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Walkthrough

by The Lost Gamer

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Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion (GBA)
A Walkthrough by Michael Gray
AKA The Lost Gamer ([email protected])
Copyright 2009


For a list of all my various guides, check
http://the_lost_gamer.tripod.com/guides.html


Table of Contents:
001.  General information
002.  Video Walkthrough
003.  Walkthrough
  003a. Chapter One
  003b. Chapter Two
  003c. Chapter Three
  003d. Chapter Four
  003e. Chapter Five
  003f. Chapter Six
  003g. Chapter Seven
004.  Credits



001-General Information
----------------------------------------------------------------

This is a walkthrough for the 2001 GameBoy Advance (GBA) game 
called Nancy Drew: Messasge in a Haunted Mansion. It is a port 
of the 2000 PC game of the same name.
 
You can contact me at [email protected] if you want 
to point out a mistake in my guide, put the guide on your 
website, or something like that. 

002-Video Walkthrough
----------------------------------------------------------------

I made a video walkthrough for this game, so if you want to see 
me beat this game in 40 minutes, along with my somewhat dull 
commentary, you can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=22BE5679F76B83FB

The last puzzle of the game involves picking out ten Chinese 
symbols in a row, so unless you're familiar with Hanzi, it's 
good to have a visual reference for that puzzle.

003-Walkthrough
----------------------------------------------------------------

003a-Chapter One
----------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter One starts with Nancy going to the haunted mansion in 
California. Your goal for this chapter is to talk to everyone in 
the mansion, solve a tile puzzle, then talk to Abby to see the 
seance.

The game starts in the Chinese room, which is Nancy's room. 
There's not much to see in the room besides a tapestry that 
provides the clue for the final puzzle sequence of the game. 
There's also a Chinese Hanzi symbol for daughter on the dragon. 
Knowing what all the Hanzi are is also important for the final 
puzzle sequence in the game; you may want to copy down all the 
Hanzi that you see, along with their English translations.

Leave the Chinese room to make it to the top floor. On the top 
floor, you have Abby's room, stairs that lead down to the main 
hall, stairs that lead to the downstairs (ie. non-main) hall, 
and the dumbwaiter. Talk to Abby.

Go downstairs. Charlie is in the basement, and Rose is in the 
dining room. The doors connecting to those rooms can be found in 
the downstairs hall. Louis is in the study, which is connected 
to the study that's connected to the main hall.

Rose has a tile puzzle for Nancy, which can be found on the 
ground near her. You need to put all nine tile pieces into 
place.

Press B to rotate a tile, and press A to put it into place. You 
can't put a tile into place unless it's in the correct position, 
facing the correct direction. In other words, it's impossible to 
put a tile into the wrong place. That makes the puzzle quite 
easy.

So, talk to everyone about everything, solve the tile puzzle, 
then talk to Abby. Once you do, the seance begins!

Abby's seance shows that a ghost named Valdez is looking for his 
wife. Also, there is a creepy sound effect. Fancy!

003b-Chapter Two
----------------------------------------------------------------

Your goal for this chapter is to fix the dumbwaiter, get inside 
the attic, solve the piano puzzle and find the hidden note to 
Diego.

First up, let's head to the attic. Talk to Rose, and if you 
haven't done so already, tell her you solved the tile puzzle. 
She will then give you a new puzzle: the paint scraper puzzle. 
Can you find a paint scraper in this game?

Solution: It's in the main hall, near the paint can and paint 
tray.

Head to the second floor, and go up the ladder that's to the 
right of the staircase leading to the second floor from the main 
hall. Climb up the ladder and scrape off the rotten tiles with 
the paint scraper.

Hey, there's a hidden attic here! It's locked, however. Nancy 
has to find the key.

Nancy will have to find TWO keys, actually, because there's a 
locked desk in the attic, so to save some running around, you 
might as well get one key now. Head to Nancy's room (the Chinese 
room) and use the paint scraper on the bedpost. Presto! You find 
the key to the desk.

