Mystery House

Mystery House is an adventure game released by On-Line Systems in 1980. It was designed, written and illustrated by Roberta Williams and programmed by Ken Williams for the Apple II.Mystery House is the first graphical adventure game and the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line.

Plot

The game starts near an abandoned Victorian mansion. The player is soon locked inside the house with no other option than to explore. The mansion contains many interesting rooms and seven other people: Tom, a plumber; Sam, a mechanic; Sally, a seamstress; Dr. Green, a surgeon; Joe, a gravedigger; Bill, a butcher; and Daisy, a cook.

Initially, the player has to search the house in order to find a hidden cache of jewels. However, terrible events start happening and dead bodies (of the other people) begin appearing. It becomes obvious that there is a murderer on the loose in the house, and the player must discover who it is or become the next victim.

Mystery House (1938 film)

Mystery House is a 1938 mystery-crime film, directed by Noel M. Smith and starring Dick Purcell and Ann Sheridan as nurse Sarah Keate, and is based on the 1930 novel The Mystery of Hunting's End by Mignon G. Eberhart. Sheridan also played the same character in The Patient in Room 18, released in January 1938, while Aline MacMahon played her in While the Patient Slept in 1935.

Plot

At a hunting lodge retreat, banker Hubert Kingery (Eric Stanely) announces to five fellow officers that one of them has forged documents and embezzled $500,000. Before the evening is over, Kingery is shot dead and the police officially rule it a suicide. Kingery's daughter Gwen (Anne Nagel) doesn't agree and asks for help from her aunt's nurse, Sarah Keate (Ann Sheridan), who suggests her detective boyfriend, Lance O'Leary (Dick Purcell), for the case. O'Leary has all of the suspects return to the lodge and begins his investigation. Stuck in the snowbound shelter, the suspects and victims begin to pile up.

Mystery House (radio drama)

Mystery House was a radio drama series which began broadcasting on NBC in 1929. The program was an early effort at bringing thriller and suspense dramas to the airwaves.

The Oakland Tribune offered this description of the program on September 21, 1930:

Cast

Chester Stratton played Lynn Edwards, and Teresa Dale played Mrs. Pendergast.-

Formats of fear

A later series with the same title prompted speculation at Radio Archives:

References

Winchester

Coordinates: 51°03′48″N 1°18′29″W / 51.0632°N 1.308°W / 51.0632; -1.308

Winchester is a city and the county town of Hampshire. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs National Park, along the course of the River Itchen. It is situated 61 miles (98 km) south-west of London and 13.6 miles (21.9 km) from Southampton, its closest city. At the time of the 2011 Census, Winchester had a population of 45,184. The wider City of Winchester district which includes towns such as Alresford and Bishop's Waltham has a population of 116,800

Winchester developed from the Roman town of Venta Belgarum, which in turn developed from an Iron Age oppidum. Winchester's major landmark is Winchester Cathedral, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, with the distinction of having the longest nave and overall length of all Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The city is home to the University of Winchester and Winchester College, the oldest public school in the United Kingdom still to be using its original buildings.

Winchester, Massachusetts

Winchester is a small suburban town located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, eight miles north of downtown Boston. It is an affluent bedroom community for professionals who work in the greater Boston area. The population was 21,374 at the 2010 United States Census.

History

The land on which Winchester now sits was purchased from Native Americans by representatives of the settlement of Charlestown in 1639, and the area was first settled by Europeans in 1640. In the early years of the settlement, the area was known informally as Waterfield, a reference to its many ponds and to the river which bisected the central village. In its second century, the area was referred to as Black Horse Village, after the busy tavern and hostelry in its center.

Until the middle of the 19th century, parts of Arlington, Medford, Cambridge, and Woburn comprised what is now Winchester. The movement toward incorporation of what, by this time, was called South Woburn was likely precipitated by the rise of the Whig Party in Massachusetts (History of Winchester, Massachusetts by H. S. Chapman and Bruce W. Stone, 1936, 1975).

HM Prison Winchester

HM Prison Winchester is a Category B men's prison, located in Winchester, Hampshire, England. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.

History

There has probably been a prison in Winchester, mainly known as Winchester gaol, since the thirteenth century.

Winchester Prison was built to a Victorian radial design, with five 'spokes' radiating from a central hub. Four of these are used for prisoner accommodation and one for administration.

Between 1900 and 1963, 16 executions took place at the prison. The last was that of Dennis Whitty, convicted of capital murder at Cornwall Assizes, and hanged on 17 December 1963.

In 1995 serial killer Rosemary West, wife of Fred West, was held in Winchester on remand for the duration of her trial in Winchester Crown Court. Each day she was driven from her specially built unit within the male segregation block half a mile down the road to the court.

In December 2001, a convicted murderer escaped from Winchester Prison by scaling the wall. The prisoner went on the run after using a home-made handsaw to saw through the bars of his ground floor cell window. He then used a rope and grappling hook to scale the 30-feet wall of the prison. The prisoner was recaptured days later.