Hell House Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mr. Deutsch

When the story begins, Dr. Lionel Barrett, a scientist who has devoted his life to refuting the notion of paranormal events and the afterlife, has been called upon to visit Belasco Manor and confirm his beliefs for the sake of Mr. Deutsch, a dying man with a lot of money. Specifically, he plans to give $100,000 apiece to Barrett and spiritual mediums Florence Tanner and Benjamin Franklin Fischer to do so. Unfortunately, Belasco Manor, better known as 'Hell House', was sealed off thirty years ago when a grisly set of events took place...of which Fischer was the only survivor.

While Barrett decides to bring his wife, Edith along to assist him, Florence Tanner prepares for the journey with prayer...and Fischer vows to use his powers to stop the horrors of Hell House once and for all.

Answer: True

After driving through thick fog surrounding Belasco House, the four are driven to the front door and are left to go the rest of the way alone; Deutsch's associate refuses to move further. They arrive to a house devoid of aeration; the windows were bricked up. Additionally, the generator brought specifically for their use doesn't work. They scout out the manor to find a horrible chapel filled with obscenities and find that Florence refuses to enter, citing horrible nausea brought on by evil forces. Instead, she's drawn to the sound of a functioning phonograph in another room; it plays Belasco's voice welcoming them to his humble abode.
Florence and Fischer explore the house alone soon after, unearthing the presence of evil in several of the rooms. Fischer intentionally blocks off his own powers, admitting it's to keep himself as safe as possible.
That evening, Fischer recounts the story of Belasco and the mansion. In the 1920s he used it to further his investigations into evil, making it a site of depravity, sinning, and bacchanalia. By 1929, everyone he'd pulled into the house had killed each other or died of illness. Belasco went missing.

Answer: A cat

Dr. Barrett convinces Florence to have a sitting on their first night, without the accoutrements and measurements of Lionel's yet-to-arrive machines and devices. During this, Florence is shocked to transform from a simply mental medium to a physical medium; she ends up being a conduit for angry, violent spirits from the house as they speak to the group, warning them that they will all die if they stay. That evening, Florence ends up being visited by a spirit in her room. Later investigation leads her to believe that it's Belasco's son, Daniel, though she can't prove this to the others.

The following morning, Dr. Barrett's items-- his cabinet and a cat-- arrive at the manor and their generator is fixed. A second sitting is held in which Florence begins to emit teleplasmic material (which Barrett claims is scientific, but Florence and Fischer believes is not). During this sitting, she's seemingly transformed into another being.

Answer: In the wine cellar

Barrett continues to believe in proving his scientific theories and Florence gets very angry with this as her experiences seem to prove otherwise. During their conversation, over dinner, a horrible disturbance occurs in which the table's contents are virtually upended-- they fly around the room attacking Dr. Barrett and the others, forcing them to hide under the table until everything settles. Barrett, very much injured, blames the event on Florence who, somehow, must've used the energy of the room against them.

That evening, Fischer witnesses Edith sleepwalking. She leaves the house and nearly walks out into the tarn adjacent to the manor; he's lucky to be able to stop her at the last minute. Florence takes the time that evening to search the cellar and, upon heading into the wine cellar, she's attacked by an unseen specter. She knows, of course, that it's the final resting place of Daniel Belasco.

Answer: The Reversor

During the night, Florence is bitten twice, leading her to believe that action must be taken to exhume Daniel from the walls of the wine room. Sure enough, after breaking through the stone walls, the four are able to find a switch which, when pulled, opens the wall to reveal a body shackled inside. Although it's hard to doubt when the body bears a ring marked with 'DB' (Daniel Belasco), Barrett refuses to give in to Florence's ideas. Fischer helps bury the body in a hole on the property.

The next day, the Reversor arrives and Dr. Barrett couldn't be more pleased. The instrument, he says, will stop the haunting entirely.

Florence is once again placed in the line of fire when the spirits of the house turn against her. This time, while in her room, she's attacked by the cat brought in when it's allegedly possessed by Daniel Belasco. This gives her more resolve, however, and she vows not to leave until she rids the house of its spirits.

Answer: Dr. Barrett

Edith and Barrett, seeking a bit of relaxation (and ease for Barrett's damaged knee) head into the pool area and steam room. Edith, taken over by the house's wooing powers, tries to seduce Barrett in the oversteamed chamber and, upon being rebuffed, leaves. The door seals behind her, however, trapping Barrett with an unexplainable ooze. When Edith returns with Fischer to break down the door, they open it to find Barrett on the floor, struggling to breathe.

Fischer and Florence have their own sitting without the two Barretts and they find that Daniel blames his father for all of the goings-on in the mansion. In the meantime, however, Edith continues to drink, inevitably coming upon Fischer, trying to seduce him, and collapsing in the main hall. Florence, napping to recover from her sitting, ends up being led out to the tarn by the spirit of Daniel. It's then that she hypothesizes that Belasco is supporting the multiple hauntings, somehow, sheerly through his own willpower.

