Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion Walkthrough by Jenny Guenther

I played as Senior Detective.
This is only one possible path through the game. Many of the tasks need not be
completed in order. This is a chronicle of my wanderings through the game; it’s
definitely not the most efficient path.

Nancy’s Room

At the
game start, you are in Nancy’s room at the mansion.

First look at the desk
that you are facing. Then, circling to the right, look at the table to the left
of the fireplace. Look at the green dragon on the mantel and note the inscription,
"Daughters of diligence earn the gold of nine dragons." Note the Chinese
symbol next to "Daughters."

Look
at alarm clock on table to left of bed. Note that the time is 8:15 a.m. and the
alarm is set for 9:00 a.m. To exit this screen, click the cancel button on the
alarm clock.

Look at the dragon motif on the footboard of the bed. Look
at the knob on the right part of the footboard. Nancy says, "It’s stuck."

Look
at the tapestry to the left of the door.

Look
at Nancy’s luggage (to right of door). Nancy says, "It’s locked." Use
the key that you started with on the suitcase. Open suitcase, look at Nancy’s
journal. Read it. Not much there at this point, but you can see that it might
be useful later. To exit this screen, first close the book by clicking on the
left side, then close the suitcase.

Pan back left to the door and click
it to leave Nancy’s room.

You will enter a hallway.

Upstairs Hallway

Look
at dumbwaiter. Notice it’s not there right now.

Go to Abby’s room, knock
on door, and talk to Abby. Choose whatever conversation path suits you; she says
the same things no matter what you choose. Abby tries to warn you about spirits,
but you’re not having any.

After you talk to Abby, go back and look at Nancy’s
notebook again. You will see a new entry detailing the important info you learned
from Abby. That’s good to know.

Go down the spiral stairs.

Downstairs

You
will be facing the dumbwaiter. Look at it again. Click on the rope end. Nancy
says, "The rope is cut." You say, "duh."

Go through
the double doors at the end of the hallway and talk to Rose. Again, it doesn’t
matter what conversation choices you make. She will fill you in on the background
and tell you a little about Charlie and then ask you to solve a parquet tile problem.

Click
on the floor to the right of Rose to get the Tangram puzzle. This is kind of tricky.
You have to make sure the pieces are highlighted before you lay them down. And
if you do it right, there will be no gaps.

After
you complete the puzzle, talk to Rose again. She’ll tell you to go upstairs and
chip tiles from the ceiling. Ask her about Abby.

Before you go back upstairs,
you might as well look around a little. Panning to the right of Rose, first look
at the table, then the magazine to learn how to build a four-poster bed (?!).

Look
at the sideboard, then the clipboard to see everyone’s schedule. Look at the drawer
to the right of the clipboard to learn about Rose’s new fire insurance policy.
Very suspicious, no? Take note of the Chinese symbol for "fire."

Look
at the far side of the dining table from where Rose is sitting. Atmosphere, pure
and simple.

Okay, now time to go back upstairs.

Upstairs …

Examine
the construction area. Note the water damage on the patterned ceiling. Nancy says,
"I need a paint scraper." No paint scrapers near here, so let’s try
downstairs.

… Downstairs

Go downstairs, this time through
the open door near the construction area. We are in the foyer. Look under the
scaffolding and examine the paint can. Move the paint tray to find the paint scraper.

As
long as we’re here, we might as well look around a bit again. Panning to the right
of the scaffolding, we first look at the stained glass light over the entry door.
We see the address, backwards, is 4653. I wouldn’t be surprised if this means
something later.

Look at the table between the two chairs. Nice lamp. Look
at the pictures above the lamp. Listen to the grandfather clock.

Look at
the bird head post on the left side of the left stairway. Nancy says, "It’s
missing an eye." Hmm … Look at the bird head post on the right side
of the left stairway to see what the eye should look like. You can also look at
the bird head posts on either side of the right stairway, but nothing happens.

