If you think Ellen looks bad here, you haven't seen the many ways she'll kill you just to look good.
The Witch's House, game and the actual place, is many things. Beautiful, a place people would want to live at, has every amemity available to service your every need. The one thing it isn't is safe. It is a place where Everything Trying to Kill You is in full effect, and there is so many ways the game provides nightmares and horror.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
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The House
- Just the whole idea of being trapped in a house where everything's trying to kill you with no way out and no way forward but towards the one who presumably created and controls it all.
- The novel reveals that all the monsters in the house, are people killed by Ellen in the past. Since Ellen in Viola's body is powerless now, it's no surprise that the monsters want their revenge.
- Cutting the limbs off a teddy bear and having the stumps bleed like a living creature is pretty creepy. Not to mention what happens shortly afterwards when the bear gets its revenge...
- Early on, Viola finds a kitchen where an invisible chef is working. They take Viola's offer of 'a hand' a bit too literally and then presumably hack the rest of her to bits too.
- It gets worse. Later she can go through an adjoining door into the pantry. A pantry full of human skeletons, none of which have hands... Even more worse...? It's highly likely that all of those skeletons are all of the children that she "befriended" over the years.
- The house and its inhabitants tend to move around a lot, often just out of the player's field of vision or when Viola leaves or enters a room. Creepy every time it happens.
- The dark maze on the top floor is scary enough on its own (especially when you start hearing the statues moving around), then you drop and break your only light. Word of advice: do not pause the game at this point.
- When you feed your frog friend to the giant snake in order to save your own skin and then pass through the room where the snake formerly was, at the last second as you open the door to the next room the frog's ghost will appear behind you. If, after entering the next room, you immediately go back into the room to check out what you just saw, the entire room will have transformed into a nightmarish scene, with ghastly sounds and a floor that looks like a nightmarish pool of glowing blood and gore. But then if you leave the room again, everything in it is totally back to normal throughout the rest of the game; the brief transformation never affects any other part of the game, and the character never comments or reflects on it. It's as if it never happened, somehow making the fact that it did happen all the creepier.
The Story
- The fragments of the witch's diary scattered throughout the house are pretty chilling.
- As much of a woobie as she is, Viola in Ellen's body is still terrifying. Particularly when she's chasing you. ESPECIALLY if she catches you! YMMV, if you did not use the save points at all. The cat will reveal he is a demon and calls you Ellen, not Viola. At that point, you WANT her to catch you, as you know that's the only way to a good, if unofficial, ending - except it isn't since the body-swap requires trust and willingness, something Ellen-as-Viola doesn't have at this point.
- Ellen tricking Viola into entering a mutilated body.
- The player learning the truth of Viola and Ellen. The Ellen that has been chasing after the player is really Viola trying to get her body back and return to her normal life. The player unknowingly helps Ellen in Viola's body escape the house and unintentionally cause her death.
- The true end is pretty much any parent's worst nightmare come true. Not only do their child associate with someone responsible for multiple disappearances, but they also get used and betrayed by someone they once called a friend. It's even worse when Viola's father shoots Viola in Ellen's body, thinking that he's protecting his daughter. This is sure to make people question who they should trust.
- The new ending, "____" depicts what would have happened if Ellen, as Viola, never entered the house. If you think the state that Ellen's body was in, it would only be a matter of time before Viola dies, which explains why the roses wilts away. But remember that triggering this ending requires a lot of time. Imagine how much Viola would have suffered, having her eyes gouged out, her limbs cut off, and her voice rendered unusable, and her only chance of fixing her situation is ruined because Ellen never walks back into the house, waiting each agonizing minute before perishing. This is Fridge Horror at its finest.
- For added Fridge Horror, the MV Remake's Extra Mode incorporates lore from the prequel: A witch's body will never die until they fall to despair. Waiting the hour makes Ellen's triumph complete as Viola despairs and dies.
- Here's a freaky, if awesome thought. As shown in the Diary of Ellen, after the switch occurs, Viola recalls every way Ellen has killed people and all the deaths in game are the same methods Ellen has killed people with. With that information, one can see how the house was set up because Viola was strictly copy and pasting what Ellen did. However, if you play on the MV Mode on Steam, we have a whole new batch of deaths alongside some of the original ones, and the house is made to be harder to navigate through with new/hard puzzles as well as the hints the House gives being muted or wiped out entirely. This means that Viola is not only exerting greater control over the house and its inhabitants, but is also using new, twisted deaths that are entirely her own creation. Viola is becoming as twisted as Ellen in order to beat her!