Head to the basement saloon. Charlie's not here, so you can 
explore. Items of interest are the stuck fireplace grate and the 
seance table, which has a tape inside. Looks like the seance was 
faked. Well, of course it was! You didn't _really_ think there 
was a ghost, did you?

The important thing in the basement is the cash register. Open 
it to find the key to the attic. All right!

Head to the attic and open it with the key. Inside, spin around 
and pick up all the various items: a tile, an iron and a 
crowbar. There's also a locked desk that opens only when you use 
the key found in Nancy's bedpost.

Inside the desk, there is a playbill, some Chinese characters 
and an odd music sheet. Is there more to this music than what 
Nancy is seeing?

Try to leave the attic, and the rope breaks. Use the crowbar on 
the exit, then go down to the basement. Play the first five 
notes of the song on the piano (B E G A and G -- if you don't 
know how to play piano, a book in the library where Louis is 
tells you how).

That opens up the player part of the piano, and you get a player 
roll.

Talk to Rose, and she gives you the job of fixing the 
dumbwaiter. Open up the downstairs dumbwaiter and use the iron 
on the rope. Then go to the upstairs dumbwaiter and take the 
tile.

Go back to the attic and open up the locked desk. Use the player 
roll on the music to get a hidden message: Find Diego on the 
stairs.

Leave the attic. At the top of the brown stairs, you can now 
zoom in for a puzzle. Turn the various posts on the stairs to 
spell out the word Diego. How? Turn the leftmost post once, the 
rightmost post once, and the second-from-right post three times. 
That spells out "Diego".

This opens a hidden compartment. Zoom in, take the symbol and 
read the letter to Diego (Valdez). Apparently, a treasure is 
hidden inside the mansion. 

003c-Chapter Three
----------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of chapter three is to spy on Louis.

Chapter three and the next few chapters are rather short. If you 
want, you can explore in Abby's room when she's not there (you 
can use the spider necklace in her room to open the dresser) to 
make the chapter longer.

Chapter Three begins with Nancy receiving the titular message in 
a haunted mansion. AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

Head downstairs to the study, and, woah, what's that? A fire? 
Quick! Grab the fire extinguisher inside the cabinet in the 
corner, zoom in on the box that's on fire, and use the fire 
extinguisher on the box to put out the fire.

Once you're done talking to Rose about the fire, go to the study 
where Louis usually stays. Now that he's gone, you can examine 
the bookshelf near where he sits. A tile is hidden behind the 
books here, and Nancy can take it.

Look at the fireplace in this room. See the missing tiles? Put 
the tiles onto the fireplace, then pull on the andiron. This 
opens up a hidden passageway behind a bookshelf.

Go inside the passageway, where you can look at a picture to 
learn the Hanzi for child. Take the lantern, then go up the 
stairs. There's a hidden peep hole here! Look through the peep 
hole to see Louis steal a book. Not nice, Louis!

003d-Chapter Four
----------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of Chapter Four is to find the book that Louis stole.

Pull on the lever here to exit the hidden room, then look on 
Louis' computer. Fortunately, Louis leaves all his personal 
information on his laptop, so Nancy has no trouble finding out 
that the lock to the briefcase is 4653-4868.

Go to Louis' briefcase and unlock it with that combination. Read 
the book inside, which talks about Gum bo Fu.

003e-Chapter Five
----------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of this chapter is to read Charlie's term paper. Head 
to the basement, and Charlie isn't there.

Use the crowbar on the grate in front of the fireplace. Crawl 
inside, but make sure to use your new lantern, or else Nancy 
will fall into a hole, and the game will end.

At the end of this hidden passageway is a hidden area where 
Charlie lives. You can read a letter from him, look at his 
Chinese food that he's eating and take his floppy disk.