Answer: In a Bible

Fischer, realizing that the house may be too strong for the others, decides to open himself up to his powers. Belasco's forces, however, topple him almost immediately when he creates this chink in his armor.

Barrett, meanwhile, tries to dissuade Florence from the facts she's been finding and claims that she may have made Daniel up. She begins to believe it, feeling that she did it to cope with the loss of her own brother. That evening though, she heads to the chapel and finds, in the Bible, that Daniel was, in fact, born in 1903.

Fischer warns the others against the Reversor (while drinking, of course), since no good can come of it. Barrett, however, still feels it's a key to turning off Hell House.

The spirit of Daniel, according to Florence, claims that the Reversor will send him from one Hell to another. Realizing what she needs to do to free him from his bonds to the physical realm, Florence allows Daniel to 'be her husband' and grants him the love he so desires to be free. Laying in bed and closing her eyes, she finds herself sleeping with a corpse.

Answer: True

After Florence's horrible encounter, Fischer watches over her and knows that he must help her. When she wakes up, he says that he's taking her away from the house. Daniel Belasco, however, is inside her, trying to break through, and both of them must fight to prevent him from taking over, even as she wavers between consciousnesses. She realizes, however, that Daniel tricked her.

As they head out to leave Belasco Manor, they stop to speak to Dr. Barrett whose Reversor is essentially ready to go-- it's meant to reverse the electromagnetic radiation of the location which has been turning the house into, essentially, a toxic battery of stored bad energy. Florence, possessed by Daniel, smashes at the machine with a crowbar until she's stopped...but not before she chases Edith through the house with it.

Everyone ends up falling asleep, exhausted by the goings-on. Dr. Barrett ends up being the first to wake up and he calls Mr. Deutsch with the good news about the Reversor only to find that he died the night before, having overdosed on medication. None of them are getting paid. Barrett vows to finish his work to prevent the house from winning.

Answer: Two

Florence realizes that Daniel can control her body and read her mind, and it isn't long after that she has to resort to using pain to stop the thoughts being forced into her head. She heads to the chapel, feeling that its warding her off must have some role in the mystery behind Hell House, and on the way she passes many of the ghostly figures of the mansion. Finally reaching the chapel she finds the missing cat inside, bisected in the main aisle.

Reaching the altar, Florence deduces that the spirits leading her to the chapel is nothing more than a trick. When the crucified Jesus statue nailed to the wall falls onto her, crushing her, it takes her several minutes to push its weight off. Seeing no way out, she resigns to her fate, slicing her wrists on the nail pulled out of the wall and ending it. In her last seconds, in a moment of clarity, she writes something in blood on the floor-- the letter B in a circle.

The others find Florence's body in the chapel as well as the message left for them but they don't know what to make of it. They remove her from the room and take her out of Belasco Manor on their way to the car, knowing that nothing should be kept inside the blast radius of the Reversor. That's when Dr. Barrett flips the switch on his machine.

Fifteen minutes later, Fischer checks the house alone to see if any spirits remain, but to his shock the house is clear. Feeling that they've accomplished what was set out to be done, he heads to town while Dr. Barrett and Edith pack their things in the now-safe house.

While Dr. Barrett investigates his machine, however, it springs to life, indicating that it never actually followed through with a complete reversal of electromagnetic influence. In moments he's attacked and drowned in the pool in the cellar.

Answer: Next to the chapel

Edith awakened by the spirit of her husband and, upon realizing, is attacked in her room by moths...and Florence...and her father. Emerging into the main foyer, she's stripped down and taken by Dr. Barrett's ghost into the theater where, like former residents of the house, she's watched by Belasco and taunted with the presence of a leopard. She's subsequently led to the cellar pool to find her husband's body in the murky water before she's knocked out.

It turns out that Fischer was the one who knocked her out, carrying her out of the house and hauling Dr. Barrett out of the pool. He tells her to drive back into town as he heads into the mansion to solve its mysteries.

Fortunately, he's able to seal himself off enough to keep the spirits inside at bay, or else they're unable to harm him. Seeking answers he's led to the chapel and arrives at the altar to watch the Bible turn to a specific line: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." Seeing the destruction around him, he opens himself to the spirits and finds himself walking directly into the tarn outside. Luckily, Edith returns and saves him at the last moment.

This works in Fischer's favor-- Belasco, in Fischer's 'last moment', informed him, egotistically, that he perpetuated the haunting alone. In this sense, Florence was close to the truth; Belasco not only fueled the haunting, but he manifested the haunting solely with his own willpower. He took over Florence intentionally, using the idea of Daniel to motivate her and, in a sense, both Florence and Barrett were right about how to stop him; he drove them apart with their own egos.

Using the hints hidden under their noses the whole time, Fischer and Edith find Belasco's spirit diminishing in the chapel and, subsequently, his body, hidden in a wall near the altar, shackled to a chair in a room encased in lead, protecting him from machines like the Reversor.

Having solved the mystery, Fischer and Edith stop the haunting and escape Hell House once and for all.