Eliza, our Horror Host for the game, who lives in a creepy abandoned wagon in the middle of the woods full of skulls and with a raven for a companion. Unsettlingly pale with a habit of popping up in the story to interact with the characters in unnerving ways. If you pay close attention early on you can see her in a few scenes, like sitting in the back of the car or in amongst the trees in the forest.
In fact, she actually stalks a few of the characters. One "blink and you miss it" moment in the Prologue has her show up inside the car before they crash, and she appears later, chasing after Laura in the opening to whisper her son’s name in her ear and send her running.
She really has it out for the Hackett family, celebrating when one of them dies in the story and chastises the player when one of them makes it out alive.
Kill her son and she will curse you - as in you, the player. She takes great pleasure in informing you she will haunt you until your dying day. If you fail to kill all the Hacketts, she will warn you never to return to the quarry. Have fun.
The kicker? She's the Hag of Hackett's Quarry. As in the local ghost story, killed in a fire caused by the Hackett children six years ago when they released her son. The events of the game were all apparently orchestrated by her in an effort to destroy the Hackett family. You, through the characters you have controlled throughout the story and the choices you have made, are the instrument by which she is attempting to enact her vengeance upon the Hacketts, despite her inability to directly influence the story herself. So she really COULD go through on her threats to haunt the player.
The werewolves. Their design is incredibly unsettling: they are large, sleek, humanoid killing machines with glowing red or yellow eyes. They can create more werewolves by biting their victims and they transform by exploding in a cloud of blood.
Watching someone turn is also pretty unnerving, especially the first time you see it with Nick. At first he’s in pretty bad shape and his friends aren’t sure what to do. Later they’re forced to move to the lodge and after a little while Nick noticeably starts improving. Later when forced to move again to the pool is when things start getting scary. Nick starts acting aggressive and after Kaylee dies he just hugs Abi and remarks she smells good. When he refuses to let go Abi pushes him into the pool he starts screaming bloody murder and when they bring him inside the poolhouse the others (sans Abi) note he’s acting strangely and bring up his healing factor, wondering aloud if he contracted something like rabies. While this is happening Abi is trying comfort him and he starts acting aggressively again. He asks if she liked him and gets increasingly agitated even if you're trying to deescalate the situation. Suddenly he practically launches her across the room and changes in an explosion of blood.
Although all of the counselors have many different deaths that can befall them, some of them have certain points in the story where they have a lot of potential deaths that can happen in the same Chapter or even the same encounter with a werewolf. An example of this is Emma on the island in Chapter 4. Once werewolf Max starts attacking her there are a plethora of ways that she can go out, including missing the first zipline and getting knocked off the wooden balcony to the ground below just before Max eats her intestines, having a piece of her neck bitten off and then dying from blood loss, getting a large chunk of her leg bitten through before also dying of blood loss, missing the second zipline and breaking her back on the rocks below (killing her instantly), and having her throat ripped open before Max gnaws on it to the bone.
Any one of Emma's Chapter 4 deaths that are caused directly by Max can also be deeply unsettling for him if he becomes fully human again after the events of Chapter 9. When moving to escape the island, he'll come upon Emma's corpse and, either by realizing that he and her were the only ones on the island besides Laura or by looking at the photo of him as a werewolf on Emma's phone, he'll realize that he killed her in such a gruesome way.
An additional ironic and deeply unsettling death for Emma can happen in Chapter 10 if she was infected on the island in Chapter 4 but cured when Ryan killed Chris, and if Jacob got infected in Chapter 6 and did not pick up Emma's silver bracelet back in Chapter 1. As is standard fare for when a person is about to transform, Jacob's behavior will become increasingly erratic, with him lamenting about how "summer's over" and being clearly distressed and aggravating. This will culminate in him deciding that summer isn't over after all, followed by him snapping Emma's neck, eating through her throat, and ripping her head clean off her body. This is also traumatic for Jacob if he finds himself cured by morning due to either Caleb's or Silas' death, as he realizes that he tore apart the one reason he started all this business (by sabotaging the van) in the first place, making it all for nothing in the worst way possible.
