Haunts — Supernatural Hazards, Rules & Examples
Haunts turn suffering, memory and restless supernatural force into encounters tied to places, objects and people. This guide explains how Pathfinder haunts work, how to notice and neutralise them, how to destroy them permanently, how to build new ones, and how to use them as mysteries rather than unavoidable spell traps.
A haunt is a supernatural hazard bound to a place, object or presence by intense suffering, death, fear or unresolved purpose. It behaves mechanically much like a trap, but its manifestation is usually spiritual or psychic and its permanent destruction requires resolving the cause that anchors it.
A haunt is not automatically an undead creature. Ghosts and other undead can create or coexist with haunts, but a haunt can also be the supernatural residue of an event rather than a conscious dead being.
Pathfinder 1e Haunt Rules
Entering the Haunted Area
A haunt normally reacts to living creatures approaching, entering or touching its area. Its maximum possible radius is generally 5 feet per point of CR, though individual haunts are often confined to a smaller room, corridor, object or other defined location.
Notice the Manifestation
When the haunt triggers, creatures within its area can attempt the listed Notice check at the beginning of the surprise round. The entry tells the GM what successful characters perceive: a sudden chill, distant knocking, blood appearing on stone, a half-heard voice, the smell of smoke, or some other warning.
Detect Undead or appropriate aura-detection magic can provide an opportunity to detect the haunt before it manifests, normally imposing a –4 penalty on that detection check.
The Haunt Acts
A standard haunt manifests at initiative rank 10 during the surprise round. Its effect often reproduces an existing spell while changing the sensory manifestation to suit the tragedy that created it.
Typical mechanical foundations include Fireball, Fire Storm, Cause Fear, Scare, Phantasmal Killer and Slay Living.
Fight the Haunt with Positive Energy
Positive energy can reduce the haunt’s hp. A haunt does not receive a Will save merely to reduce this positive-energy damage. When the positive-energy effect requires an attack roll, use AC 10 to hit the haunt rather than the physical wall, floor or object it inhabits.
Unless the individual haunt lists another weakness, ordinary weapon attacks and unrelated damage do not reduce its haunt hp.
Neutralise It Before Initiative 10
If positive energy reduces the haunt to 0 hp before its action at initiative rank 10, the haunt is neutralised and its immediate effect does not occur.
Neutralised Is Not Destroyed
Suppression only buys time. After its reset period, a haunt can return. Permanently destroying it requires the unique act listed under Destruction: recovering remains, exposing a concealed crime, returning an object, completing an interrupted duty, ending a curse, or otherwise resolving the event that still anchors the manifestation.
Elements of a Haunt
Name & CR
The haunt’s name is followed by its Challenge Rating.
XP
Experience awarded for overcoming the haunt, based on its CR.
Alignment & Area
Gives the haunt’s alignment, physical area and whether it is persistent. Area is normally no larger than a 5-foot radius per point of CR unless another rule modifies it.
Caster Level
Effective caster level for ongoing magical effects, dispelling interactions and other rules that require a caster level.
Notice
Gives the skill and DC used to recognise the warning sign before the haunt acts, together with the sound, sight, smell or sensation that reveals it.
Hit Points
A normal haunt has hp equal to twice its CR. A persistent haunt instead has hp equal to CR × 4.5, rounding fractions down.
Weakness
Lists special vulnerabilities or methods of deceiving the haunt, such as additional damage types, stealth, invisibility or magic that conceals living creatures.
Trigger
Defines what causes manifestation. Proximity and touch are common, but a haunt can use a more specific trigger when the story requires one.
Reset
Gives the interval before a neutralised haunt can attempt to become active again. The normal reset attempt uses a DC 10 caster-level check.
Effect
Describes exactly what the haunt does mechanically and what the characters experience when it manifests.
Destruction
Gives the specific act required to end the supernatural phenomenon permanently.
Creating a Haunt
The original Pathfinder construction system starts with a spell effect, calculates a base CR, modifies that CR according to the haunt’s behaviour, and then derives its caster level, hp, attack modifier and saving throw DC.
Step 1 — Choose the Effect and Base CR
Choose the spell effect the haunt reproduces. Its starting CR is 1 + the level of that spell.
