TLDR: I'm sort of looking for ideas in the realm of "Sheogorath" meets "The Shining."

OK, so I'm working on a new haunted mine for Helgen Reborn and I need ideas! I'm not so concerned with getting it built and ready to upload as I am getting it right, and hopefully having a few WTF moments and some WOW! moments in there. So, here's where I'm starting from:

I loved Vault 106 in Fallout 3 with image space swaps and hallucinations, so I thought about doing something similar in certain spots. For example, the entry of the cave is guarded by a giant spider, so I thought about on her death doing an image space swap and have a few baby spiders and maybe one more giant spider appear. It would sort of be like when you killed the first one, that brought out the haunted spiders.

After that room there is a short hall leading into another chamber that I was thinking about a couple of normal skeletons, but when you kill them there could be another IS swap and they turn into the Corrupted Shade versions, reanimate and come back to life. (If I can figure out how to script it that is.)

That chamber leads to another short hallway and room that I've been leaning towards cluttering as a break room of sorts with some tables and chairs and cooking pots. Sort of a place where the miners would take their lunch break or whatever. I thought about another image space swap for this room, but when it fades back in, all the tables and chairs were now on the ceiling. There was a room in a dungeon in one of the Oblivion DLC that was upside down, so that's sort of my inspiration for this idea.

After that room, there is a very short hallway that leads out into a medium sized cavern. I cheated to save a little time and used the cavern that is full of spiders in Shor's Stone for this central area. For starters, I would like yet another IS swap and enable a perched dragon out on the walkway, but I don't know if I can do that and make him stay put or if he will try to fly around in there. It's not really big enough for flight I don't think, and I remember people having trouble with dragons flying through walls like this IIRC.

Anyway, that's about all I have in mind so far and that is about 1/2 the size of the whole level. There is the winding ramps all the way to the bottom of the cavern where I thought I'd probably put the boss level bad guy, maybe a Dragon Priest, but I'm very open to suggestion.

I also have a series of connecting halls where I thought about more IS swaps and maybe a murder scene or something. I'm sort of looking for ideas in the realm of "Sheogorath" meets "The Shining."

EDIT: For the record, the layout is 100% finished excluding any changes I make based on what I script for the encounters. Final clutter will also be deternined by the encounters. So this is not something I still need to build as it's built and ready to populate and finalize.

Sounds interesting.

Only things I can think of to add is I like a bit more subtlety and tension. "WTF was that?!" moments.

Things falling over in the players peripheral...shadows in the distance but nothing when you get there...maybe one room where when you turn your back, the chairs move positions...

Basically all I'm saying is the Triggerbox is your new best friend

- Hypno

Flying around pickaxes, invisible ghosts running at you(sort of a Fallout3 stealth boy effect) hallucinations where everything is on fire. shadows walking around but the NPC is invisible, so a pickaxe does work by himself. hallucination from gas. dead bodies standing up again talking to you about gold fever. Ghosts arguing over pieces of gold. Gold ores falling from above and when you pick them up just junk gets added to the inventory. Strange light effects. Messages writen on the walls. Or maybee some kind of bird cage gets thrown around and makes noises for all the birds who died in the mine. Something with animals because thats always more creepy.

pitch dark, heart beat loop track, unkilable children walking through walls with their heads spinning singing nursery rhymes, a picture of your face all over the walls in a beautifully intricate wooden frame. lots of bloody turtles strewn about...

For this one, I'd check out how they handled Malkoran and his shade for the Break of Dawn quest.

Out of place sounds (spiders that sound like laughing children when they die), and the right (or very very wrong) lighting can work wonders for changing things between surreal and horrific.

woot! all good stuff although I'm afraid I'm going to run out of talent with scripting floating objects. I just looked at that haunted house in Marcarth, and all I can say is that I'm clueless on how those scripts and animated objects work, lol. For childern, I'd love to have some ghost children at an altar of some sort chanting,

But that would be too much of a total ripoff. Are there any good poets around?

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down.

I think you know this poem, its about dying of scarlet fever.

Since you're using The Shining as inspiration, you could always shamelessly rip off the ghost twins' lines. Make it a for-real Easter egg.

Hello Dovahkhin. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Dovahkhin. Forever... and ever... and ever.

Oh gods! Where the hell am I gonna get child actors!?!? (it just hit me)

You find them often on a supermarkt parking lot.