Haunting (Indefinite Detention)
Guide to Haunting. Dead students in detention may haunt a living classmate's dorm once a day: curated spooky prompts, a 7-day cooldown per target, a consecutive-day streak, and two free-of-charge responses for the owner, both of which pay the ghost.
An Afterlife With a Hobby
Indefinite Detention (see Detention) is, by design, extremely boring, and the department has never once budgeted for entertainment. Enter Haunting: the one activity dead students may pursue that involves someone other than Umbridge, does not require a quill, and produces a small, satisfying disturbance in a living classmate's dorm room.
You do not need permission, a body, or a plan. You need only be dead, and someone else needs only to have decorated a dorm and left the door (figuratively) unlocked.
How to Haunt Someone
From the Graveyard's Places menu, choose Haunt Someone. You'll be offered two methods:
- Search by name: find a specific classmate and haunt their dorm directly.
- Haunt at random: the department picks for you, from everyone currently eligible.
A target must have decorated a dorm, kept it open to visitors (the default), logged in within the last two weeks, not already be haunted by someone else, and not be you (haunting your own dorm accomplishes nothing; you already know where your own quills are).
The Rules, Such As They Are:
- One haunt per game day. Even spite needs a schedule.
- One dorm, one ghost, at a time. A haunted dorm turns away further applicants until it's resolved or the haunting simply expires.
- A 7-day cooldown per target. You may haunt the same classmate again, just not immediately, presumably so it still feels like an event.
- 7-day expiry. An unresolved haunting eventually gets bored and leaves on its own. No cleanup required, on either side.
A Streak, For the Committed:
Haunt on consecutive game days without missing one, and the department keeps count. Skip a day and the count resets to one; the department does not accept excuses. Once you're a few days in, the game will let you know. There is no prize for this beyond knowing the number, which the department considers a prize.
What the Haunted Actually See
A haunted dorm displays a small ghostly indicator on its owner's public profile, along with one curated line describing what the ghost has been up to. The line is drawn from a fixed list the department has pre-approved for tastefulness, and no ghost is permitted to write their own material, for reasons the handbook declines to elaborate on.
If It's Your Dorm
The owner of a haunted dorm has exactly two responses on offer, both free, both available directly from their own profile:
Exorcise
The haunting is removed, no questions asked. The owner is never charged, and gets nothing extra either. The ghost, for its trouble, still walks off with a small consolation payment -- delivered the next time it's logged in, since detention does not offer real-time banking.
Embrace the Haunting
The generous option. The owner receives a small gold tip on the spot, and the ghost receives a noticeably larger reward of their own, delivered the same way. Costs the owner nothing either way.
Good News: Neither response ever costs the dorm's owner gold, and both pay the ghost something -- embracing simply pays it more. There is no wrong answer here, only a friendlier one.
Haunting Them Back
The department keeps a record of the last ghost to bother you, whichever response you chose. Once you are similarly indisposed, the Graveyard's Haunt Someone menu will offer to haunt that exact classmate back, no searching required. It's the same haunt as any other in every respect that matters: it still spends your one haunt for the day, and it's still off the table if the 7-day cooldown on that particular target hasn't lapsed. Revenge, like everything else here, waits its turn.
Privacy
A dorm set to private (see the "Visitors" toggle on your own profile) is off-limits to haunting entirely, the same way it's off-limits to guestbook signing and liking. If you'd rather not be haunted at all, that's the lever.