There
are two doors we can use to exit this room. The one between the stairs, we recognize
from our earlier foray into the downstairs hallway. Let’s try that one, and then
the door to the left. It leads to the basement. We’ll save that for later.

The
door across from the basement door is inaccessible. Let’s try that other door
out of the front room. Back we go …

Sitting Room

… To
find ourselves in the sitting room. Panning to the right of where we are standing,
click on the side table. Nothing much doing there.

To the right of the side
table is another set of double doors. We’ll come back to that later.

Examine
the desk in the corner. There’s a phone that we can use to call home, Bess, or
Emily. I really like Bess; I think I’d like to hear her voice again, so I dial …
Guess what? George is there, too. What I learned is that we can call them for
hints if we get stuck. Good to know.

I’ll try Emily. I really don’t know
her that well, but I’d like to hear what she has to say … She turns out
to be an old friend (I guess I really do know her but just forgot) who lives in
San Francisco; she’s a veritable gold mine of information. Ask her as much or
as little as you care to, but I think it’s a good idea to ask her everything.

I
miss my pappy, so I’ll try calling home as long as I’m here … He’s not
home, but Hannah answers the phone and fills us in on Rose and Rose’s situation.
(Hannah sounds just like Patty Mayonnaise on the cartoon show Doug, doesn’t
she?)

My ear is ringing. Time to be done calling people. Look in the left
drawer of the phone table. I found some interesting correspondence.

All
right, continuing our rightward circuit, next we come to a corner cabinet with
a floral scene on the door. Open it to find a fire extinguisher. Nancy says, "It’s
good to know it’s here."

Look at the fireplace, then the box on a chair
toward the right of the screen. Find an old telephone directory from 1894. Note
that E. Valdez, Hotelier, once lived at 4653 California Street. Funny …
that’s this house. Didn’t Abby say something about Valdez?

Look at
the other paper in the box to learn that the property was auctioned off several
years later, in 1906. I don’t know what all this means, but I have a feeling I’ll
find out.

Look at the windows to the right of the left-most sofa to get
some spooky curtain movement.

Look at the table between the two window nooks.
Look at the bird carving under the table. Look at the book on the table to the
right of the chairs, "Subterranean San Francisco." Read it to learn
about tunnels under the city.

Now I think we’ve seen everything in this
room; let’s try the double doors we passed by earlier.

Library

It’s
the library.

Look at the fireplace, then look at the missing tiles. Something
odd here, if you click on one of the empty spots, Nancy says, "it won’t fit."
What won’t fit? I guess we should find some tiles and try again later. Meanwhile,
be sure to look at the statue/lever thing on the left side of the fireplace.

For
a change of pace, let’s pan to the left this time. Look at the desk. What’s this?
A laptop! Turns out all you can do with it is play a maze game. Look at the book
to the left of the computer to learn the knight’s moves in chess.

Look at
the boxes of books to the left of the desk. Read one to learn about phoenixes.

Look
at the table between the two green leather chairs. It’s a Mah Jongg set. Examine
the tiles more closely. You can learn a Chinese symbol for four.

Look
at another pile of books in a different corner. Read about Lizzie Applegate.

That’s
about it here. Let’s go pry off some ceiling tiles now. Back upstairs to the construction
area. As you climb up the stairs, a whispered voice … "I see you."
Ooh!

Construction Area

Use the paint scraper on all of the
water-damaged tiles to reveal a secret door. Examine the keyhole. Nancy says,
"It’s locked." At this point, I went back to Nancy’s room to check the
journal and got some creepy noises there, too, but nothing much new in the journal.

I
recall that I haven’t explored the basement yet. Down I go.

Basement

Talk
to Charlie. Choose any topics. He tells you he thinks he’s a good worker and it’s
not his fault that there are so many accidents.

Look at the piano. You can’t
open the door to the player piano roll part, but you can tap out tunes on the
keyboard. Question is, what tune? You try the piano bench and find sheet music
for "Swanee River." There are no notes to play, but there is another
Chinese symbol, for "river."