Step 2 — Apply Haunt CR Modifiers
| Feature | CR Modifier |
|---|---|
| Persistent | +2 |
| Notice DC 15 or lower | –1 |
| Notice DC 16–20 | — |
| Notice DC 21–25 | +1 |
| Notice DC 26–29 | +2 |
| Notice DC 30 or higher | +3 |
| Reset 1 minute | +2 |
| Reset 1 hour | +1 |
| Reset 1 day | +0 |
| Reset 1 week | –1 |
| Slow: manifests at initiative rank 0 | –2 |
| Susceptible to another damage type | –1 per additional type |
| Tricked by magic that conceals creatures from undead | –2 |
| Tricked by Invisibility | –1 |
| Tricked by Stealth | –3 |
| Triggered by touch | –2 |
A haunt tricked by Stealth uses a caster-level check rather than an ordinary Perception check when determining whether it detects the sneaking creature.
Step 3 — Set Caster Level
The haunt’s effective caster level normally equals its final CR.
Step 4 — Set Hit Points
A normal haunt has 2 hp per CR. A persistent haunt has CR × 4.5 hp, with fractions rounded down.
Step 5 — Calculate Attack and Save DC
When an attack modifier is required, use the haunt’s CR. When its duplicated spell allows a saving throw, calculate the save using the spell level and the minimum ability score required to cast a spell of that level.
Communicating with a Neutralised Haunt
The Haunting of Harrowstone adds an optional investigation method for haunts that have been reduced to 0 hp but have not yet reset. The GM can allow the weakened manifestation to behave like a simple rapping spirit, answering questions through knocks or other repetitive signals.
Under that option, characters can establish codes such as one knock for yes and two for no, then work through letters, numbers or spoken choices.
The information is still limited by what the dead or residual presence knew. Communication should therefore produce clues, names, fragments, impressions and requests rather than omniscient answers.
Occult Adventures later expands spirit communication further, allowing broader séance procedures and more flexible communication with neutralised haunts.
Advanced Haunts
Occult Adventures expands the original subsystem with clarifications and additional haunt elements. These options let haunts follow characters, inhabit objects, connect directly to ghosts or manifest in more mobile and aggressive forms.
Holy Water
A flask of holy water that directly strikes a haunt deals 2d4 damage. Haunts within 5 feet of the splash take 1 damage.
Item-Bound Haunts
An item-bound haunt follows the normal haunt rules, takes normal damage from positive energy and uses the normal reset rules, but its effects are centred on the haunted object. Its trigger can depend on the object’s nature, such as playing an instrument or using a weapon. The haunting presence adds 5 to the object’s Break DC and doubles its hardness and hit points. If dispel evil is cast quickly enough, the haunting presence can be ejected with a caster-level check against DC 10 + the haunt’s CR + 1 for each month the object has been possessed.
Possessing Haunts
A possessing haunt follows the normal haunt rules but centres its effects on the haunted creature, who takes a –2 penalty on all saving throws against the haunt’s effects. The host must always use a standard action to retrieve a stored item unless doing so would normally take longer, and any item the host drops lands 10 feet away in a random direction. At the GM’s discretion, tormenting dreams can also inflict 1 point of ability drain per day to an ability score appropriate to the haunt. Dispel evil can eject the presence using the same caster-level check of DC 10 + the haunt’s CR + 1 for each month the creature has been possessed.
Chained Haunts
A chained haunt is tied directly to an incorporeal undead entity, most commonly a ghost. It cannot be permanently destroyed until the connected spirit itself is brought to final rest.
Additional Haunt Elements
| Element | Mechanical Change | CR |
|---|---|---|
| Belligerent | Substantially increased haunt hp | +3 |
| Item-bound | Bound to an object | –1 |
| Chained | Bound to a ghost or linked spirit | –1 |
| Fast | Manifests at initiative rank 20 | +2 |
| Free-roaming | Can move instead of occupying one fixed location | +1 |
| Increased area | Doubles the usual radius allowance | +1 |
| Possessing | Bound to a creature | +1 |
| Spiteful | Raises caster level and save DCs | +1 |
| Vaporous | Harder to strike and gains an incorporeal form | +1 |
Horror Adventures expands the concept again with haunt elements functioning much like templates, variant haunts, magical scars, dimensional disturbances, psychic manifestations and a much larger selection of example encounters. Those later systems are best treated as extensions of this core subsystem rather than mixed into the basic rules above.
