"Not all of Saxton's dead were pleasant souls in life. So don't expect pleasant souls in death."
When you're hunting ghosts in what is quite possibly the most haunted town in England, expect of a lot of pants-wetting stuff to go down.
- The general atmosphere of Saxton is beyond creepy: everything's in black and white, with the occasional splash of colour such as flowers, lights, and blood spatter. Then there are the odd noises in the dark, ghostly whispers, and the occasional sensation Nigel feels that he is being watched...
- The situation with Hadden is scary by itself. Imagine that your employer is a man with a lot of power and authority who is dabbling in paranormal experiments on the side. Then imagine royally pissing him off by hacking into his systems and stealing top secret documents. Next thing you know, you're running for your life from people who will undoubtedly do very violent things to keep you from talking. You manage to lose them in King's Cross station by taking the last train to a small town in the middle of nowhere, and just when you think you're in the clear, you call your employer to try and sort things out only to to discover that he knows exactly where you are, and has even narrowed it down to the phone box you're standing in. If you value your life, you have no choice but to do whatever the hell he wants, becoming a tethered slave for as long as he considers you to be useful. It's an inescapable situation that Nigel finds himself in even at the end of the game.
- Every time you encounter a ghost is bound to be a spooky experience, but the various Mind Screw events that occur can be just as bad.
- For example, Immediately after his third and final dream about the Nightmare Room, Nigel wakes up in a blurry, otherworldly version of Harbour Cottage, and he himself has become as translucent as a ghost. His exploration of the cottage ends in him approaching the door-shaped stain at the end of the corridor, which beckons to him with that ominous black mist. When he wakes up in the real world, the door that had been hidden within the wall all along has been violently ripped apart. It's natural to assume that Nigel did this in his sleep, but he couldn't have done it without tools and had no inclination to open the wall beforehand. But if Nigel didn't do it, then what did?
- What happened to Edward and Christina Molina, the first occupants of Harbour Cottage, is as horrific as it is tragic. To put it basically, what was supposed to be a fresh start results in Christina falling seriously ill soon after joining her husband at the cottage. At first it's just nausea, but as time goes on her hair grows thin and falls out, she grows weaker by the day, and at one point there's blood in her bathwater. She's convinced that some unknown evil within the walls is what's killing her, but no matter how hard Edward searches he can't find the problem. Eventually Christina suspects her own husband of slowly poisoning her after she discovered his secret smuggling operation, a nightmarish situation in itself.
- When Nigel discovers the hidden basement dock full of filthy, stagnant water, along with a safe containing Edward's final journal entry, the truth becomes clear: when the Harbour Cottage was converted from it's original purpose as a boat house, the archway that allowed boats into the dock was sealed up, and the water trapped inside was left to fester. In a shocking display of negligence, the builders had fixed the plumbing so that it didn't pump water from the well, as it should have, but from the basement dock. All that time, Edward had been feeding and bathing Christina in water laden with lethal bacteria. By the time Edward realised the truth, it was too late, and Christina died believing that her beloved husband had betrayed and murdered her. Overwhelmed with guilt over his part in her demise, Edward hung himself from the rafters the next day.
- What makes this whole affair even worse is that no-one, not even the current owners, knew of the massive health violation that lay within Harbour Cottage, as Edward killed himself without warning anyone of the danger. Had the plumbing been working when Nigel stayed at the place, no doubt he would have suffered the same fate as Christina. If he hadn't discovered the basement dock and learned what had happened to Christina, how many more people would have gotten sick or died because some criminally negligent builders couldn't get their water pipes arranged right?
- The Agers are a long dead quartet of morally bankrupt gentlemen who were each responsible for at least one murder in their lives, not to mention they were utterly obsessed with making sure the last Anglo-Saxon crown is never found, and not even death can stop them. And now they've got their sights on Nigel...
- Most of the time they show up, and they mostly show up in the dark of night, they manifest as pitch black smoke, creating smoky barriers to hinder Nigel's progress. No other ghosts have these abilities, with the exception of of the train wreck ghosts which makes one wonder if committing such evil deeds in life had granted them demonic powers in death.
- It becomes apparent throughout the game that the Agers are keeping a close eye on Nigel. They even enter Harbour Cottage to watch Nigel as he sleeps!