Try
looking at the fireplace. Nancy says, "I should wait until he leaves."

Look
at the scrollwork behind the bar. Read the book, "Famous Non-Alcoholic Drinks
and how to mix them," to learn how to make Minty Festival Punch and Ginger
Whisper. Mmm, I’m thirsty.

Read the newspaper on the table to the left of
the bar to learn about the B&B boom in San Francisco.

Look at the junk
to the left of the stairs to read a piece of old newspaper telling us about some
scandalous behavior (play-acting) by society ladies.

Back Upstairs

Go
talk to Rose again and exhaust all topics of conversation. You learn some interesting
tidbits. Most interesting is the name of the owner of the laptop in the library,
Louis.

Here I went back to use the phone in the sitting room to call Emily
again. She told me a little bit more about some of the stuff I had learned. Then
the phone rang, and I heard a "creepy sound."

Sudden Death
… Sort of

As I was heading back up to the second floor, using the
right set of stairs this time, I noticed a rope wound around a knob on the wall.
I clicked on it and learned that it lowered the chandelier in the foyer. I clicked
again until the rope was completely unwound, and the chandelier dropped to the
floor. Rose kicked me out of the house. Luckily, the game has a "second chance"
option that let me restart just before unwinding any of the chandelier rope.

Back
into the Bowels of the House

Down to the basement again. Now Charlie’s
gone, so I can look at the fireplace. I see a grate, but Nancy says, "It’s
stuck." I look at Charlie’s work table and take a screwdriver from his toolbox.
I look at the base of a table to the left of Charlie’s work table and find a secret
compartment … with nothing in it.

Look at the right side of the bar; examine
the cash register, push a button to open the drawer, and find a key.

Attic

As
I was going back upstairs, someone (or something) slammed the basement door shut.
Scary …

I tried the new key on the attic trapdoor (above the construction
area), and it worked!

Up in the attic, panning to the right, first examine
the table and read "The Mysterious Story Book." Examine the lectern.
Nancy says, "It’s locked." Examine the old tool chest to find a crowbar.
Just what the doctor ordered! No adventure game is complete without a crowbar.

Read
the diary on the old sewing table to learn about a puzzle pyramid and the possibility
of a puzzle mansion.

Look in the box by the doll head to find an iron. Take
the iron. Note the bundles of old newspapers. Look on top of the barrel to find
a tile. Take the tile.

That’s about it up here, so we turn to leave, but
the trapdoor rope breaks. Good thing we have the crowbar! That does the trick.

Basement
Yet Again

Let’s try our crowbar on that grill in the fireplace. It works!
Alas, it’s too dark down there to see anything. I hope we find a light soon.

Nancy’s
Room Yet Again

Back up to Nancy’s room. I looked at the notebook, but
nothing had changed. I remembered that bedpost, so I tried the crowbar on it.
No go. Then I tried the screwdriver, and that didn’t work either. I tried the
paint scraper, and that did the trick. This is a prime example of the inimitable
logic of adventure games. Anyway, all commentary aside, I found another key.

Attic
Revisited

The new key opens the lectern in the attic. You find sheet
music for The Bandit’s Treasure. Do you suppose that’s the tune to play on the
piano? Worth a try. What’s with those circled notes?

Before
we go, let’s look at the other stuff in the lectern. There’s an old playbill for
"The Bandit’s Treasure," a recommendation letter from E. Valdez, a photo
of a woman (maybe Lizzie Applegate?), and a practice book of Chinese characters
for the word "beginning."

Piano
Playing (Basement)

Play the highlighted notes from The Bandit’s Treasure
on the piano. The notes are B-E-G-A-G. On the playable keys of the piano, numbered
from the left, the order is 6-2-4-5-4. That’s for all of you who stink at music
puzzles as badly as I do. It took a good deal of figuring out for me. When you
get the right sequence, the player roll cabinet opens, and you get a piece of
a player roll for The Bandit’s Treasure with a note saying that it’s the key you
need. (Note: Well after the fact, I found a book in the library, on the
shelf under the statue of the horse, that lays out the keys. And another book
on the shelf under the photo that tells what notes lie where on the staff. D’oh!)

