Haunted House
Haunted House is a scene game in which performers explore a haunted environment, reacting to imagined terrors and building suspense through commitment to the horror genre. The group moves through rooms or areas of the house, with each new space revealing fresh dangers, creatures, or supernatural phenomena. The game rewards physical reactions, vocal work, and the ability to create genuine tension within a comedic framework. The comedy emerges from the contrast between real fear responses and the absurdity of the imagined threats.
Structure
The audience suggests a location or type of haunted house (abandoned mansion, cursed hospital, haunted carnival). Two or more performers enter the space as characters who have a reason to be there: paranormal investigators, lost travelers, teenagers on a dare.
The performers explore the environment through object work and spatial awareness, establishing rooms, corridors, and doorways. Each new area introduces a different threat or phenomenon. One room contains ghostly whispers; another has objects moving on their own; a third reveals a physical creature.
The ensemble creates the haunted effects collaboratively. Offstage performers provide sound effects, appear as ghosts or monsters, or manipulate objects in the space. The onstage performers react to these effects in real time, building the scene through their fear responses.
Tension escalates as the performers move deeper into the house. Early rooms produce mild unease; later rooms produce genuine panic. The game builds toward a climactic encounter in the house's heart: the source of the haunting, the creature's lair, or the room from which there is no escape.
The scene resolves through escape, confrontation, or comedic collapse. Some versions end with the performers fleeing; others end with a twist revelation about the nature of the haunting.
How to Teach It
How to Explain It
"You are all in a haunted house. Not a funny haunted house: a genuinely frightening one. Commit to the reality of this place. When something happens, let it scare you. Your body responds before your mind does. Keep the tone."
Haunted House is an effective game for teaching genre commitment and physical reaction work. Students learn to sustain a consistent tone across an extended scene and to let their physical responses drive the comedy rather than verbal commentary.
Coach performers to build the environment before introducing threats. A detailed, specific haunted house (with creaking floors, cold drafts, and dusty furniture) creates the atmosphere that makes subsequent scares land. Performers who skip the environmental work and jump straight to monsters lose the buildup.
The most common failure is performers commenting on the scene rather than living in it. A performer who says "this is so scary" is describing rather than experiencing. Coach for physical expression of fear rather than verbal acknowledgment.
The game teaches ensemble coordination. The offstage performers creating effects must time their contributions to the onstage performers' exploration. This requires close listening and the ability to read when a scene needs a new scare versus when it needs time to breathe.
How to Perform It
The game lives in the performers' reactions. A haunted house with spectacular effects but flat reactions produces no tension. A haunted house with minimal effects but committed, specific fear responses creates genuine suspense. Performers should invest in the physical experience of fear: quickened breathing, rigid posture, startled jumps, and the instinct to grab a scene partner.
Pacing controls the tension. Moving through rooms too quickly prevents the audience from settling into the atmosphere. Moving too slowly drains the energy. Each room needs enough time to establish its threat and produce a peak reaction before the performers move on.
The horror-comedy balance is the game's central challenge. Playing the scene as pure horror alienates an improv audience expecting laughs. Playing it as pure comedy with no genuine tension wastes the genre's potential. The best performances commit fully to the horror and let the comedy emerge from the performers' humanly imperfect responses to danger.
Sound and lighting effects, when available, significantly enhance the game. A sudden blackout, an unexpected sound cue, or a change in ambient lighting creates real surprise reactions from performers that no amount of acting can replicate.
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Sound Effects
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How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Haunted House. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/haunted-house
The Improv Archive. "Haunted House." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/haunted-house.
The Improv Archive. "Haunted House." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/haunted-house. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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