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Paranormal Games: The Three Kings Ritual

Published

6 months ago

November 3, 2025

Welcome back for a brand new entry in Paranormal Games on iHorror. Today we have something far more sinister than the Cat Scratch Game or Red Door, Yellow Door. It’s called The Three Kings Ritual, and it’s a game whose rules you must follow to the letter.

Honestly, I’m loathe to call it a game at all. It is indeed a ritual as the name implies. As with most games like this, its origin is murky at best. The earliest mentions I can find of it are on CreepyPasta websites and Reddit.

As a side note, this has nothing to do with voodoo ritual of the same name. That’s a different kind of power all together, though some of the supplies that you’ll use within the “game” again point to a more ritualistic nature.

Supplies, Rules, and Warnings for Playing The Three Kings Ritual

Supplies:

This list is long and involved and you need every single piece in order to play. DO NOT LEAVE ANYTHING OUT.

A large quiet room, preferably without windows. If you must use a room with windows, cover them up so that no light from outside can make its way into the room. The room should also have a door that will close and latch securely.
A candle. Preferably a sturdy pillar candle that will not burn out or burn down quickly
A lighter. You have to light the candle, of course
A small bucket of water and a clean mug or cup
An electric fan
Two large mirrors
An alarm clock
Three chairs
A fully charged cell phone
A partner you trust to follow the rules and take the game seriously
A small object that holds sentimental or emotional value for you

Setting up for the game:

At 11 pm, you should begin set-up for your Three Kings Ritual.

In your chosen room place one of your chairs facing North. This is your Throne. Place the other two chairs on either side of the Throne facing toward it. These chairs belong to the Queen and the Fool and they should be about an arm’s distance from the Throne.

Secure one mirror onto the Queen’s chair and one on the Fool’s, again facing toward the Throne. Sitting on the Throne, you should be able to see your reflection in the periphery of your vision without having to turn and look.

Place the bucket and your chosen cup or mug in front of the Throne just barely out of reach. You want them near enough in case you need them, but not so close that you might trip over them.

Place the fan behind the Throne and turn it on, but not on high. Medium or Low should suffice for the purposes of the ritual.

Turn the lights off and leave the room making sure the door is left open and go to your bedroom.

Place your cell phone, candle, and lighter close to the bed so you can reach them easily without having to hunt for them. To make sure the phone is fully charged, I would just leave it on the charger. Set your alarm clock for 3:30 am.

Take your chosen object and get into bed. It’s time to sleep to prepare for what is to come.

Conducting the Three Kings Ritual

When your alarm clock goes off at 3:30 am, get out of bed, light the candle, and grab your phone. Keep your sentimental object with you at all times.

You have three minutes to return to your prepared room.

When you enter the room, close the door behind you. Your chosen partner in this ritual should wait right outside the room and be as quiet as possible.

Protecting your candle flame, take your place on the Throne. Your body should block the wind from the fan behind you and keep it from burning out the candle. The idea here is that, should you slump to the side during your time in the room, the candle flame will be blown out by the fan ending the ritual.

DO NOT, AT ANY POINT, LOOK DIRECTLY INTO THE MIRRORS ON EITHER SIDE OF YOU!! Also, do your best not to stare directly into the candle’s flame.

Assuming you’ve made it onto your Throne by 3:33 am and all has gone according to plan, you may now begin the active part of the ritual by asking question aloud. It may take time, but again, assuming you did everything correctly, you will soon be joined by the Kings who will answer your questions.

Reportedly, you will actually hear their voices, but remember, no matter how startled or how unsettling it may be, do not turn to look into the mirrors.

Remember to take this seriously. This isn’t a time to ask stupid questions–regardless of what you may heard before, yes they do exist. You have one hour with the Kings to ask whatever you like. Be prepared for answers you may not like, and be prepared for questions as answers to your questions.

Finally, do not let the candle go out during your session.

At 4:34 am, your friend on the other side of the door should call out to you that the game has ended. If you do not respond, they should try calling your phone instead. If, and only if, neither of these methods succeed in getting your attention, they should then enter the room to try and snap you out of the ritual by calling your name, but they should not under any circumstances touch you. And finally, if that doesn’t work, they should use the mug to throw water from the bucket in your face.