Running a Haunt Well
Foreshadow Before the Trigger
Give the location ordinary evidence before initiative begins: damaged furniture, repeated stains, local stories, abandoned belongings, strange temperature changes or a pattern of previous accidents. The players should have something to investigate before the rules attack them.
Make the Notice Check Matter
A successful Notice check should reveal something specific enough to provoke a decision: retreat, channel energy, protect another character, move away from an object or prepare for an effect they have seen hinted at elsewhere.
Separate Neutralisation from Resolution
Reducing the haunt to 0 hp solves the immediate danger. Discovering why it exists and carrying out its destruction condition solves the story. Keeping those two goals separate is what makes a haunt different from an ordinary trap.
Let Repetition Reveal Information
A returning haunt should not merely deal the same damage again. Repeated manifestations can expose another face, name, sound, room, object or fragment of the original event.
Do Not Hide the Only Solution Behind One Roll
Characters should be able to uncover destruction conditions through several routes: records, witnesses, physical evidence, magic, communication with the haunt and deduction from the manifestation itself.
Use the Haunt as Part of the Location
A strong haunted house is rarely one oversized hazard. Use several connected manifestations to reveal different pieces of the same history and make the building itself feel like the encounter.
Haunts in the World of 1454
In SpiralWorlds, a haunt is a wound in a place’s supernatural memory. Some contain conscious spirits. Others are repetitions: terror, violence or despair impressed so deeply upon matter and landscape that the event continues to react to the living long after the people involved are gone.
The fifteenth-century world provides countless places where such wounds might survive:
- abandoned plague houses and sealed rooms;
- battlefields and forgotten mass graves;
- siege breaches and ruined gatehouses;
- execution yards and abandoned prisons;
- collapsed mines and sealed workings;
- burned guild halls and workshops;
- wrecked ships and drowned harbours;
- manor houses abandoned after murder or betrayal;
- bridges where travellers repeatedly vanished;
- mills, foundries and workshops where workers died violently;
- treasuries, vaults and rooms built around concealed crimes;
- places repeatedly touched by the supernatural Red Death.
The Black Death remains a historical catastrophe. Its enormous human suffering can leave individual haunted places, but the plague itself is not retroactively made supernatural. The recurring Red Death, by contrast, can produce unusually intense supernatural residue where its manifestations intersect with death, fear and unfinished purpose.
The important distinction is scale: not every battlefield, plague house or murder site becomes haunted. A haunt forms where something exceptional remains unresolved.
Haunts by Challenge Rating
Browse the SpiralWorlds haunt collection by Challenge Rating, from minor supernatural disturbances to powerful persistent manifestations.
CR 2
CR 12–15
Running Horror at the Table
These two retained guides deal with the practical problem the haunt subsystem alone cannot solve: creating tension, uncertainty and horror during play.
Runesmith — Breaking Down Horror
Dungeon Dudes — Running Horror Adventures in Dungeons and Dragons
Sources & Open Game Content
Rules authority: the Pathfinder 1e haunt mechanics on this page derive from published Open Game Content. SpiralWorlds GM advice, explanatory prose, page organisation, 1454 setting material and editorial interpretation are presented separately from those rules.
- Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide, pp. 242–243: core haunt rules, stat-block elements, construction rules, persistent haunts and Bleeding Walls.
- Pathfinder Adventure Path #43: The Haunting of Harrowstone: expanded haunt investigation and the neutralised-haunt communication option.
- Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Occult Adventures, pp. 228–230: holy water, item-bound, possessing and chained haunts, clarifications and additional haunt elements.
- Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Horror Adventures, haunt chapter beginning p. 172: later haunt elements, variant manifestations and expanded haunt material.
- Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition: official PF1e conversions and corrected CRs for the older Rise of the Runelords haunts listed in the directory.
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