# Uncover every hidden detail and Secrets in the Finch House with our complete guide. Find all missable achievements, secret passages, peephole locations, and unlock the true meaning of the family “curse.” Your definitive 100% walkthrough awaits.
Geminvo – So, you’ve found your way to the Finch estate. Good. Whether this is your first visit or you’re returning to these haunted halls, you already know this isn’t just any old house. It’s a living museum of tragedy, a puzzle box of memories, and the setting for one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking stories in gaming history. What Remains of Edith Finch is a game that sticks with you long after the credits roll. As Edith, the last of her line, you return to your ancestral home to piece together why you’re the only one left.
This guide is your key to unlocking every secret the house has to offer. After multiple playthroughs and achieving 100% completion, it’s clear that “secrets” in this game mean more than just collectibles. They are missable achievements, hidden architectural pathways, and, most profoundly, the ambiguous, layered truths at the heart of the so-called “Finch curse.” The game is presented as an “interconnected anthology” where you are constantly made to doubt the authenticity of each story you witness. This guide will walk you through it all, from the practical to the philosophical. Let’s open the door.
The Explorer’s Checklist: Missable Achievements and Trophies
For the completionists out there, the Finch estate holds a number of missable achievements (or trophies) that require a keen eye and a bit of patience. Following this chronological checklist will ensure you don’t miss a single one on your journey.
Starting Strong: The ‘All Roads’ Achievement
Right at the beginning of the game, before you even set foot on the property, you can unlock your first secret. The path from the ferry landing splits into two: a wider main road on the right and a narrower forest path on the left that passes the family mailbox.
- How to Unlock: Simply walk a significant distance down one path, then turn around and walk down the other. You don’t need to go all the way to the house on both. As long as you trigger Edith’s narration on both routes, the achievement All Roads will unlock.
The All-Seeing Eye: A Complete Guide to Every Peephole and Telescope (‘A Closer Look’)
This is the game’s main collectible hunt and a fantastic piece of environmental storytelling. Dawn, Edith’s mother, sealed every bedroom to try and lock away the past. Great-grandmother Edie, wanting the stories to be remembered, drilled peepholes into each door. Finding them all unlocks the A Closer Look achievement. There are 9 peepholes and 1 telescope in total.
This mechanic is more than just a scavenger hunt; it physically casts you as a historical voyeur. You are forced to peer through these tiny, illicit openings to see the preserved memories the family fought over—one trying to forget, the other refusing to let go. Your actions as the player directly engage with this central family conflict.
| Item # | Location | Story Context |
| Peephole 1 | In the wooden fence to the left of the house, before entering through the pet door. | Your first glimpse of the overgrown and abandoned property. |
| Peephole 2 | In the library door on the ground floor, to the right of the main staircase. | Peeking into the room Edie said contained the stories of every Finch who ever lived. |
| Peephole 3 | Upstairs, in Molly‘s door at the end of the left-hand hallway. | The first of the sealed bedrooms you encounter. |
| Peephole 4 | Upstairs, in Edie and Sven’s door, down the right-hand hallway. | A look into the room of the family’s matriarch and patriarch. |
| Peephole 5 | Upstairs, in Gregory’s door, at the very end of the right-hand hallway. | A view of the nursery where a tragic accident occurred. |
| Peephole 6 | Upstairs, in Sam’s door, immediately to the left of Gregory’s door. | The bedroom of Edith’s grandfather. |
| Peephole 7 | Upstairs, in Barbara‘s door, on the left side of the main landing. | A peek into the room of the former child star. |
| Telescope | In the family cemetery, past Odin’s memorial statue. Look for it on the right, pointing out to sea. | Use it to zoom in on the ruins of the original Finch house that sank offshore. |
| Peephole 8 | In Milton’s tower, after climbing up from the library. Look at the door to his room before entering. | The room of the boy who famously “disappeared.” |
| Peephole 9 | In Lewis’s door, just after leaving Milton’s area and before entering his story. | The final peephole, looking into the room of Edith’s last brother to pass away. |
Secrets of the Vignettes
Several of the family stories contain their own missable achievements. Here’s how to get them.
- Molly’s Story:
- When you transform into the owl, you must catch two rabbits in only two swoops. Take your time aiming before you dive. If you miss or swoop more than twice, you’ll need to restart the chapter to try again.