- In the mines beneath Carrion Wood, Nigel finds the journal of a man named Alistair Farleigh, who went in search of the crown in 1924 only to fall afoul of one of the Agers wielding a scythe, likely William due to the date and the tattered state of his clothes. The journal ends with him hiding in the mine, hoping that the man with the sickle won't find him...
- The great train wreck of the 1920's, as the Station Master tells it to Nigel on the second day. While mainly a tearjerker, it can be rather unsettling to hear how the unfortunate sorting staff had been mangled and drowned when the train derailed into the river. Nowadays many of the locals are wary of traversing the tracks where the accident happened, stating that it's... different at night.
- On the second night, we find out why. We start with the leadup to it; while Nigel is making his way to Sedgemarsh Station, it suddenly cuts to a shot of the moon passing across the inky black sky, accompanied by echoing voices of all those who warned Nigel against going on the tracks at night. Then when he reaches the tracks where the train derailed, the station light, which was seen to be stuck during the day (and Nigel can take a picture to reveal that something paranormal is holding it shut), suddenly opens to reveal the bright red light. That's when the pale, gaping ghosts of the victims come flying at Nigel out the darkness, reaching for him with outstretched arms. Without the protective charm Nanny Noah had given him earlier that day, he would have been snookered.
- The Nightmare Room, a place that appears in Nigel's dreams. It's a dark, windowless room with a blood-stained sickle dangling above a similarly blood-stained table, and beyond it is a desk, a bookcase, and a painting depicting the four Agers. Along with this disturbing scene are flashing images of a man wielding that same sickle, and a close-up of an eye wearing spectacles. Somehow, Nigel is having premonitions not only of discovering the fate of the missing cats, but the murder of Professor Hardacre.
- The room appears for three consecutive nights, each time appearing slightly different. On the second night, the night after Nigel thwarts the ghost of Thomas Ager and then is warned by Verity's ghost that William Ager is also after him, the eyes of the Agers in the painting are all red with rage. On the third night, the night after Nigel discovers the real-life Nightmare Room, he's standing right there in the painting along with the Agers. You get the sense that the dreams are trying to warn Nigel of what will happen if he keeps insisting on hunting the lost crown...
- The Net Hut sequence on day three. All of it.
- It starts with Lucy on the trail of the missing cats, eventually tracking them down to the abandoned Net Store that overlooks Saxton coast, a place with Nigel has repeatedly noted to look foreboding. She and Nigel find a way in, Lucy making it onto the upper walkways and Nigel finding himself on the lower floor, in a labyrinth of piled up junk. The window, the single source of light in the room, suddenly closes and casts the room in darkness. With Nigel's night vision camera, Lucy is able to see, but what she sees is terrifying: a mass of black smoke manifesting near an unaware Nigel, signalling the presence of one of the murderous Agers. Frightened and bewildered by the sight, Lucy has to direct Nigel through the dark maze of junk, all the while being pursued by the ghost, until he can reach the chain to open the window again and dispel the smoke.
- With the coast seemingly clear, Nigel discovers a set of stairs leading to the basement beneath the derelict building, and at the top of it is a collar belonging to Mr. Tibbs, Rhys Branwen's missing cat, stained with blood. Seeing this as a bad sign, Nigel heads down the stairs, opens the door... and with a Scare Chord guaranteed to set your heart pounding, discovers the Nightmare Room from his dreams, somehow far, far worse in reality. The missing cats are found skinned and dangling from a bar like butcher meat, complete with a Gross-Up Close-Up of one of the poor creatures, and one wall is completely covered in photographs of Nigel and Lucy, revealing that the monster behind all of this also has his eyes on them, too. Nigel, the master of Dull Surprise, is completely and utterly horrified.
