Jinn

Activity

It can’t turn off the fuse box directly. But it can trip it by turning on too many lights and overloading it.

Ability: sanity drain

• First it checks whether the fuse box is on. If it is, 5 s later it checks whether there are players in the same room as it or within 3 m.
• If there are, it picks the first one on the list (the order they joined the lobby) among those in range and drains 25% sanity from them at once.
• Doing so leaves an EMF 2 or 5 reading at the fuse box.

Hunt

If all three conditions are met:

• the fuse box is on,
• it has line of sight to the player it’s chasing,
• and it’s more than 3 m from that player,

its speed is fixed at 2.5 m/s for as long as they hold. Otherwise it moves at standard speed, with one catch: while it’s going 2.5 m/s, the line-of-sight speed-up keeps building “in the background” and kicks in once any of the conditions stops being met.

Whether the lights are on or off doesn’t affect its abilities; only the fuse box matters.

Strategy

Turning off the fuse box stops it from using its abilities, but it leaves the map dark and sanity drains faster. Decide whether shutting down its abilities is worth getting more hunts from lower sanity. You can offset it by carrying a lit Firelight, which reduces sanity loss.

How to identify it

Both tests are done with the fuse box on:

• By its speed. Wait for the hunt at the far end of a long room or hallway, far from where it’s expected to come in and with a clear view. Listen to its footsteps and watch its speed before and after it sees you. If it suddenly speeds up to chase you, it’s probably a Jinn. Use Incense if you need to.
  • Don’t mistake it for the Revenant: both speed up instantly when they see you, but the Revenant’s change is much more drastic.
• By the EMF at the fuse box. Leave an EMF Reader at the fuse box while it’s on. If it picks up a reading but the fuse box never turned off, it’s very likely the Jinn using its ability (rule out other causes, like the fuse box door). If someone’s sanity suddenly drops by 25%, that points to the Jinn too.

The fuse box turning off on its own doesn’t rule it out, because it can trip it with too many lights. When it trips, all the light switches turn off too; when a ghost turns it off by hand, the light switches stay as they were. That’s how you tell them apart.

On custom difficulties with the fuse box broken, or if it gets broken by the Monkey Paw’s “I wish for activity” wish, the Jinn can’t be identified by behavior, only by evidence. With no evidence it’s almost impossible: all you can do is rule out every other ghost, and depending on the room, even that may not be possible.

Trivia

• Jinn come from Arabic mythology, though there are similar descriptions in ancient Mesopotamia; Islam made them popular. They are beings created before humans out of smokeless fire. They’re usually invisible, but they can take many forms: serpents, winged beings, giants, insects, or humans.
• They aren’t undead: they live, eat, age, and have children like people do. Like humankind, they were created to worship God, and they’re neither good nor evil by nature.
• It’s a myth that the Jinn interacts more with electronics: it has the same chance of interacting with anything nearby.

Change history

Version	Change
Alpha, 2 February 2020	Its ability changes: it no longer affects the weather; now it runs if its target runs.
Alpha, 7 March 2020	Runs faster.
Alpha, 10 August 2020	No longer turns off the fuse box.
Alpha, 24 August 2020	Its ability becomes a faster speed when it’s far from its target.
0.3.0	Before this version, its evidence was EMF Level 5, Spirit Box, and Ghost Orb.
0.5.0	Its chasing speed goes up to 2.5 m/s. The distance at which it slows down drops to 3 m.
0.6.2.0	When it uses its ability, it leaves the EMF at the fuse box instead of where it is.
0.7.0	The ability affects anyone in its room or within 3 m. The EMF appears at the fuse box when any player’s sanity is drained, not just the host’s.