Red Door Yellow Door: A Scary Sleepover Game To Play With Your Friends

Okay, we all had those creepy games we used to play at slumber parties in middle school, right? You know like Red Book, Three Kings, and Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. Well, there was this one game my friends and I used to play that still haunts me to this day. We would sit in a circle in my best friend's creepy basement, wrapped in our blankets with flashlights in our hands.

The game is called Red Door Yellow Door and there are two starring roles, the subject and the guide. The person acting as the guide sits cross-legged with a pillow in their lap and the subject lays facing up with their head on the pillow. The guide massages the subject's temples in a circular motion, quietly chanting "red door, yellow door, any other color door." The rest of us watching would also chant. Creepy, right? If I went to the basement and found my 14-year-old sister and her friends chanting in the middle of the night, I'd be freaked.

It doesn't even stop there.

The subject has to keep their eyes closed the entire time. They are essentially put into a trance while the guide "opens doors" in their mind. The guide leads the way through whatever the subject sees in their own brain, asking them to describe what they see and telling them which doors to open next. For the most part, it's very lighthearted, but it can get dangerous sometimes. See, there are a few things you're supposed to avoid at all costs, as supposedly they will try to trap you in your own mind!

If you open a door to a room full of clocks, leave immediately. Clocks are a trap, and they will keep you inside that room forever. You also shouldn't go down any stairs, only up. Don't walk down dark pathways either, stick to lit-up rooms and halls. And last, but not least, if you see a man in a suit, stop the game at once. The man in the suit has bad intentions, and if he sees you… well, no one really knows what happens, but none of us want to find out.

Obviously, the game is probably not real. But it's a spooky atmosphere and you get caught up in the moment, especially when you're with friends. Nonetheless, preteen me definitely had nightmares about the man in the suit.