The Phantom Society

About this board game

The Phantom Society is a ghost-hunting game for 2–4 players that plays in about 20 minutes. Set in a Scottish manor hotel, it pits sly spirits against determined ectoplasm hunters in a contest of concealment, deduction, and destruction.

The dual-level game board represents a manor floor divided into 36 rooms. Each room is represented by a tile worth between £1,000 and £6,000, creating a visible measure of the damage inflicted on the hotel. Four ghosts are each associated with a room type and secretly hide beneath a matching tile.

From their hiding places, the ghosts begin devastating the manor by removing tiles adjacent to the ones beneath which they are concealed. The hunters study the pattern of destroyed rooms and use logic to determine where the spirits may be hiding. However, searching is dangerous: hunters also remove tiles to investigate, adding their own destruction to the manor’s total damage.

• Ghosts: Stay concealed while helping the manor suffer at least £45,000 in damage.
• Hunters: Use the evidence left by destroyed tiles to locate the ghosts before that threshold is reached.
• Hidden information: Ghosts rely on cunning and psychology to cloud the investigation.
• Risky deduction: Every tile removed can reveal useful information, but it also increases the damage.

The ghosts succeed when at least £45,000 of damage has been inflicted, whether caused by the spirits or the hunters themselves. The ghost hunters must stop them in time, carefully weighing each possible discovery against the cost to the manor.

With its opposing roles and compact play time, The Phantom Society creates a focused battle of hidden positions, logical investigation, and psychological misdirection.