Recap / Nancy Drew Game 3 Message In A Haunted Mansion

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Dear Bess,
Hello from stormy San Francisco! This time I'm staying in a beautiful old Victorian mansion. You'd love the room I'm in - it's full of old Chinese furnishings and some interesting knick-knacks.
The owner of the house, Rose Green, is a friend of Hannah and asked me to come out and help her with some renovation work. She and her friend, Abby, hope to turn the place into a bed and breakfast by next month.
But from what I gathered last night, Rose isn't sure if she can open in time. Ever since they started the renovations, they've had a lot of accidents. Could it be just bad luck, or is there something more sinister at work? I'm sure I'll find out!
Love, Nancy

The game opens with Nancy in her room at Rose Green's old Victorian mansion. Her friend Abby informs Nancy that the house may be haunted by the ghost of someone named Valdez, the original owner of the mansion. Meanwhile, Rose Green appears rather stressed about the condition of the house. She's dealt with a lot of accidents lately, including a gas leak and a scaffolding collapse. With some snooping, Nancy discovers that she's insured the house for one million dollars against fire — could it be she just wants to collect off that insurance?

The house handyman, Charlie, has been agitated by the whole ordeal. He's had a tendency of showing up at the scene of the accidents, plus lacks experience and frequently gets the first blame. He proclaims it isn't his fault, even though the others believe otherwise. Louis, the house's antique dealer, has been brought on to make the house look closer to its original state.

As Nancy snoops around the house, various occurrences that appear to be hauntings seem to take place, such as strange noises, a flash of light behind the windows, and a chair being "sat" on by an invisible person. Abby hosts a seance to see if she can contact these spirits, where Valdez claims to be searching for his wife. Nancy returns back to the scene of the seance though, and finds a tape recorder with a fog machine, discovering she faked the whole thing.

After finishing a chore for Rose, Nancy is assigned another one and in the process discovers a hidden attic full of things that hadn't been touched in what appears to be decades. She follows a trail of clues that seem to indicate Valdez fell in love with a girl named Elizabeth "Lizzie" Applegate, and he appears to be leading her somewhere, but where?

All the while, Nancy discovers a hidden passage behind a book case in the library, where she finds an area she could spy on people and uncovers a lantern. This lantern helps her crawl underneath the old fireplace in the basement, where she finds the living space of...Charlie? He's been living in this house the whole time? She takes a floppy disk with his name on it.

Back in her room, Nancy receives a threatening note that commands she "leave the mansion now!" Distressed but not discouraged, she arrives in the parlor to find Rose's worst fear — fire! Luckily, she is able to extinguish the flame just in time. Nobody in the house knows what started it, but when Nancy returns to the scene, she finds two charred old letters that Rose wrote, which were in a different spot last she checked. That fire must have been deliberate.

Nancy returns upstairs and hears Rose and Abby arguing about where their priorities lie. Nancy sneaks into Abby's room, and uncovers a big cabinet full of high tech gadgetry. A sound board, spy cameras, and a tape player in conjunction with an old speaker she uncovered behind a vent earlier all help Nancy conclude the only ghost who walks the halls is Abby.

Nancy returns to the library and spies on Louis, finding him enthralled with a book. She proceeds to take advantage of a virus on his computer to check out what was on Charlie's disk — it's a term paper about the entire history of the house! She also discovers Louis's briefcase combination, which she uses to have a peek inside. Among other pointers about the house's history, she runs across a book with the term "gum bo fu". What does that mean?

After asking around the house and mostly getting non-answers, Hannah says she might have a lead on it. Rose then informs Nancy that they are off to the winter festival so she'll be alone in the house for a while, but has removed a tapestry from her room and delivered the letter Hannah sent. Hannah informs Nancy that "gum bo fu" means "gold treasure mansion". Could it be?

Nancy discovers behind her tapestry is a series of strange locks. As she digs deeper and deeper, she uncovers a jewel. After putting two and two together and realizing this could be the eye that was missing from the ornament on a staircase, she puts it back in and finds a light shining on the floor centerpiece. She opens it up with her crowbar, and finds a pit full of gold! But before long, she's knocked out.

Louis! He was the one causing the trouble! Without a moment to lose, she unties the chandelier and traps him.

Dear Bess,
I'm just about finished with my renovation work and counting out all of those gold coins! Louis was behind all of the accidents, hoping to pressure Rose into selling the house so he could find the treasure himself. Although Rose and Abby may not have a legal right to the gold, the bank the coins were stolen from will still give them a reward for finding it.
The house has also gotten a lot of publicity with all the news stories, and the place is booked solid for the first month of it's opening! I guess a haunted bed and breakfast with hidden treasures is all the rage these days, even if there are no such things as ghosts. I think.
See you soon.
Love, Nancy

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Tropes in this entry include:

• Arc Words:
  • The long poem in Nancy's room ends up being a very critical part of the game. Not only does it parallel the game's premise, it also serves as the guide for all the Chinese symbols you need to find to solve one of the final puzzles.
  • Late in the game, "gum bo fu" becomes this, as it ends up meaning "gold treasure mansion".
• Being Watched: Oh good grief, this game has a huge amount of these moments.
  • The hauntings give off this feeling, such as a whisper of "I see you" and a painting that blinks.
    • And, once you find out the reason behind the hauntings, it's not even that far off — Abby has spy cameras set up around the house and can see people from a two-way mirror in her room.
  • The first time you get ready to leave the basement, you just briefly catch a glimpse of someone slamming the door on you.
  • When you talk on the phone about the meaning of "gum bo fu", you briefly hear a door open and then close in the background, making it appear as if someone is onto you.
• Big Bad: Louis, who wanted the treasure for himself.
• Bookcase Passage: The library has one of these, which doesn't open until you get all three tiles over the fireplace back in.
• Call-Back: A newspaper snippet in Louis's briefcase has an article that Rick Arlen is "back with a vengeance", alluding to the previous game "Stay Tuned for Danger". Also doubles as a plot element that implies Louis is keeping tabs on Nancy.
• Chekhov's Armory: Pretty much every part of the main lobby counts as this. Most of the stuff in there — the bird with the missing eye, the floor design, the creak in the floor, and the hanging chandelier — seems completely insignificant up until the finale.
• Chekhov's Gag:
  • The creak in the floor in the lobby, which seems to just be there for atmosphere until it becomes a death trap in the finale.
  • The "hauntings" (if you can call them gags) become this once you reach the locked cabinet in Abby's room.
• Developer's Foresight: If you sneak into Abby's room real early on, the key to her cabinet will be absent. This prevents the player from having the reason behind the hauntings being spoiled too early on and ruining the suspense of them.
• Event Flags: Most notably, the threatening note you receive happens the exact moment the fire is triggered in the parlor.
• Failure Gambit: Louis causes the accidents hoping that Rose gives up and sells the house so that he could find the gold himself.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: The lobby has one of these, though it only falls if you intentionally unhook it.
• Foreshadowing: Plenty of it.
  • Rose brings up her fear of the house burning down multiple times. Guess what happens later on?
    • Additionally, there is a fire extinguisher quite conveniently close to where the eventual fire occurs. If you look at it before the fire, Nancy remarks "it's good to know it's here."
  • Rose points out the Contrived Coincidence that Charlie was looking for work only a few minutes after Rose and Abby were talking about needing help in the basement, hinting at the fact Charlie was already living in the house.
• Get Out!: Occurs if you're caught snooping in Abby's room or Louis's briefcase, unhook the lobby chandelier, or tell Louis you found "gum bo fu" in a book.
• Hypocrite: One of the things that can lead to a game over is if Abby catches you snooping in her room. Rose will chide you for violating privacy, but Abby is in little position to complain considering she has spy cameras set up around the house.
• Idiot Ball: For the purposes of not spoonfeeding information to the player, the characters clutch it at a few points:
  • Rose and Louis both insist that we have no idea who the original owner of the house was. This in spite of the fact that a box in the parlor has a phone book page that very obviously spells it out for you.
  • Just after the fire occurs, Rose claims nobody can figure out who started the fire. The only person who has any justification for "not knowing" would be Louis since, well, he's the eventual culprit after all so it's obvious he'd lie about it. Everyone else, however, must not have given any glance at the box that was set ablaze because you can see remnants of some old letters Rose wrote, and when asking Rose about it, she mentions she doesn't remember where she put them. Someone must not have looked very closely at the wreckage...
  • Nancy and Louis both clutch it when Louis leaves her the threatening note. First, he waits until Nancy is at the door to deliver it and quickly slides it under, as opposed to when she's asleep and thus has little chance of getting spotted. Second, Nancy's immediate instinct should have been to open the door or even just peek through to see who delivered this unexpected note, as she could have just figured out the culprit then and there and saved herself a lot more trouble.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: An admittedly light example because it's not actually necessary to solve it, but there is a book in the library on Louis's desk that teaches you how a knight moves in chess. This is supposed to be a hint for a puzzle that is a part of the end game, meaning not only is it very likely you will forget this book even existed by then, but said puzzle has absolutely nothing to do with chess (it's one of those tile flipping puzzles where you need to flip over every tile, and every tile you click also flips over every adjacent tile). Exactly how the player was expected to make the connection there is a mystery in and of itself.
• No OSHA Compliance: The hook for the chandelier is within easy reach on the stairway, instead of somewhere locked off or where you would need a ladder to reach it. This would pose a huge safety hazard if the house was open to the public like Rose plans it to be.
• Paranoia Gambit: Overlapping with the Failure Gambit, Rose makes it very obvious that she fears the house burning down more than anything — something Louis obviously took into account when committing arson.
• Red Herring: Charlie's term paper about the history of the house is purely a coincidence — he has nothing to do with the pursuit of the house's possible treasure.
• Schmuck Bait: In the finale, the obvious choice would be to go up the right staircase since that is the quicker way to the chandelier hook. However, if you run up that staircase, you'll hit the creak in the floor and alert Louis to your presence, signalling him to run out and giving you a game over.
• Secret Path: Crawling under the fireplace tunnel leads to a hidden room behind a two-way mirror in the basement. It also can be exited from a hidden door disguised as part of the wall in the hallway.
• Smash Cut: If you unhook the Falling Chandelier of Doom before you're supposed to, you immediately cut away to the phone...
  Bess: You did WHAT?!
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Happens if you attempt to crawl through the basement fireplace tunnel without the lantern.
• What the Hell, Player?: Most of the game overs will get you scolded by the house guests as is expected, but if you unhook the chandelier, you get to instead be lectured by Bess and George, who are absolutely steamed over your carelessness.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Rose brings up fire multiple times, and has the house insured for one million dollars against fire. Sure enough, you have to extinguish a potential house fire at one point in the game.