Attic

Go
back up to the attic, open the lectern, get the sheet music, and put the player
piano roll scrap on it. It reveals the clue, "find Diego on stairs."
Off we go, a’Diego huntin’.

Landing

Go to the foyer stairs,
but not down, and look at the railing. There are letters on the bottoms of the
posts. Turn the posts until the letters spell DIEGO. You’re on your own here–I
didn’t take notes on what order I clicked the posts. Anyway, when you get done,
it spells out "coins false floor" and a compartment opens up under the
posts.

Click on the compartment. You see a scroll. Click on the scroll and
get a wooden Chinese pictogram. Open the scroll and read it. It’s a note telling
you "here is the tool that you’ll need to find" the treasure. Then there’s
a poem riddle:

Library

Go
back to the library and meet Louis. Talk to him until he gives you the brush-off.
His last suggestion is to go talk to Abby.

On the Way to Abby’s Room

You
go back up the stairs from the foyer, and as you are heading down the hall, you
notice a vent on the bottom right corner. Use the screwdriver on all four screws
to remove the cover, and you see a speaker inside. Hmm, could that be the source
of those ghostly sounds? Put the vent cover back. Next time you pass by that vent,
you hear a woman crying. It gets louder as you approach the vent.

Seance

Go
to Abby’s room and knock on the door. Watch the seance. After the cutscene, you
are back in Nancy’s room. It is 10:15 p.m. Check the notebook.

As you leave
Nancy’s room, you catch a glimpse of a shadowy figure slipping down the hallway.

Dining
Room

Go down to the dining room, where Rose used to be but is no longer.
Now you can examine all of her paperwork, four pieces in all. While you’re there,
observe Rose’s coffee mug. Wonder where she got that? I want one!

Basement

Go
back to basement. Look at the base of the table where the seance was held. Open
the secret compartment. Now there’s a smoke machine, a film projector, and a cassette
inside. Take the cassette.

Dumbwaiter

Go back up and look at
the frayed rope on the dumbwaiter. Use the iron on the end of the rope. Go upstairs
and look in the dumbwaiter. Take the tile. Note the Chinese symbol for "eye"
on the bottom of the cup.

Nancy’s
Room

Go back to Nancy’s room. Nancy, always quick on the uptake, checks
her journal and sees her own note that the seance was a hoax. As you leave Nancy’s
room, someone slips an envelope under the door and then runs off too quickly for
you to see who it was. You read the note: "Leave the mansion now!" (You
try, but the front door won’t open! You’re stuck! Just kidding.)

Fire!

Go
back down to the sitting room. Fire! Good thing you found the fire extinguisher
already! Get the fire extinguisher and use it on the fire. You hear sirens in
the background, then you find yourself back in the dining room with Rose. Exhaust
all topics.

Library

Go to the library and talk to Louis again.
Exhaust all topics. We don’t like him much. Something smells like fish. You think
he could be the bad guy? We’ll just have to wait and see …

There’s
a third tile behind some books on the shelves to the right of the library exit
door. Sweep your magnifying glass cursor over the books until it lights up, then
click.

Sidetracked

We now have three tiles–let’s see if we
can fix that fireplace. Where was that again? Not the basement, but I talked to
Charlie again while I was down there. He seems so genuine and innocent, and he
manages to cast a little doubt on Louis. Or was it the elusive and spooky Abby?
Hmm …

Oooh, we can go snoop in Abby’s room now. Look at the interesting
spider lock on her wardrobe. Look at the book on her nightstand and read about
Lizzie Applegate and the Bandit. Get caught and get kicked out of the house. Second
chance time again …

Oh well, maybe we’ll try that another time. That
fireplace again… Oh yeah, it was in the library all along.