If you find yourself in a semi-conscious state and it’s time to return, focus on the personal item you brought with you and let it guide you back to a waking state. It might sound silly to you, but if you’ve committed to the ritual, thus far, then it’s not that big a stretch of the imagination.

As soon as you are aware that time for the ritual is up, you should stand up, blow out the candle and leave the room to signify closure.

Warnings:

If you do not wake up at 3:30 am, do not continue.

If you return to your prepared room to find the door closed, do not continue and leave the house taking everyone with you. Do not return before 6:00 am.

If the fan is turned off or no longer working in some way, do not continue and leave the house taking everyone with you. Do not return before 6:00 am.

Do not let your candle go out before the ritual is complete.

Again, as stated above, do not at any point look directly into the two mirrors. It is said that what you see there may pull your consciousness inside and you can become trapped by the Kings.

Do not leave your Throne before 4:34 am.

Don’t go into this ritual acting cocky or disrespectful. It won’t end well for you or your ritual partner.

Risk Level:

Of all the games we’ve covered in this series so far, this is, by far, the riskiest as it actually involves ritualistic elements and supposed spirit summoning. Those particular elements aside, you’re also holding onto a lit candle for an hour so there’s the risk of burns as well.

Make sure this is something you really want to do before you take on the Three Kings Ritual.

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News

The Practical Magic 2 Teaser Trailer Is Finally Here

Published

13 hours ago

April 20, 2026

Luna Gray

The Practical Magic 2 teaser trailer is out, and it is worth taking a second to appreciate what we are actually looking at here. A film that bombed at the box office in 1998, fell short of recouping its $75 million budget, and got mixed reviews at best is now getting a sequel with its full original cast, a rebuilt set, and a room full of theater owners losing their minds at CinemaCon.

What Happened the First Time

The original Practical Magic came out in October 1998 and critics did not know what to do with it. It was part romantic comedy, part domestic abuse drama, part supernatural thriller, part crime story. The tonal whiplash was real, and the reviews reflected that. The film underperformed. Nobody called it a classic.

Then it became one anyway. The film found its audience over the following two decades, particularly among millennial women who responded to what it was actually doing underneath the genre mess. A film about women protecting each other, centered entirely on a bloodline of women, with a finale built around a community of women coming together.

What the Trailer Shows

Sandra Bullock opens the teaser in voiceover as Sally: “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Owens family. The ones from Massachusetts. The ones their neighbors whisper are witches.” Nicole Kidman is back as Gillian, settled into life with a black cat. The house on the cliff was rebuilt from scratch for the film.

Bullock said of returning: “Coming back didn’t feel like shooting a sequel. It felt like coming back home.” Given that the original cast and director were not involved in any franchise maintenance for twenty-eight years, that is something.

The Cast

Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest are both back as the aunts Frances and Jet. The film adds Joey King as Sally’s daughter. She uncovers buried family secrets and develops dark powers of her own. Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, and Solly McLeod round out the new generation.

Practical Magic 2 opens September 11, 2026.

News

The HUNGRY Red Band Trailer Is Here and We Need to Stop Laughing at the Hippo

Published

14 hours ago

April 20, 2026

Luna Gray

The trailer for HUNGRY dropped this morning, and before we get into it, I want to address something. You are going to look at the words “hippo horror movie” and your brain is going to do a thing. It is going to go to Hungry Hungry Hippos. It is going to think this is a joke. You are going to be wrong, and the hippo is going to eat you for it.

Hippos kill an estimated 500 people per year in Africa. They are the third largest land animal on earth. They weigh up to 4,000 pounds, can run up to 19 miles per hour, and are aggressively territorial in both water and on land. The animals are also largely nocturnal, which means most of what they do to people happens in the dark. Jaws made us afraid of open water for forty years and sharks kill roughly five people globally per year. Five. Do the math.

The hippo has been waiting for its movie. HUNGRY might actually be it.

What Is Happening in This Movie

HUNGRY follows a group of tourists on a riverboat tour through the Louisiana swamplands who get lured off the main route with the promise of an exclusive experience. What they find instead is a ravenous hippopotamus lurking beneath the bayou’s murky water that has very different ideas about how this excursion is going to go.