Should Abigail choose not to shoot the werewolf Nick, she will be rewarded with a grisly decapitation, complete with a shot of her head on the floor with an expression of horror.
Although some of Jacob's deaths (especially early on) are (relatively) tame, such as him drowning in Chapter 3, he is by no means an exception to the carnage that can befall any of the other counselors. One such example has him evade a werewolf attacking him on the docks, only to find himself caught in a bear trap, then fail to pull himself free to the point where he falls face first into another trap, killing him nearly instantly unless he becomes infected in the aforementioned werewolf confrontation.
Constance Hackett struggles with Laura for her gun. Should Laura win the struggle, she will blast Constance right in the face, eroding most of her face.
Similarly, should Travis turn on Laura and Ryan, and Ryan fail to shoot him, Travis will shoot Ryan point-blank in the face, leaving a grisly and grotesque mess where his face once was.
A transformed Laura can smack Travis's head clear off his shoulders.
While the potential deaths in this scenario are just as gut wrenching as they are in any other part of the story, Kaitlyn's screams for help, both before she gets attacked and while she's being killed, are nothing short of blood-curdling.
If you don't shoot Silas, he'll rip through Travis, Laura and Ryan like they're made of tissue paper. He decapitates Laura, mauls Travis before ripping his head off too, and Ryan gets the worst of it by having Silas slowly rip his lower jaw off before eviscerating him. Oh, and this all happens onscreen. Sweet dreams!
It is entirely possible to make it to the last chapter and not have any playable characters left. If you do this, Eliza will tell you that you've had your last chance and she can't help you anymore. You are then presented with a sequence that shows you the fates of all the characters (panning slowly over the mangled bodies of the dead and the horrified, bloodied infected in human form) and this sequence is entirely silent, letting it sink in just what you've managed to do to all of these characters.
In the path leading to Ryan killing Chris and undoing Laura’s transformation, and if you did not not shoot or antagonize Travis in the Hackett home, he begins to tell Laura and Ryan ahout the original werewolf, Silas. He mentions he hasn’t been seen in the area for quite some time, and there’s been sightings “up and down the coast”. Now just imagine how many people might have been gruesomely attacked far beyond the Quarry and general area. Even worse, those who could have survived and been infected with the curse thinking they narrowly escaped with their lives, going home to turn on a full moon over a span of SIX YEARS in various places, potentially murdering or turning their neighbors and family members, continuing the spread of death. While not having any control of his actions while transformed and being a victim himself, suddenly killing Silas comes off as the only way to prevent a nationwide lycan pandemic.
One of the Clues that Jacob can find is a bloated corpse, wrapped in barbed wire and chained to the bottom of the lake. Regardless of who that corpse was or why it's down there, the counselors and young children at Hackett's Quarry have spent at least one summer playing around and boating in the same water as a fairly recently deceased human being, judging by the amount of decay present when Jacob finds the body. And friendly surrogate dad Chris Hackett knew about it, because he had to have been the one who posted the signs telling campers to stay out of the water, as well as the one who wrote the protocol counselors were to follow in the event that someone fell in.
If Jacob dies before The Hermit is discovered, Eliza will remark that the card has no future - only a past. Should you agree to watch the vision Eliza offers you, you will see Bobby and Jedediah Hackett throwing a body into the lake from the same pier Jacob and Emma later dive off of. All of the Hacketts knew that they were allowing children to gambol all over a watery gravesite, and the only thing anyone did to mitigate the nastiness of it was make a rule against swimming in the lake... and considering the Hacketts' M.O., even that was likely more to protect themselves than the campers.
. You are then presented with a sequence that shows you the fates of all the characters (panning slowly over the mangled bodies of the dead and the horrified, bloodied infected in human form) and this sequence is entirely silent, letting it sink in just what you've managed to do to all of these characters.