For a lot of people, the appeal of horror is being surprised and disturbed by something they've never seen before. In recent years, I've sourced this rare feeling from movies like Obsession, where the gender dynamics of that story made it feel a bit dangerous, or Speak No Evil, which has one of the most shocking and nihilistic endings that I can recall. I even find that freshness in a modern classic like Pearl, which isn't really scary, but contrasts a technicolour old Hollywood style with a singularly unsettling Mia Goth performance to great effect.Presented by(Image credit: Torn Banner)This article is brought to you by No More Room in Hell 2.Fear of the unknown is more valuable to me as a viewer than seeing a really good version of something I've experienced before. In games, it's largely the same—I crave new places and themes above all else. It's why Silent Hill: Townfall, Mouthwashing, Dredge, Silent Hill f, and Still Wakes The Deep all succeeded for me. They're all set in locations or timeframes I've never seen anywhere else in games. I step into those worlds not knowing exactly what I'm going to find, and come out the other side feeling exhilarated in a profoundly nasty way. That's horror, baby. From this decade, however, nothing in the horror genre has upended my expectations like MyHouse.wad. Everyone who plays this Doom 2 map seems to have the same experience: they know there's something weird about this mod set in a seemingly normal suburban home, but they spiral once they start playing it and realise how many secrets are impossibly embedded within its walls. They then become obsessed with trying to understand exactly how the house works. I consider it a modern horror classic because it's able to take players on this ride.If you missed its release in 2023, the 'backstory' behind MyHouse.wad is that its creator had recently lost an important friend. Among his friend's belongings was a floppy disc containing an incomplete Doom map recreation of his parents' house. Since they both shared an interest in Doom mapping back in the '00s, the creator decided to honour his friend's memory by finishing his work. Except, of course, this story is all fiction, and the Doom map in question turns out to be a hellish labyrinth disguised as a lovely home. Its real creator? Still officially unknown.MyHouse.wad is relentlessly tense, and punctuated by a series of 'WTF' moments that keep you wondering what evil thing you've downloaded.On the first run through MyHouse.wad, it does indeed look like a normal suburban house, albeit one filled with Doom monsters. After killing the patrolling enemies, you exit the house, look in from the outside, and realise it's somehow filled with monsters again. You go inside to gun them down and learn the house has subtly changed: new doors appear, leading to rooms that weren't there before and architecturally impossible spaces. Key visual details have been altered. Crucially, too, the sound design begins messing with your head, resetting and then distorting Doom 2's classic Running From Evil music, or playing the Discord notification sound as a jump scare. No matter where you go, too, the general shape of the environment somehow still looks exactly like the house…(Image credit: Veddge)The unsettling details of the spaces you're exploring just pile up—MyHouse.wad is relentlessly tense, and punctuated by a series of 'WTF' moments that keep you wondering what evil thing you've downloaded. There's no question that the choice of a simple family home as the backdrop contributes to how disturbing it is.Bless this messMyHouse.wad is just as mischievous as it is scary.The first thing that very online people will tell you about this mod is that it's inspired by House of Leaves, an experimental novel by Mark Z. Danielewski (which has also been cited as an influence on Remedy's Alan Wake and Control). The mod shares the premise of a house that's larger on the inside than it seems from the outside, with the interior undergoing constant bizarre changes. There are several direct references to specific details from the book. But while reading House of Leaves these days feels like work—I got the distinct impression I'd have appreciated its experimental structure and overwrought style much more if I'd read it at 21, rather than my late 30s—MyHouse.wad is just as mischievous as it is scary.(Image credit: Veddge)I feel its anonymous creator chuckling darkly at me as I see the house refill with monsters, or when I shoot a horrible giant fish guarding a swimming pool and see it explode into tinier evil fish that are much harder to kill. The creator is definitely laughing at me as I fight an evil version of Shrek outside a nursery. While the story of the mod gestures at darker themes, it's almost like the creator is playing a series of pranks on you, subverting your expectations of Doom as they go (illustrated by John Romero himself streaming it multiple times and frequently stopping to admire its tricks). My relationship with MyHouse.wad is similar to how I felt about Kojima Productions' PT. It's not something I necessarily play for its mechanics—even though it's still Doom, of course. You're more focused on unpicking the 'how did they do that?' factor of its impossible architecture, the nightmarish logic of how the different areas link together or why its more novel monsters are even there. It's one giant mystery with a load of little mysteries buried inside it.(Image credit: Veddge)Another thing it has in common with PT is how scant details are on its creation, which feeds into the overall legend surrounding it. As mentioned, we still don't officially know who made MyHouse.wad—the creepypasta-style files in the mod's Google Drive folder don't give anything away. Its credited creator is Steven Nelson, AKA Veddge, but that's just a pseudonym. Veddge's Doomworld account was active until 2006, at which point they took a hiatus until they started posting again in 2022. That too feeds into the wad's myth. Veddge has not posted once since the mod was released in 2023, either.It's packed with the kind of moments or clever twists that would become iconic if they featured in full games. I'm almost too vain to accept the idea that someone could create something this good then disappear into the wilderness without taking credit for it. But this confidential origin story is a key part of MyHouse.wad's creative identity. Anyone with a search engine and a spare hour can piece together who the creator almost certainly is (and in-game credits shed light on who else contributed to the project), but I wouldn't give that much thought. The intention behind the mod's creation is to blur fiction and reality in this way that enhances the experience. Let the mystery be. House secretsReplaying it now, what is staggering about MyHouse.wad is that it's packed with the kind of moments or clever twists that would become iconic if they featured in full games. People still talk about Psycho Mantis reading your PlayStation memory card in Metal Gear Solid almost three decades later. But this mod has maybe four or five moments that evoked a similar 'no way…' response from me as a player, all happening inside this single map. The rub is, finding your way to those moments is not for the faint of heart—MyHouse.wad is deliberately obtuse and tough to figure out. But what you're doing in the map is fundamentally the same thing you do in all Doom maps: shooting monsters and looking for items or interactive parts of the environment to forward your progress. It's just that you're being asked to do so in an impossible, ever-changing space that never allows you to be comfortable. (Image credit: Veddge)I keep encouraging my normie friends to get over the hump of MyHouse.wad being a mod so they can discover its magic for themselves, but no one in my life has played it so far. Despite its continued popularity as a topic on YouTube, MyHouse.wad's reach is still limited to anyone who can be bothered to mod Doom 2 on PC, a process that takes all of two minutes.If the same idea was packaged up into an indie game that took place inside a fake retro FPS wrapping (like No Players Online), maybe it would find a slightly different audience, but seeing something this inventive running in ancient Doom with a few bells and whistles is undoubtedly its special sauce. This house, as a feat of level design inside a decades-old game, is that fresh element I crave from all the horror I love.