While most ghost stories take place in haunted houses, hauntings can afflict business buildings, parks and even boats. The locale of your haunting will affect the mood of the adventure. If you want a bone-chilling investigation, a house will work nicely since it is a familiar setting that will set the player's imaginations rolling. Buildings in general are more useful for investigations of bizarre happenings without an inherent danger.

Parks and graveyards, like houses, are frightening locales, but the open air allows easy escape which may be impossible in the house. So be sure to make it a fog-clouded night when they go exploring, preferably during the new moon when it's darkest.

Ghost ships provide intense adventures where escape is impossible and the terror peaks, but tension like this should be reserved to a single isolated adventure or it ruins the genre.

Haunted Houses

The haunted house is best known to those of us who have lived with an abandoned house down the street, windows boarded up, creaking sounds escaping from within. When dealing with a haunting in -a house, the characters should have to spend some time inside. This is easily done if they live there, but if they just walk in and out, the effect of being trapped will be lost. There is a tale of the two vagrants who found refuge in an abandoned home only to be awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a ghost screaming.

One jumped from the second story window and the other escaped alive. This is the kind of horror you want in your adventure. Sleeping over-night is a good way to keep the characters in the house.

If they are cautious about staying too deeply inside a possible haunted house, have it start raining and put the only dry room in the center of the building. Easy escapes could be boarded up or treacherous to use with rotten floorboards. This is why older houses are more useful - in a new home those kinds of dangers would be out of place and would confuse players rather than adding to the atmosphere.

If the ghost is not some evil creature, there is no fear, since the players figure their characters are not in any real danger. To create a false sense of peril, then, one must take further steps. When exploring the house, minor frights can be used to add to the effect.

Encountering rats in the basement or mice scurrying by in the middle of the night works well and is not inherently dangerous - just disconcerting. Creaking sounds that give the impression of someone walking toward works as well, as old houses tend to make strange sounds when they settle. The actual encounter with the haunting might take place hours after the players arrive, or if you feel like building tension, days later - just when they're about to leave in frustration.

The encounter should rise from nowhere, perhaps when they are investigating some other minor detail. Have the ghost appear right over the character's heads or right next to them. This is a good time for fear checks.

The resolution of a haunted house adventure should resolve the haunting in some way. Either it ends or it continues with newfound strength and perhaps moves its focus to the characters. There have been cases of families moving into haunted houses, only to find the ghost following them when they moved away. This adds the horror of dealing with the spirits.

Ghost Ships

A ghost ship provides a kind of terror unmatched in any land-locked adventure. Unlike houses or parks, the characters are completely trapped aboard with the ghost and must resolve the situation there and then. These adventures should be both terrifying and personal. Perhaps the ghost is someone the character knows. Or maybe the ghost is a former passenger on the ship who was killed by the crew and now seeks vengeance upon all inhabitants. Poltergeist activity during a long trip after food supplies have run out will make things even worse.

The key to dealing with a haunted ship should lie in its history, in some location deep within the hull, or perhaps in a spot in the sea it happens to pass over. This forces the characters to explore the ship and delve into its past - very, very quickly. While down below, odd shifts in the movement of the boat may heighten paranoia while strange noises will certainly excite the players' imaginations. Again, use of animals such as rats can be justified in larger vessels, and birds circling overhead can be used to signal some approaching danger.

While being stuck aboard a ghost ship can be terrifying, encountering one on the open seas may make more sense in an adventure. In this case, the desire to explore a drifting empty ship will draw the characters into more than they bargained for. In this case, the cause of the haunting should definitely be found aboard the ship, This is also one case in which the characters might find decomposed corpses lolling about in various creepy locations.

However if you are after more of a mystery, it might be better for the characters to find no trace whatsoever of the crew or passengers. In our own world there have been many cases of ships found drifting, empty and with no apparent cause for the crew to abandon them. This kind of discovery could be very disturbing if they later found a haunting in the middle of the sea where the crew were all killed.

Resolving a ghost ship crisis will be difficult, as the characters will most likely concentrate on escape. This is simply solved by making escape impossible. If the characters should get away, say to a Coast Guard vessel in the vicinity, a storm a few days later could force them to abandon ship and take refuge on - guess what happens by. This kind of forced return intensifies the horror as the characters realize they will never escape.

Graveyard Hauntings

Graveyards are natural locations for hauntings. In fact, many call them haunting grounds. The final resting place of the dead is a natural place for spirits to hang out, as ancient tradition held that a restless spirit was bound to the place of their bur­ial. However, many graveyards are treated as nothing more than scenery without character. This is completely unlike the way a haunted graveyard should seem. Looming oak trees should make the brightest day dark and gloomy, and bizarre gravestones should adorn the ground, mak­ing running through a hazardous affair. Why have clean rows and paths through the grounds when you have a labyrinth of sagging tombs? Escape from an open area is too easy; it should seem as if the characters are trapped in a world of death, where the exit is difficult to find and the journey is full of stones and low-lying branches that force you to watch where you're running and not what's following you.

The actual haunting of a graveyard is most like­ly to be in the form of an impassioned or fearful ghost, though an apparition could be present. Poltergeist activity is rarely found around, unless there is a groundskeeper who really hates his job. The kind of haunting will affect how you present the graveyard. If the ghost is impassioned, there will be a sense of order to the confusion on the grounds. For example, the graveyard home to a ghost seeking to be with his true love (or at least have his body interred with hers) would have many "Beloved wife of..." on the tombstones and other such romantic gestures. The ghost's grave would have no inscriptions, but a rose growing behind it and a tree nearby could have a carving of a heart with the ghost's initials and someone else's in it.

Graveyard hauntings are rarely resolved, since few people visit graveyards for very long and if something frightful is discovered, they leave and never return. This is why ghosts haunting this locale will most likely be frustrated and desperate for help, perhaps to the extent of forcing the char­acters to help them by trapping them in the grave­yard. Possessing one of the characters is another possibility. In any case, this should be one haunt­ing the characters may wish to forget (and that's okay if they had a good time being scared).

Anatomy of a Haunting "Real Life" Ghosts to Enhance Your Campaign

Introduction
Types Of Hauntings
Haunted Places
Ghostbusting and Exorcisms