Go back to the library/study. Use the floppy disk on the 
computer to read Charlie's paper. Apparently, Diego Valdez stole 
a lot of gold from a bank over 100 years ago. Could this be the 
treasure that Diego hid in the mansion?

003f-Chapter Six
----------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of chapter six is to investigate Gum bo Fu.

Call Nancy's friend Emily Foxworth, who knows some Chinese 
people. She promises to send Nancy a letter when she gets a 
translation.

For some reason, calling Emily allows Nancy to ask Louis about 
Gum bo Fu. Lie to Louis and say you read it in a magazine, or 
else the game will end, as Louis will get Nancy fired. Louis 
will lie to Nancy and say it means "house of great books".

Ask Abby and Charlie about Gum Bo Fu. They don't know what it 
means. Then talk to Rose. Rose doesn't know what it means, but 
she has news: Nancy got a letter. This must be the letter from 
Emily!

Rose also mentions a puzzle in Nancy's room. Leave the dining 
room to end the chapter.

003g-Chapter Seven
----------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of this chapter is to find the hidden treasure and stop 
the culprit from stealing it.

Head to Nancy's room and read the letter. "Gum Bo Fu" means 
"Gold Treasure Mansion"! Wonder what mansion _that_ could refer 
to...?

Anyway, like Rose said, there's a puzzle in Nancy's room. It's 
near Nancy's bed, on the wall. This puzzle was impossible to 
access earlier, and actually, it's a series of puzzles.

The first puzzle is a zodiac puzzle. Do you know all twelve 
animals of the zodiac? There's a book in Abby's room that says 
the animals are rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, 
sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. Click on all twelve in that 
order to get another puzzle.

This is the Chinese symbol puzzle. If you read the tapestry in 
Nancy's room, you'll notice ten words are in yellow. Click on 
the Hanzi for those ten words in the proper order.

Child � found on the painting when spying on Louis
Beginning � in the desk in the attic
Daughter � on the dragon in Nancy's room
Four � on a game tile in the library
Eye � tea cup in dumbwaiter
Fire � on insurance letter in the desk in Rose's room
Moon � in the desk in Abby's room
King � on the Chinese food box in Charlie's hidden room
River � on the music score inside the piano seat
Golden � on the letter from Emily

I would recommend watching my video to see what the symbols look 
like, as that takes less time than going back through the game 
to find all the symbols you missed and writing them down.

Once you solve the Chinese symbol puzzle, you can read a 
marriage license between Diego Valdez and Lizzie Applegate 
(who's a character I totally forgot to mention when typing up 
this guide), as well as Diego's will.

There is also a suspicious pyramid. Use the golden Chinese 
symbol in Nancy's inventory (from the letter to Diego from under 
the stairs) on the pyramid. You have another puzzle--turn all 
the moons into suns.

Solve this puzzle by clicking all four corners, then the middle 
square. Fortunately, the difficult slider puzzle found in the PC 
version of the game isn't here, and Nancy finds a red diamond.

Remember what the letter to Diego said? Yeah, me neither. 
However, I'm pretty sure it said something about finding the 
hidden treasure. Go downstairs and zoom in on a phoenix head at 
the bottom of the stairs. The phoenix is missing an eye.

Put the red diamond in the phoenix eye slot, and light shines on 
the floor. Zoom in on that area and use the crowbar to find the 
golden treasure. Great!

Then the culprit of the game knocks Nancy unconscious and steals 
the gold. Not great!

Turn around and head up the stairs to the right. See the cleat? 
That's the thing which controls the chandelier. Undo it to get 
the chandelier to fall down and land on top of the culprit.

The culprit is trapped underneath the chandelier. The culprit 
has been caught, and Nancy found the hidden treasure. I guess 
that means it's game over. Great job, detective!

004-Credits
----------------------------------------------------------------

This FAQ is copyright of The Lost Gamer, 2009.  If you want to 
use any part of this FAQ, ask me first (instructions under 
general information)