- As the tentacled sea monster, you’ll come across a sailor in a cabin singing “What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor.” To get this achievement, you must wait for him to finish his entire song before eating him. It takes a few minutes, so just put the controller down and listen.
- Barbara’s Story:
- When you enter the basement, you’ll be armed with a crutch. Walk over to the pool table and use the crutch to swing at the billiard balls until you’ve knocked every single one of them off the table.
- Gregory’s Story:
- This one can be a bit tricky. While playing as the toy frog in the bathtub, you need to use your jumping ability to knock all the plastic letters of Gregory’s name into the water. The key is to use controlled charges; too much power and the frog will bounce wildly off the tub walls.
- Sam‘s Story:
Finishing Touches: Post-Game Secrets
A few secrets can only be unlocked after you’ve seen the story through to its emotional conclusion.
- This achievement is unmissable and will unlock once you complete the final scene of the game.
- To get this, you must watch the entire end credits sequence. The achievement will pop when the name “Johann” appears on screen.
- After finishing the game, the “Replay a Story” option will appear on the main menu. Simply select and replay Calvin’s story to unlock this final achievement.
The House of Hidden Ways: Charting the Secret Passages
The Finch house is more than a setting; it’s a character in its own right—a “physical manifestation of the curse” and a literal “memory palace” where each room is frozen in time at the moment of its inhabitant’s death. As Edith, your journey is made possible by a network of secret passages, allowing you to bypass the doors your mother sealed in her attempt to escape the family’s history.
Your path through the house is a physical act of rebellion against your mother’s wishes. You first enter Molly‘s room not through her sealed door, but through a hidden passage in the back of Walter’s closet. From there, you climb ever higher, moving through crawlspaces and hidden corridors that connect the house’s bizarre, stacked additions. This architectural chaos is a direct reflection of the family’s own chaotic history, with each new room built precariously on top of the last.
The very structure of the house tells the story of a generational conflict over memory and grief. The foundation represents Edie’s philosophy of preserving every story, no matter how painful. Dawn’s act of sealing the doors is a violent, physical attempt to sever ties with that foundation. The secret passages you use are the counter-move, a re-opening of those sealed memories. Finally, the precarious towers built for the later generations symbolize a desperate, and ultimately failed, attempt to build a future that could escape the weight of the “cursed foundation” below. Your climb through the house is a journey back through this timeline of trauma.
| Architectural Feature | Symbolic Meaning | Narrative Impact |
| The Stacked Additions | The accumulation of generational grief and trauma; a desperate attempt to escape the past by building on top of it. | Visually represents the family’s chaotic and unstable history. Your upward climb is a journey through time. |
| The Sealed Rooms | Dawn’s attempt to repress memory and protect her children from the “curse” of storytelling. | Creates the central obstacle of the game, forcing Edith (and the player) to find unconventional ways to access the past. |
| The Secret Passages | Buried truths and the family’s inability to truly hide from its own history; Edie’s insistence on remembering. | Serves as the primary gameplay mechanic for exploration, allowing you to literally connect the sealed-off memories. |
| The Preserved Bedrooms | Shrines to death; the family’s obsession with the past and their tendency to define members by how they died. | Each room acts as a self-contained “level” or vignette, freezing a family member in their final moments. |
Unlocking the Story: The Secrets Behind the Finch “Curse”
What is the Finch curse? Is it a supernatural force, a genetic predisposition to tragedy, or something else entirely? The game’s greatest secret is that it never gives a definitive answer. Instead, it provides compelling evidence for multiple, overlapping interpretations, leaving you to ponder the “vast and unknowable world around us”.
The Curse of Storytelling (The Meta-Narrative Secret)
This theory suggests the “curse” is not an external force, but an internal one: a self-fulfilling prophecy fueled by the family’s obsession with romanticizing and mythologizing its own tragedies. Great-grandmother Edie is the primary architect of this curse, preserving every death as a grand, fateful tale.
The vignettes you play through are rarely presented as objective fact. Instead, they are filtered through fantastical mediums:
- Molly‘s death from eating toxic holly berries and toothpaste is experienced as a magical, shapeshifting hunger fantasy based on her diary.
- Barbara‘s murder is retold as a campy horror comic book, complete with the Halloween theme music.
- Lewis’s story is the most tragic example. His mundane job at a fish cannery leads him to retreat into a complex fantasy world, an escape that ultimately leads directly to his suicide.
In this view, the curse is the stories themselves. By constantly telling themselves they are doomed, the Finches create an environment where tragedy is not only expected but almost invited.
