One of Richard Garriott’s better known eccentricities was holding a massive haunted house event every other year between 1988 and 1994. These were done around his home Britannia Manor and he spared no expense making each more elaborate than the one before.

I’ve always been curious about these but can’t say that I know too much about them. The website for the 1994 event is still up at http://www.britanniamanor.org and a DVD documentary called The Worlds Most Famous Haunted House – A Tribute To Britannia Manor was produced and sold some time back but I can’t say I’ve ever seen it.

Rather than being haunted houses in the traditional sense, the events were more along the lines of live fantasy role-playing. They were based around Ultima with characters like the Guardian making an appearance.

This tape is a VNR based on the 1992 event. Like all VNR’s, it purports to be a genuine news broadcast but must have been produced by Origin themselves to help drum up some publicity. The reporter Galen Svanas was actually product manager on System Shock and Wing Commander 3 among other things.