1973

An old English man buys a rumored haunted mansion (on purpose) and hires a team of investigators (scientists and mediums) to see if the mansion is really haunted. He wants the findings in a week. It’s December 17. This old man is a dick.

The first person he hires is a physicist (Dr. Barrett) who tries to get his wife to stay home this time, since any other team who’s gone in has died or went insane. Except one dude (Fischer) they want to bring with them. Apparently they have no sympathy for PTSD in the paranormal societies of 1970s England. They also bring a young medium (Miss Tanner) who is played by the same actress who was a little girl in The Innocents. I already hate her.

They are left at the haunted mansion and told by the valet he will be back to get them on Christmas Eve afternoon. The valet also stocked the house with food and made up the beds. However, the electricity is spotty, the windows are boarded up, and the house smells terrible. Oh yeah, and the house talks to people and makes sure they don’t make it out of the front door with both their limbs and brain intact. Happy Christmas, everyone!

As soon as they arrive, the team starts to experience activity. Miss Tanner immediately disappears and at this point she’s gotten on my nerves so much, I hope the house ate her. It doesn’t unfortunately. At least not right away.

The team finds out the person who built the house, Belasco, was the bastard child of a British whore and an American munitions maker. He made up for his circumstances of birth by spending his entire life doing a fuckton of drugs, having lots of orgies, and basically any other depraved hobby you could possibly imagine. They didn’t mention bestiality, but that could just be the team trying to be polite and proper. They also call ghosts “surviving personalities,” which is so British. When the authorities finally made it to the house in 1929, all 27 people in the house were dead and Belasco couldn’t be found anywhere.

They do a “sitting” immediately, which is like “parking,” but invites in less evil and involves more ghost rape. The spirit’s voice starts talking through Miss Tanner and tells them to get out or it will hurt them. She’s all like, oh my, that’s never happened anymore. She calls him a “clever” spirit and applauds his playfulness. So British.

The house continues to try to maim and murder the team. First it gets into their heads and changes their personalities. Then it tries to get them to all have sex with each other. Then it tries to make them irrational and angry. Then it sics a black cat on them. It works for a bit, until the group figures out that there is only one spirit in the house, and he’s pretending to be multiple spirits to get the group to believe there is a giant, ongoing evil party in the afterlife. Which I suppose could be cool, if it wasn’t hosted by a megalomaniac who is so afraid of people finding out how short he is, that he actually cut off his legs and got prosthetics to appear taller. And you thought Trump had issues.

Miss Tanner is now thoroughly obsessed with the house, and the ghost. She even lets the ghost have sex with her and knock her around her room. She screams at the other members when they tell her she needs to calm the fuck down. She also is able to get Belasco’s spirit to destroy the dining room, while they are trying to enjoy a nice Cornish game hen dinner. So British.

The only way to save all of them and the house is by using Dr. Barrett’s giant super computer that is programmed to “de-energize” the house. Which is ridiculous. How did no scientist proofread this book and was like, “Uhhh…you can’t just kill energy. That’s not a thing.” It’s doubtful it will work, until it actually does. Sort of.

Tanner tries to smash the machine but ends up getting knocked out. She then goes to the chapel, because she hasn’t experienced enough abuse from her ghost boyfriend, who then crashes a giant crucifix on her. Bye.

The de-energizing process commences and the entire house is cleared, except for the chapel where Tanner’s body is still bleeding and eventually is joined by Dr. Barrett who foolishly thought his machine worked correctly. The only people left are Fischer and Barrett’s wife, who are definitely going to need therapy after this. Fischer is the one who figures out that Belasco’s spirit just needed to be called on his bullshit, and that he is just a midget with mommy issues, just like the rest of us.

They find Belasco’s preserved body behind the chapel in a lead lined room. To rid the world of this orgy-holding spirit once and for all, they bring the giant anti-ghost machine into the crypt and set the phasers to “stun” or whatever mumbo-jumbo psuedo-science they are employing. They leave the house and go collect their money, which they conveniently only have to split two ways now. This must be nice for Mrs. Barrett since her husband probably sunk all their savings into that machine and they haven’t taken a proper holiday in years that didn’t involve “surviving personalities.”