Secret Doors
and Tunnels

Place the three tiles you collected where they go (you have
to make a symmetrical pattern), then pull the bird lever to the left of the fireplace.
What’s this? A secret door! Better hustle on over there before it closes!

Look
at the bottom of the portrait of the little girl to get the Chinese symbol for
"child."

Take
the lantern. Look at the loose brick above the lantern’s location to find a peephole
to spy on the Mah Jongg table.

Pull the lever and back out of the hidey
hole.

Now that we have a lantern, it’s time to go explore the tunnel under
the basement. (In the fireplace, remember?)

Look out for the hole! Continue
down to the end of the tunnel. Look at the Chinese food containers to get the
Chinese symbol for "king."

Look
at the book to learn about "El Diablo." Take the "term paper"
diskette. Somebody’s been sleeping here. Look at the postcard. It’s signed "Charlie"!

Look
at the bar. You are behind the mirror that’s behind the bar in the basement. Go
up the stairs. You come out in the downstairs hallway again.

Let’s go talk
to Rose again. Exhaust all topics.

Library

Time to do the horrible
maze game on Louis’s computer. I solved it by sticking to the left wall no matter
what and wandering where I was led. I suspect that book about the knight moves
next to the computer might play into it somehow, though. Eventually, I came to
a giant target on the maze floor, et voila! I was in. I found a list of San Francisco
hotels showing that the mansion was called the "Golden Gardenia Hotel"
in 1888, as well as a list of Louis’s passwords. The password to his computer
is "antiques," and the password to his briefcase is "4653-4868."
There, now you don’t have to do the maze game at all.

Exit
from the computer close-up, and then put Charlie’s term paper diskette on the
diskette slot in front of the laptop. Log on to the computer again using Louis’s
name and password, and click on the diskette icon to read Charlie’s term paper
outline.

Abby

I wanted to go talk to Abby again, but she was
always snoring. I looked at the alarm clock in Nancy’s room, which said 5:00 a.m.
I set it to 8:00 a.m., and the time was advanced to 8:00! Abby was now awake;
I exhausted all topics with her. She admitted to staging "part" of the
seance and tried to cast suspicion on Charlie.

Library

Go back
to the library, use the secret door, and look through the spyhole. This will trigger
a cutscene where we see Louis taking a book from the library, exclaiming "aha!",
and putting the book in his briefcase. He is called out of the room by Rose, and
he leaves his briefcase on the green chair. Time to go see what he was hiding..

We
open the briefcase using the combination from Louis’s computer (two locks, two
combinations) and read the book. We learn a Chinese phrase, Gum Bo Fu. We rifle
through the rest of Louis’s papers and find out that the dirty dog is nothing
but a treasure hunter. He already has a client lined up to buy the mansion’s hidden
treasure when he finds it.

I’d Like to Phone a Friend, Regis

I
called Emily since she’s an expert on all things Chinese and San Francisco, and
she filled me in on a lot of stuff. She didn’t know what "Gum Bo Fu"
meant, so she told me to ask everyone in the house.

Then just for the heck
of it, I tried Louis’s office number from the business card in his briefcase,
and the "call could not be completed as dialed." Hmm …

Chit-Chat
All over the Place

First I talked to Rose, then Charlie (he had a lot
to say), then Abby, then Louis, who is back in the library by this time. When
I asked Louis about Gum Bo Fu, he said, "where did you hear about that?"
The choices were "in a book" or "from a magazine." I said
"from a magazine." I don’t know if the outcome would have been any different
if I had said "in a book." Louis told me that Gum Bo Fu were private
homes where books and documents were stored to protect them from the fires that
ravaged San Francisco around the turn of the century.

Abby’s Room

I
was hoping to get another chance to search Abby’s room. As I passed by the mirror
in the hall outside her door, I saw a ghost in the mirror! Aaaaagh! But it was
a good thing I pulled myself together, because Abby is indeed absent from her
room. I saved first, remembering what happened last time I tried snooping, then
went in. To the right of her door is a trunk containing a book on illusions. To
the right of the trunk is a picture. When you click on it, it opens, revealing
the backside of the haunted mirror. In the wavy bookshelf in the corner is a book
on the Chinese Zodiac.

