So, I'm about to run HoH again with a new group, and I recall running it once before...
Of all the haunts in Harrowstone itself, the silliest one is the first, in the antechamber. Once a person steps into the small 'room' with doors on all four sides, they all slam and "lock" shut. It's good for a jumpscare scene the first time... but it resets so quickly, and if a party goes in and out of Harrowstone repeatedly, I felt it got old quickly.
Plus, aside from a blatant "see, this place -is- haunted", it's a pointless haunt/trap. You don't take damage inside the chamber, and as it slams shut so quickly, and there's not many living creatures to chase you inside of Harrowstone, it's not like you'll be trapped away from your team and having to fight an enemy by yourself.
I just don't really see the point of that one. Feedback?
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That's mostly true. I present to you two scenarios from my group's recent playthrough, and what I think they mean for this haunt in particular, as counterpoint.
1) One character of the group ended up getting separated and locked out of that room... in the room next door with the cold spot. It provided a nice preview of haunts essentially working together, to become even more dangerous than they are separately, which ended up being a good learning experience for the group when they ended up having to deal with the Father and the Piper at the same time because of the order and nature of their exploration.
2) The fast reset time shows to players immediately that there's more to defeating haunts than just hit point damage. You have to figure out how to lay the thing to rest or it just keeps coming back, forever. The fact that this easy to deal with one kept resetting on them and being annoying made them try ways to figure out how to permanently defeat a haunt, which they then started to apply to all of the more dangerous haunts with longer reset times. And, while they didn't know the reset times for the others, they felt a sense of urgency with each one because it might be a quick-resetter.
So while the haunt itself might be ineffective, I think it's presence is useful and important nevertheless as a "tutorial level haunt" without which Harrowstone, and especially Renchurch later, becomes even more of a challenge for lack of crucial information and experience.
I'm thinking of having the slamming door haunt happen the first time the players go thru and then roll percentile dice to see if it happens again when they exit or go thru again.