Location Location: Spencer Mansion

Time to go somewhere spooky! Where shall we go to this time?

Well, how about to one of the more iconic mansions from an iconic horror series? Just make sure that when we go ahead and do our tour, we have the appropriate keys to get into the right rooms. Don’t want to be getting lost, now! Wait...what do I mean keys? Oh, well that’s just how this house is designed! It helps for added security; we don’t want any...unsavory folks coming and accosting us now, do we?

Full Disclaimer: That is exactly what happens in this game.

Spencer Mansion is the main setting of Resident Evil 1. It would be a glorious place to visit...if not for the numerous traps abound, locked doors that require a myriad of keys to open, tricky puzzles, and quite the confusing layout. Oh...let’s not forget the employees working there, as well as their pet dogs, are quite...well...dead. And walking around...and preparing to eat your face.

You start off in the foyer, but not because you went so voluntarily. Whether you play as Chris Redfield, or Jill Valentine, you wind up there because you were chased by zombified Dobermans. This is after you see said Dobermans maul and eat one of your teammates. When you get inside, you’re warned not to go back out there, which makes sense, considering that those pups are still hot on your heels. Not long after you catch your breath, you hear a gunshot, which brings you into what would’ve been a lavish dining room, save for the blood near the fireplace. Granted, you don’t see anything, but blood is there.

Setting off to investigate, you go through the hallway and hear...wet crunching sounds. And you run into...this.

(The vid has the scene from both the uncut original and the remake...both can freak you the fuck out.)

The Spencer mansion is named after a man named Oswell E. Spencer, one of the original founders of Umbrella. It’s architect, George Trevor, is responsible for the intricate design of the place. He’s also responsible for the numerous secret passages, puzzles, and traps that you can find in the place...ironic, given he met his end in the same mansion. Curiously enough, the Raccoon City Police Department has a Trevor-inspired design, as well as the estate down in the bayou in Resident Evil 7 (his company helped with its construction). Seems like a common practice within the series...you know, making winding hallways and death-trap puzzles, and the like.

As far as horror locales go, this place holds up very well. Even after all this time, the place is still terrifying to enter. Even as the various wings of the mansion get confusing to navigate, over time you start to slowly understand what’s the quickest way to and from certain rooms. All you’d have to deal with as you traversed through them is the cold, overwhelming sense of dread that’s something’s going to break throu-

CRASHHHH!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

images belong to residentevil.wikia.com and video from Youtube