- In the Diary of Ellen, Ellen gets careless with one man who came in to kill her and lets herself be thrown out the window and to the outside of the house, where she completely loses the magic keeping her healthy and returns to her true, sickly-looking form which has continually progressed to the point it's untreatable anymore. In the Manga, we get to see how she truly looks, and Body Horror does not BEGIN to describe it! Her skin is a thin veil of flesh covering bone, with her nose shriveled up and her limbs being bloodied bones! And if you think that's bad, imagine how Viola must've felt crawling OUT of the house after Ellen in that utterly broken body! It's no wonder that her father called her a monster!
The Many Deaths Of You
- Many of the potential deaths can count, especially how out of left field and somewhat Jump Scare nature of the deaths can come to be. See here for a good majority of them.
- The first death is something simple, but not one most would expect. After you enter into the house and see the note on the other side of the wall, but in the middle of the room is a pool of red liquid that drips from the ceiling. Step into this pool, the walls immediately rush to crush you with a squish.
- The MV remake adds in the lovely scene of them parting a tiny bit, allowing for Viola's entrails to be seen by the player!
- The second death is the Teddy Bear. After lopping off a Teddy's limbs to make it fit into a basket, bloodied paw prints will appear and the basket will move after you. The real danger comes when you go back into the first room you entered into. When you get halfway a giant bouncing teddy bear will chase you, crushing you to death complete with squishing sounds!
- The MV Remake adds in a death trap as well in the Extra mode. Normally you'd be fine if you entered the room where the bears were. But go into it on the extra mode, there will suddenly be LOADS of teddy bears barring you from going further, and you don't get the chance to turn around before the attacking bear enters and crushes you!
- Before you enter the kitchen, you can find a note asking you to "lend a hand". If you enter and offer to lend the invisible presence a hand, the man will proceed to thank you, forcing Viola's wrist onto the cutting board, and saying "A Hand is all I needed".
- The MV Remake adds in an extension to this in the Extra Mode. Normally you're supposed to give him the teddy bear limbs, but he remarks that they're too filthy and that he'd prefer Viola's hands. You pretty much need to dash out of the kitchen and dining room, or he'll cut Viola in half vertically. Oh, and attempt entering it before you've solved the puzzle in the dining room, he'll just get out and kill you instantly!
- The Spider room on the second floor. You're told that the spider is colorblind in the room, and the implication is that it'll notice if the butterfly is missing because it needs to eat. Try leaving the room without putting up a replacement, the door will be locked. Going back to put the butterfly back on the web will have the spider lunge at you and eat Viola's head off in one go!
- The MV Extra mode gives an extension to this, namely that even after you put in a butterfly, while you're walking back, a pit will form forcing Viola to go back as scary music will begin to play. You see the spider now chasing you, and unless you get to the door in time, it WILL kill you!
- The Book of Death given by the librarian. Reading it causes Viola to scratch at her eyes, before seeing them all bloodied as the screen turns redder and redder until it's game over!
- In the room you need to place the Book of Death into, there is multiple loud thuds, made by a skull in a glass case trying to get out! If you open it, it will come out and kill you. After placing the Book of Death in the bookshelf, you will hear a glass case falling off, scary music start playing, and the thing starts to chase AFTER you!
- The MV Extra mode adds in an extra death the players will never see coming. If you try to place the Book of Death into the usual bookshelf, it will fall down on you, crushing you instantly!
- After you kill the frog by feeding it to the snake, if you go back to the room where you got the frog and try reading the note, a giant shadowy hand will appear and grab Viola, crushing her instantly.
- After completing the mirror puzzle, you'll see a note telling you to ignore everything until you reach the room after the hall. When you enter, a knife suddenly appears. Most players would assume to dodge, but do that, and you get teleported into a square room with no escape...until a boulder comes down and kills you!
- As an addendum, ignoring the note does let you interact with the objects in that hallway. The downside is that this also means the knife is able to kill you!
- Verges on Damn You, Muscle Memory! in the MV Remake's Extra mode — the hallway stays in the "didn't read the note" mode.
- The Snake Room. It's here that you need to kill your one ally in the place in order to proceed, because if you don't, your neck will be broken by a hungry snake chomping down on it.
- The MV Extra mode adds on some extra significance to this room. First off, remember later on where the room the musical sheets were at? Apparently that room connects to the snakes den, meaning it's the thing that pulls you in and presumably kills you! Secondly, after dropping the sheet thanks to a jumpscare, you have to go inside the den itself to retrieve it. As you try leaving, the snake drops in and starts chasing you as you leave!
- Despite being so laden with Paranoia Fuel, there's actually only one thing that's really dangerous in the dark maze: a watch you can pick up. You could miss it in there certainly; but if you do run into it, considering that you're already conditioned to pick up everything you see in this game, you'll almost certainly take this watch too. If you pause the game at this point you'll see the same Nightmare Face as in total darkness, and the description of the watch simply says "DIE". After you take a few steps, a rope or tentacle will come out of the ceiling to hang Viola.
