror. There’s no one there but me. I sigh, grateful.
Encounter Four: A Truce
Tarot Card: Justice (Positive) - Room: Main Living Area
The living room is quiet as I enter, the soft shh shh sound of my feet in the deep carpet welcome after the slamming and banging upstairs. I make a beeline for the record player, searching the nearby shelves for the Coldplay album Ghost Stories. Setting the vinyl onto the plate and twisting on the power, my heart rate slows as I hear the soft whispers of the needle across the record’s surface. The first song begins to play, and my thoughts quiet as the music fills the house.
Taking a moment, I enter the kitchen and make some hot water for tea, pouring two mugs. I bring them both back into the living room, setting them onto the coffee table before snuggling into the plush cushions of the couch. After a moment, I feel warmth wrapping around my shoulders, and look up to see the blanket from upstairs folding itself over me. I give a soft smile and a whispered “Thank you,” before reaching for my mug and sipping the hot tea.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. I hum along with the music.
Epilogue: Embrace
Tarot Card: The Moon (Positive) - Room: Main Living Area
-Six Months Later-
It took a little while to get used to having a “roommate” that I couldn’t see, but we’ve fallen into a routine. They’ve promised not to move things around when I have people over, and I’ve finally gotten all of the Coldplay albums on vinyl so they can listen to them whenever they like. I’ve also invested in those letter magnets and some magnetic poetry sets, so they can leave messages on the fridge instead of on the bathroom mirror. One morning, I woke up to “Coffee??” in bright, mismatched letters, so now we have a coffee maker that I remember to setup the night before and they remember to turn on for me when I get into the shower. It’s a pretty good arrangement.