That is the whole premise. Tourists. Swamp. Hippo. No one gets out easily.

The Louisiana bayou setting is doing a lot of work here. It is a landscape that already feels like it is hiding something. The water is opaque. The trees close in. Sound travels differently. If you are going to put an apex predator somewhere and make it feel genuinely threatening, a Louisiana swamp is about as correct a choice as you can make. The film is leaning into that and the trailer makes it clear this is not a sunlit adventure film. This is a survival movie.

Distributed by AURA Entertainment and classified as a survival thriller and creature horror, the film opens June 23.

News

This Week in Horror: CinemaCon Delivered, Nicolas Cage Is Coming Back, and Someone Let Ti West Near a Christmas Story

Published

3 days ago

April 17, 2026

Luna Gray

It was a big week. CinemaCon happened, a Longlegs sequel got announced, and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opened today, which we already covered but deserves to be in the roundup anyway because it is the biggest horror release of the month, and you should go see it. Here is everything else.

CinemaCon: The Horror Stuff

CinemaCon ran April 13 through 16 in Las Vegas and there was a lot. Here is what matters to us.

Werwulf got a real trailer, and it looks unhinged in the best way.

Robert Eggers’ follow-up to Nosferatu showed up at Universal’s presentation and it sounds like exactly what you want it to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson transforms into a werewolf. Grimy medieval England. Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Ralph Ineson are all in this. Variety called the transformation sequence alone worth the price of admission.

Practical Magic 2 happened and it was genuinely emotional.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman walked out together at Warner Bros.’ presentation and the room apparently lost it. The sequel reunites the Owens sisters, brings back Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing, and adds Maisie Williams and Xolo Maridueña as the next generation. They rebuilt the original house on the cliff. Sally is single now. If you know the original film you know why.

Ti West and Johnny Depp are making a Christmas horror movie and I have questions.

Paramount showed first footage from Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, directed by Ti West and starring Depp in prosthetics as Scrooge. Ian McKellen is Jacob Marley. The Ghost of Christmas Present apparently shows up with his ribcage open. It is a Ti West film, so presumably this will be deeply upsetting by the end. Filing this under “extremely interested and also a little scared.”

Scary Movie is coming back June 5.

The original cast is back. Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, Regina Hall. The footage shown at Paramount’s panel apparently goes after reboots, remakes, elevated horror, and origin stories. That is a lot of ground to cover.

The Longlegs Universe Is Expanding

Osgood Perkins and Nicolas Cage are doing another Longlegs film, this time at Paramount, which picked it up because the scope was apparently bigger than Neon could handle. Not calling it a sequel exactly, more like something set in the same universe.

The Terror Is Back

The Terror: Devil in Silver drops May 7 on AMC+ and Shudder, and it looks like a proper return for the anthology. Dan Stevens stars as Pepper, a man committed to a psychiatric hospital who starts wondering if what he is experiencing is supernatural or if he is actually losing his mind. Based on Victor LaValle’s novel of the same name, who is also the showrunner. Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Stephen Root, and Marin Ireland are in the cast. Ridley Scott remains an executive producer. The first two seasons of The Terror were genuinely excellent, and this one has the cast to back it up.

Also Worth Knowing

Faces of Death is in theaters now and sitting at 69% on Rotten Tomatoes. Directed by Daniel Goldhaber, stars Barbie Ferreira as a content moderator who finds what might be real execution videos on a TikTok-style platform. It is a smart premise and the reviews say it mostly delivers.

Passenger got a trailer this week. André Øvredal, who directed The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, is calling it his scariest film yet. A supernatural entity latches onto a couple on a road trip.

The Young People from Osgood Perkins is still coming October 30, which means we are getting two Perkins-adjacent projects in the same year. This one stars Lola Tung, Nico Parker, Tatiana Maslany and Nicole Kidman and follows two school friends whose relationship turns sinister as one starts exhibiting disturbing behavior. Between this, Werwulf, and Other Mommy, fall 2026 is looking very good.

That is the week. Go see The Mummy.