I could *not* for the life of me figure out what to do at the ending. I found out I was missing an item and had essentially hit a dead end (I thought there were none in late 90's sierra games?).
Anyway so I try to load. No dice, game won't let me. So I quit. It tells me I will have to start the chase scene from the beginning. No biggy, I need to go back. Except.....wheres the load button? All I see is "Start new game"
You have to be kidding. This game did not just delete my save because I refused to do it in one go? What the hell? What am I supposed to do without the items I missed? I had no choice but to quit! Do I seriously need to download a savegame? Is this game that retarded?

Unreal. I answered my own question. It deletes your save and is designed this way. Why would they do this? Good lord.
I did read though that apparently you can't hit a dead end, there's alternate items. But still....deleting your save? That is easily the worst design choice I could imagine them making. Come on Roberta, I used to DEFEND your game design choices. :(
Screw it, watched the ending on youtube since I was two mouseclicks from it anyway.
Umm...yeah. Really dissapointed here.

Your other option if this happens is to create a New Game. It will give you the option to choose which chapter you want to start on. You can start on Chapter 7 and play through it to the end.
I had the game crash on me during chapter 7, then I couldn't get it back. There was no way I was going to play through all that a 2nd time.

it doesn't delete your saves. it goes onto a new option down the bottom labled replay chapter 7 chase sequence or something. if you didn't finish the game it will replay until you die then start from the bit just before tou died or will simply play the whole chase from begining to end if you finished it.

That's what SHOULD happen...except I have the same prob as the OP - there is no option to replay Chap. 7 on the menu screen.

Yeah, when mine crashed, whenever I tried to load my game, I just got a black screen and a cursor. I had to start a new game, but you can start at chapter 7.

Does this game has more than one ending? It just deleted by save, after that I watched spolier movie on YT. I see I have to go back to town to get the cross in antique shop instead of kamea. But in chapter seven I can't get out of the house. I'm I right?

Spoiler alert!

When the chase sequence starts after you enter the darkroom, the game starts saving the game as a chase-video instead of a standard savegame. (This was explained in the original game's manual, and can probably also be found in the GoG-version manual which is a pdf-version of the folder.)
The video, lying under Watch movie is named the same as your original save, and you will be able to regain control of it at some point during the viewing. If you've forgotten items before getting into the chair, you'll be able to try again, retracing your steps and find the things you've missed.

However; if you manage to forget or not find any number of the vital items for the last sequence, you are forced to start a new game, as there is no turning back after big boss meanie is after you. Simply put; if you screw up, you're dead.
In that case, you may start a new game and begin at chapter 7 instead of running through the entire game, basically just playing through the ending. There are different ways of getting to the same ending. But there are only two possible endings, either you live, or you die ;)

In reply to offtza01, I never had the holy item required at chapter 7 either, and the house was locked, so no going into town to get it, however, you can get a different holy item by going to the crypt and taking the crucifix/rosary beads from the coffin.

/Start rant

I am so frustrated right now, I need to rant. Please bear with me.

I stayed up all night playing this game from chapter 1 up to chapter 7. I thought I was [/i]incredibly[i] thorough, searching through each location (that I managed to find) multiple times, re-visiting people and places, checking the painting/computer/fortune-teller machine every day etc. Although the beginning was slow, I got into the flow of the game soon enough, and was enjoying it immensely.

Then chapter 7 came along, and made me loathe this game to its very core. I had the crucifix from the antique shop and all the other items I had collected along the way. I completely missed the shard of glass in the nursery, as there was no hint pointing out that I should re-visit the nursery at the beginning of chapter 7. Neither did the game warn me that as soon as I enter the darkroom, a chase sequence takes place - erasing my save game and destroying my chances of winning the game. I had to start a new game from chapter 7 (I was fuming at this point), only to realize that I could not exit the house and thereby retrieve the crucifix from the antique store. So I started another new game from chapter 6... this time I completely gave up and tried to use an online walkthrough to make sure that I would not miss out on any detail. It turns out that this game requires you to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time - without ever giving you the slightest hint on what you should be focusing on. Consequently, as I read the official Sierra walkthrough, I realized that I had somehow managed to miss out on a great many things without which I could apparently not win the game.