- It actually gets worse from there. Nigel explores the room, discovering the catnapper's journal revealing that he's torturing and killing local cats out of the insane belief that they're searching for the crown, too. He realises that whoever is killing cats is continuing the Ager's dark work. He finds the portrait of all four Agers overlooking a desk, upon which lies the blood-soaked corpse of a cat believed to be Mr. Tibbs. He opens a drawer and finds the bloody sickle from the painting and the dream. That's when the door's latch suddenly slides shut, trapping Nigel in the room, and a horde of flies comes pouring from the drawer, and the ghosts of the four Agers slowly materialise and surround Nigel as he tries to escape. Lucy arrives in the nick of time and kicks the door open, upon which everything suddenly disappears, including the sickle. It is speculated that Nigel had hallucinated the whole thing, but if he hadn't, the Agers likely would have killed Nigel then and there had Lucy not gotten to him in time.
- When Nigel ventures beneath Ulcombe Church to find Nathanial Ager's crypt, he must first pass through pitch black catacombs full of coffins marked to indicate that they contain plague victims. And every now and then you get a first-person Jump Scare of a rotted ghost writhing in agony.
- Not to mention the occasional pebble, levitated and flung by the catacomb's hostile spirits, hurled directly at the night-vision camera in a clear attempt to break it and strand Nigel underground in the dark.
- When you finally reach Ganwulf's kingdom, it's a dark, ancient, creepy place with several stages you have to go through to reach the crown. The deeper you go, the more you get the sense that you really, really need to turn back while you have the chance.
- After travelling through the crumbling ruins, you reach a chamber with a circle of water bowls, and in the centre is yet another pillar of supernatural black smoke that may (or may NOT) be one of the Agers. In each bowl you see the still image of a past event that has happened to you in-game. There is no explanation for why those images would be there, unless you consider the other strange visions Nigel has had since he began his treasure hunt. Could it be that the visions are somehow being sent by some unknown force within the underground kingdom, warning Nigel to abandon his quest before it's too late?
- After solving several puzzles and activating an ancient elevator, Nigel finally reaches the final resting place of King Ganwulf. The sarcophagus lies at the end of a massive chamber, and above the sarcophagus hovers what appears be a massive swirling white portal bearing an unnerving resemblance to the photographs depicting Hadden's experiments into the 'Chasm', the paranormal dimension which the corporation is studying. The portal sends out startling lightning flashes, illuminating the sarcophagus and the body within; Ganwulf seems dead enough, but when the crown is taken from him the skeleton suddenly turns its skull to give Nigel a literal death glare, and almost immediately Nigel experiences another vision of Ganwulf's helmet staring at him.
- On his way out of Carrion Wood, Nigel finds his way constantly blocked by black shadows, and feels eyes constantly watching him, but it is no longer certain that it's the Agers who are stalking him. Nigel hasn't realised it yet, but something ancient, dark and very dangerous was unleashed when he took the crown.
- When Nigel discovers that someone has ransacked his room and stole the crown, he and Lucy use a crystal ball to track down the thief. Before long the crystal ball reveals Hardacre running down to the coast. At first it seems that he's simply trying to escape Saxton with the crown, but it gradually becomes apparent that he's being chased. The next thing we know, we're seeing a man holding a sickle striking Hardacre over and over, never stopping until the man is lying still on the rocks, and all the while there is a sound like distorted screaming as the screen slowly fades to white...
- In the final chapter, aptly titled 'A Shadow across the Land,' Nigel finds himself along with the crystal ball the next morning, with no memory of what happened to him or Lucy, and almost immediately he senses that something is wrong. When he checks on the paranormal evidence he has collected, everything has been erased. The morning newspaper brings grim tidings of livestock being killed by an unknown pestilence and other troubling events, along with another poison pen letter from the catnapper. When he goes outside, the weather is dismal, and when he encounters Nanny Noah, she acts like she doesn't know him and orders him to go away. Nigel goes about the town, finding out that it's not just Nanny Noah, but everyone who's a Saxton local has fallen under some kind of spell, causing them to forget who Nigel is and turn against him. At the coast he finds that the police have taped off the area, as Professor Hardacre had been murdered the night before by an unknown assailant with a rock or blunt blade.
- And just to make it worse, Nigel's first fear, upon being told someone has been killed among the rocks, is that it's Lucy who's been murdered.
- The Stalker with a Crush letter to Katherine Karswell that Nigel finds at the edge of Brock Farm is really disturbing. Especially considering that it's strongly implied that the writer actually set the fire which killed Katherine and her husband: a double murder for which he was never convicted.
