It was a dark and stormy night (as a famous beagle once wrote) and things were stirring beneath the hallowed halls of academia known as GUE, the George Underwood Edwards Institute of Technology, one of America's foremost learning centres.
With mere hours to go before your term paper is due, the campus computer network goes berserk, trashes your files, and starts spewing gibberish about sacrifices, blood, and weird rites.
A friendly hacker examines your workstation and informs you that the source of the problem appears to be the alchemy lab.
A lesser student might start re-writing. But it's a boring subject, and a walk around will be a welcome distraction. And there's the question of the strange symbol-carved stone in your hand, the remnant of what you thought was just a nightmare.
Lurking Horror is, without doubt, the most spine-chilling adventure yet from Infocom but how spine-chilling that is depends on your imagination.
It's certainly the most deadly. While many adventures settle for frustrating the player, Lurking Horror kills at every opportunity. Turn off your flashlight in a dark location and - bam! Something will get you.
Among the foes to be outsmarted are the wicked-toothed flying creature, the zombie maintenance man, and a horde of rats.
Lurking Horror creates a tense, fear-charged atmosphere with lots of attention to background detail, masses of puzzles of varying difficulty, and a number of questions to be answered.
What is the professor of alchemy up to? Why did his star student commit suicide? What nameless horror lurks in the muddy tunnels by the river? And what unspeakable deeds have been committed on the blood-stained altar deep below the campus?
Not least, how are you going to finish your essay before breakfast?
One of Infocom's best, but definitely not for the novice adventurer. And if you're too nervous to watch Psycho, don't play Lurking Horror alone at night.
Thanks to Frank Skagemo for transcribing and donating this article.