Mare

Activity

• It can’t turn lights on and, among its interactions, it prefers turning them off.
• It also doesn’t do the light flicker that leaves an EMF reading on the light switch (it does do the “atmospheric” flicker).
• It has no special relationship with monitors, TVs, Bleasdale Farmhouse’s motion-activated lights or the fuse box: it turns them on and off like any ghost. That said, because of a bug, it still can’t turn on monitors or TVs.
• It has no special relationship with fire either: it can light Firelights and other fire sources.
• It picks the light-shattering ghost event 11.11% of the time (6.67% for other ghosts).
• If the lights in its current room are on, it does long roams 50% of the time.
• Unlike almost every other ghost, it can do long roams even when it isn’t in its favorite room, as long as that room is lit.

Ability: turning off the light you turn on

• If a player turns on a light (TVs and computers don’t count) within 4 m of the Mare and on the same floor, it has a 1/7 chance of turning it off almost instantly, within 1 s at most.
• Each light has a 10 s cooldown per player after it’s turned on or off, and the Mare can’t use its ability on a light that’s on cooldown.
• It works even if the fuse box is off or broken, but not if the light is shattered. It also works during a ghost event.

Hunt

Its threshold depends on whether the room it’s in has the lights on:

Room lights	Hunt threshold
Off	60%
On	40%

This applies even if the fuse box is off or broken, but not if the room’s lights are destroyed. Other light sources (your equipment, Firelights) don’t count.

Strategy

• Be careful when using the Spirit Box or looking for Ghost Orbs to find out where it is: with the lights off it hunts earlier, and it can start a hunt with you very close.
• Once it’s identified, there are two ways to handle it:
  • Leave the lights on in its favorite room and the rooms next to it to lower its threshold.
  • Once sanity is below 40%, it will hunt with or without light anyway. At that point it may be better to leave its room dark: that way it wanders off less and hunts more from there, which is less dangerous than having it roam all over the map (and maybe change its favorite room).
• Either way, having someone near the light switches helps get the lights back on if it turns them off or if the fuse box trips.
• Light doesn’t change its chance of shattering lights. If you want a room lit, avoid staying in it so it doesn’t shatter the light.

How to identify it

It’s one of the hardest ghosts to identify by behavior. Signs:

• It turns the light off the moment you turn it on. Wait a few seconds between turning on lights. When it manifests during a ghost event, turn on nearby lights: ghosts normally don’t touch lights during a manifestation ghost event, so if one goes off in the middle of the event (not at the start or the end), it’s a Mare.
• It prefers light-shattering ghost events.
• It hunts a little earlier in the dark or a little later in the light, though this isn’t very reliable.
• If you tend to leave the lights on near it and you see it often roaming into rooms nobody has entered, or changing favorite rooms a lot on Professional or higher, it could be a Mare.

To rule it out:

• If the ghost turns a light on, it’s not a Mare. But never turning one on doesn’t confirm it: any ghost can go the whole contract without doing it.
• Any ghost can turn off a light right after you turn it on, purely by chance. Some ghost events also turn the lights off at the start or the end; that’s not its ability.
• If you see lights flickering outside of ghost events and hunts and an EMF reading shows up on the light switch, it’s not a Mare.

Trivia

• In the journal overhaul of version 0.3.1.0, its description was mistakenly changed to an old version, in which it caused hallucinations that lowered sanity and were stopped by toggling your Flashlight. That mechanic was replaced before early access with the light-based threshold. Hallucinations, not tied to any one ghost, will arrive with the “Horror 2.0” update.
• It’s based on the mara of Scandinavian and Germanic mythology. She wasn’t a spirit but a woman who transformed at night because of a curse tied to her birth; in a man, that same curse created a werewolf.
• The mara entered homes at night and sat on the chests of her victims, who were left paralyzed and feeling like they were suffocating. She also caused nightmares, hence the names: nightmare in English and mardröm in Swedish. She attacked livestock, leaving them exhausted and sick, and left knots and tangles in the hair of people and animals.
• To drive her away you had to find her “mare tree,” which she was bound to and which could be recognized by its tangled branches (in reality, “witch’s brooms,” caused by phytoplasmas). A branch from that tree in the victim’s bed kept her away. She was described as a pale, gaunt woman with claw-like hands, long tangled hair and pale eyes. In the game it can look like anything, even a man.

Change history

Version	Change
Alpha, 18 March 2020	Now requires Spirit Box as evidence instead of EMF 5.
Alpha, 7 August 2020	Looking at it lowers sanity slightly faster than with other ghosts (this seems to have been removed later).
Alpha, 17 August 2020	Its ability changes: it no longer causes hallucinations; it now hunts earlier in the dark and later in the light.
0.2.11.0	Can no longer turn lights on.
0.3.0	Before this version, its evidence was Spirit Box, Ghost Orb and Freezing Temperatures.
0.3.1.0	A description with its old ability is added by mistake; it’s fixed in a hotfix for the same version.
0.5.0	Can instantly turn off lights that a player turns on. Prefers turning lights off. Roams more with the lights on. Prefers light-shattering ghost events.
0.9.0	No longer counts keyboards and TV remotes as light sources.