The Horror Within the Walls (The Supernatural Secret)
A popular and chilling fan theory posits a more literal monster. According to this interpretation, the original Finch house that sank offshore is a malevolent, supernatural entity that feeds on the souls of the family members. This theory provides a cohesive horror narrative that explains every death.
- The entity influenced Odin to move the house to a new “feeding ground” before consuming him in the shipwreck.
- The deer that causes Sam‘s fall during the hunting trip is a physical manifestation of this monster.
- Walter wasn’t just paranoid; he was hiding from the monster he saw consume his sister, Barbara. The entity eventually tricked him into walking in front of a train.
- Milton, the boy who vanished, wasn’t dead. He was taken to a spirit realm to be kept as the monster’s “pet,” a favorite it chose not to consume.
While not explicitly confirmed, this theory re-frames the game as a terrifying story of a family being farmed for its “delicious children” by an ancient evil.
The Tragedy of Neglect (The Rational Secret)
Perhaps the most heartbreaking secret is that there may be no secret at all. If you strip away the magical realism and horror, what remains is a simple, brutal history of preventable deaths caused by ignorance, recklessness, and parental neglect.
- Molly (age 10) dies after her mother sends her to her room without dinner, leading her to ingest fluoridated toothpaste and toxic holly berries.
- Calvin (age 11) dies after his daring attempt to swing over the top of the swingset sends him flying off a cliff.
- Gregory (age 1) drowns in the bathtub after being left unattended by his mother.
- Gus (age 13) is crushed by a totem pole during a storm because his father was too preoccupied with his new wife to bring him to safety.
In this light, the “curse” is a coping mechanism—a story the family tells itself to make sense of a series of senseless, preventable tragedies. It’s easier to believe you’re doomed by fate than to accept that your child died because you weren’t paying attention.
The true brilliance of What Remains of Edith Finch is that all three theories can be true at once. Molly’s death was an act of neglect, which she processed in her diary as a fantasy, which her family then enshrined as a legend, all while a potential supernatural force watched from the shadows. The game doesn’t offer a single answer; it explores the very human ways we use stories—rational, fantastical, and horrific—to confront the inexplicable nature of death.
Final Mysteries: Easter Eggs and Hidden Connections
For those who have explored every corner, the house still holds a few final secrets that connect it to a wider world and add layers of foreshadowing.
- This is the biggest Easter egg. Milton, the Finch brother who “disappeared” by painting a magic door and walking through it, is confirmed by the developers to be the King in their previous game, The Unfinished Swan. This provides a canonical, albeit magical, answer to his fate and links the two games in a shared universe.
- The house is filled with subtle clues about the family’s fate that are easy to miss on a first playthrough:
- In Edie’s room, you can find a book of Norwegian folktales, hinting at the source of her storytelling style and the family’s origins.
- During Calvin’s story, you can see a fresh cast on his leg, indicating a history of reckless behavior long before his fatal swing.
- Edith mentions that the family cemetery was built before the new house was even finished, a chilling detail that reveals Edie’s morbid foresight and obsession with the family’s demise from the very beginning.
Summary 4 Secrets in the Finch House
For those in a hurry, here is a quick-reference summary of the most important secrets hidden within the Finch house.
- Top Missable Achievements:
- All Roads: Walk down both paths at the very start of the game.
- A Closer Look: Find all 9 peepholes in the sealed doors and the 1 telescope in the cemetery.
- Let Him Finish: In Molly’s story, wait for the drunken sailor to finish his entire song before you… interact with him.
- Loop-de-loop-de-loop: After finishing the game, replay Calvin’s story from the main menu.
- The Secret Passages Are the Key: The house’s network of hidden corridors is your only way to explore the sealed-off bedrooms and uncover the family’s history. They represent the past that can never truly be locked away.
- The “Curse” Has Three Meanings: The game’s central mystery is deliberately ambiguous. The “curse” can be interpreted as:
- A Storytelling Curse: A self-fulfilling prophecy where the family’s romanticization of tragedy leads to more tragedy.
- A Supernatural Curse: A literal monster (the old house) that feeds on the Finch family members.
- A Rational “Curse”: A series of preventable deaths caused by simple neglect, recklessness, and mental illness.
- The Biggest Easter Egg: Milton Finch, the brother who vanished, is the King from the developer’s previous game, The Unfinished Swan.
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