I almost want to cry now. All that time and effort I spent on this game, for nothing but a gruesome death scene repeating over and over and over again.

I never managed to find this mysterious crypt that everybody is talking about, neither did I realize that there was a secret passage in the chapel until it was too late (the secret passage in the chapel is supposed to lead to the crypt, but all I managed to find was a broken stairway and two passages leading to various rooms I had already visited in the game).

I am probably going to give up on this game, and watch the ending video on youtube (after all, I did make it all the way to chapter 7 before I realized that I was doomed).

But out of curiousity, in case I ever want to attempt to complete this game properly, can anyone tell me how I can find the crypt in chapter 7, and how I can win the game without the crucifix from the antique store? Since starting the game anew from chapter 7 means that I lose half the items I had collected throughout the game without a hope of redeeming them (except by starting again from chapter 1, and I am not willing to do that).

While I'm ranting, I might as well complain about the bugginess of the game. I was saving my game obsessively, because every 15 minutes or so, my cursor would get stuck to a specific area of the screen and refuse to move/interact with anything - forcing me to quit the game and reload it. The game also has a habit of crashing to the desktop randomly. Audio and graphical glitches were likewise common. Yet I still endured, and enjoyed the game, until *bleeping* chapter 7 came along.

/End of rant

Excuse me if my sentence structure and vocabulary is atrocious - as I mentioned - I stayed up all night for this game, and I am quite sleep-deprived at the moment. I will be very thankful to anyone who can answer my questions regarding chapter 7. Thank you in advance :).

Manual (which is included in the GOG version) did explain that in the last chapter the save is converted into movie and you can load it by selecting watch movie. I didn't have any problems with that. However I dislike the fact that you only get one save game, so I did what I do with every game which allows only a single save. I manually took copies of the save game file every time when I achieved something in the game, so that in case of broken save I could go back.

When it comes to difficulty, I think that Phantasmagoria is one of the easiest Sierra adventures and I didn't find any dead ends, unlike in early Sierra adventures where I had to restart several times because it was rather easy to make the game unwinnable (like missing crucial item at the start of Space Quest 2 or crossing a bridge in King's Quest 2).

@shadowmirage: It's been a while since I last played Phantasmagoria, but IIRC the secret passage to the crypt is in the chapel from where you did find the book on the altar. There's also another secret passage which leads from upstairs to the chapel. I think that you had to go through that to avoid Adrienne's husband.

"But out of curiousity, in case I ever want to attempt to complete this game properly, can anyone tell me how I can find the crypt in chapter 7, and how I can win the game without the crucifix from the antique store?"

There's two hidden passages, the 2nd one's the one you want, move the cursor to the lower right and you should get a different view of the chapel, then click the wall there to get to the hidden passage that leads to the crypt.

It's actually possible to come to a dead end in Phantasmagoria as well, if you forget to bring either a crucifix or something sharp to pinch your finger for blood in the final scene. I managed that heroic act myself once, and you have no way of getting it when you've reached that point in the game. It was a very sad face-desk moment. :p

Thanks to both of you, OlausPetrus and I_mcgregoruk! Now that I at least know what I'm looking for (and have recovered sufficiently from my trauma) I might dare to attempt Chapter 7 once more. Wish me luck! :)

The endgame part greatly confused me as well. The topic of this thread was exactly what I thought initially, and almost my search terms, verbatim.

Having finally beat the game, with the help of a guide I apparently cannot post a link to at this moment, I am convinced that the mechanics during this part of the game and the sequences you endure are intentionally meant to feel like an inescapable hell.

As has been mentioned, fortunately, it is possible to beat the game at the start of Chapter 7. Depending on how you quit the game during the endgame, you will either have your save game erased whereby you must start at the beginning of Chapter 7 after starting a new game, or you can resume where you were if you clicked Quit in the Game Over screen.

What you must do exactly is not all too intuitive. But I will give these two major spoiler-laden hints:

If Don is chasing you throughout the mansion, then you have already lost. But you might as well get a stronger sense of the horror you are dealing with.

Grab that darn book. But be ready. First, click around the mansion like you were possessed by a demon.

Be brave. Take a stand for your life. Tonight.