Her
desk drawer contains some incense with the Chinese symbol for "moon."

Look
at the book on her desk. It’s called "Fortune Telling for Business Popularity."
You can’t read it, but it gives you insight into what Abby’s all about. Look at
her dresser to see a magic lantern and some other stuff. The book on the stand
to the right of her bed tells about "Lizzie Applegate and the Bandit."
Look in Abby’s jewelry box on the stereo shelf and take the spider charm. Use
it on the wardrobe. You find the source of all of the haunted house stuff. Try
the tape from the basement in the cassette player. It’s the voice from the seance.
Take the tape back, put the spider charm back in the jewelry box, and then it’s
time to go.

Let’s Tattle … or Not

I think we should go tell
Rose. Instead of letting me spill my guts, though, she tells me that I’ll be alone
in the house and that she removed a tapestry from my room and left me a letter
that someone had dropped off.

Nancy’s Room

The letter is from
Emily; it’s on a chair in Nancy’s room. Louis was lying! Gum Bo Fu really means
"Gold Treasure Mansion!"

Look
at the wall to the right of Nancy’s bed, where the tapestry used to be. It’s a
secret door! Remember the Zodiac book from Abby’s room? Press the panels in the
correct order to open the door:

3 8 10
12
9 6 2 7
4 5 1 11

The
door opens to reveal a safe! Instead of numbers, it has Chinese symbols.

Remember
the tapestry by the door in Nancy’s room? I bet that has some bearing on the situation.
We already found nine of the ten symbols, and the tenth is the same as the first
symbol in Emily’s letter. We think it means "gold."

Turn
the dial to line up each of the symbols under the arrow in the order they appear
in the poem, child, beginning, daughter, 4, eye, fire, moon, king, and river,
and then finally gold, clicking on the arrow after each symbol.

Child

Beginning

Daughter

4

Eye

Fire

Moon

King

River

Gold

It was Lizzie Applegate’s safe! Look at everything: a jewelry box,
a letter from Diego in which he fancies himself a sort of a Robin Hood, a letter
from El Diablo proclaiming his love (d’you think Diego and El Diablo are one and
the same?), Diego and Lizzie’s wedding certificate, Lizzie’s will, and a pyramid
puzzle. When Nancy clicks on the pyramid, she says, "Something’s missing
here." Remember that wood charm we got from solving the "Diego"
puzzle? Use that on the pyramid. It turns to reveal a puzzle where you have to
change all of the moons to suns. If you click on the spots marked by X, you can
do it in four moves.

00X0
X000
000X
0X00

Then
the pyramid turns again, and you get an accursed sliding tile puzzle. Oh, Her
Interactive, why do you torture us so, we who love you, we, your most devoted
followers! First a maze, then a sliding tile puzzle, the two great banes of adventure
gamers the world over! (And a music puzzle, too!) (But at least not a tune-matching
one.) Okay, editorializing over. Just do the slider; there’s no escaping it. It
makes a phoenix to match the inlay in the foyer floor when you do it right.

The
box opens; you get a red jewel.

Endgame

(Note that the clock
time must be set to 4:00 at this point–thanks to Linda Petrie for pointing this
out.) Put the red jewel in for the missing eye of the bird at the foyer staircase.
It causes a ray of light to shine from the door to the bird to the phoenix inlay
on the foyer floor. Nancy can now click on the phoenix where before she could
only look at it. She says, "It’s stuck." Time for the trusty ol’ crowbar
again. Nancy has found the treasure! Unfortunately, Louis sneaks up and thumps
her on the head and starts gathering up the treasure for himself. Nancy has to
stop him! Quick! The chandelier! Drop it on Louis! But don’t use the stairs with
the creaky steps or he’ll catch you; use the stairs on the other side.

Nothing
left to do but watch the wrap-up. Girl detective triumphs again!