Hamilton gets cameo in hit horror video game Phasmophobia

When players from around the world load up the popular, UK-produced horror video game Phasmophobia, one of the levels they can choose to play is a big farmhouse with a large porch, sitting in a dark rural landscape.

When you enter the house, you will find a few unassuming envelopes on a welcome mat on the floor. After a closer look, players from Ontario may see a familiar city address on the envelopes: "Bleasdale Farm, Hamilton, ON L8R 2L2."

"My first reaction was disbelief," said Nicole Sharpe, who has been playing the video game since October 2024.

"I was also very eager to figure out why such a specific Hamilton address was [chosen]," said the Hamilton-born player.

While the farm is fictional, the postal code is real — a location in downtown Hamilton, off James Street North.

As it turns out, it was chosen at random. Well, kind of.

Phasmophobia is a four-person co-operative horror video game where players, using ghost-hunting equipment, must investigate a haunted location to figure out what type of ghost they're dealing with.

The award-winning game came out in 2020 and quickly gained popularity on Steam — a popular storefront and management platform for PC games — as people looked for things to do while in pandemic lockdowns and quarantine.

The team behind the game is mostly based in Southampton, England, and the game takes place in the United States, so shortly after the level was revamped, some players in the Hamilton quickly started wondering about the choice of the location.

"My initial theory was one of the [developers] had close ties to Hamilton in some way," said Sharpe.

But turns out the truth behind this location is a bit simpler than that.

The Bleasdale Farm location used to be a rundown farmhouse. It was re-released earlier this year as a big, beautiful home.

The game's level designer, Ben Lawson, said the idea of having the setting of the farm be in Hamilton came from a painting in the house.

"In my head, the old beardy guy … is Canadian," he said in email to CBC Hamilton through Kinetic Games's media team. The studio produced the game.

"It was one of those quick ideas that just came to me in the moment, and it stuck."

After some research, Lawson chose a random postal code that ended up being in the city's downtown core — on James Street North between Mulberry and Colbourne streets — a very different scenery from the remote, rural farm, which another team member said it's "quite funny."

"Maybe we could play it off as this alternate universe or something," said Corey Dixon, art director at Kinetic Games.

Sharpe, the player who is now based in Kitchener, Ont., said she was "disappointed" to find out the reason it was chosen.

For her, though, it's still nice to have a city with a "bad rep" like Hamilton getting some love.

"It's nice to see it be recognized more," Sharpe said.

Another Ontario player, Julia Munro, said even though a deeper reason for the name would have been cool, "the fact that it's kind of random is also very funny."

Munro's first reaction was "mostly confusion," when she saw the address, especially when looking up the postal code just to discover it was close to Hamilton's downtown.

"I thought it was funny that it's also in such a busy city area … and yet in game, it's like some abandoned house in the middle of a farm," said Munro, who lives in St. Catharines.

She said out of all the places in Canada they could have chosen for the map, she's glad the developers of the game chose Hamilton to get the spotlight instead of a bigger city like Toronto or Vancouver.

The revamping of Bleasdale and another level called Grafton Farmhouse took around three to four months each, Dixon said.

Dixon said though there are many story elements placed in the house — referred to by players as a map — a lot of it is purposefully made vague for players to fill in the blanks.

He said for the back story of the locations, the team came up with the idea of an older couple who live in Bleasdale.

"We added the idea of maybe their granddaughter comes to stay, but they don't really get on with her very well, so she gets put up in the attic," he said, where concert posters that took place in Ottawa are also placed.

"The story that we're trying to push a little bit is that maybe she came from Grafton before it was abandoned... and then she had to move in with her grandparents in Bleasdale."

Dixon said their player base is notorious for noticing small details and connecting them to the real world, something he enjoys.

"It's really nice that people [pay attention to] something as minor as an address on a letter, and people connect with that," he said.

"We'll make sure to keep doing these places where people play the game and people are excited to see the name."

But this experience also taught him to be a bit wary in future. "What if we put a map somewhere, and then [a player is] like, 'oh, my God, that's down this route from me,'" he said.