The Monkey Paw is the riskiest Cursed Possession in Phasmophobia. It hands you real advantages, like forcing a ghost to appear or reviving a dead teammate, but every single wish drags a penalty along with it. Knowing exactly what each wish does, and what it costs, is the difference between speeding through a contract and wiping your whole team.
Quick answer: Pick up the Monkey Paw, hold it, and speak a valid wish into your mic (or use the text UI). The wish triggers instantly with both its benefit and its side effect, and a finger curls to show it worked. You get 3 to 5 wishes per contract depending on your reward multiplier.
How the Monkey Paw works and how many wishes you get
The Monkey Paw is one of seven Cursed Possessions, so it has a 1 in 7 chance (roughly 14%) of being the cursed item that spawns on a contract. It will not appear on Insanity difficulty. Each map has one fixed spawn spot, so if a Monkey Paw shows up, it is always in the same place.
You can only use it inside the investigation area. The number of fingers still sticking out tells you how many wishes you have left, and the total depends on your difficulty reward multiplier.
| Reward multiplier | Wishes available |
|---|---|
| 0x – 1.99x | 5 wishes |
| 2x – 2.99x | 4 wishes |
| 3x or higher | 3 wishes |
Each wish can only be granted once per contract, no matter who in the group says it. There are 10 possible wishes, but you will never get to use all of them in a single run.
How to make a wish and confirm it worked
Voice recognition can be fussy. “I wish to be sane” and “I wish to be safe” get mixed up constantly, and “I wish for infinite wishes” can be misheard as “I wish for sun.” If the Paw is ignoring you entirely, switch your in-game voice recognition setting or just use the text UI instead.
Note: There is no delay and no cancel. The second a wish is recognized, the penalty lands too, so only speak when you are ready for the consequence.
All Monkey Paw wishes, effects, and penalties
Wishes fall into three groups: ones that affect the ghost, ones that affect players, and a catch-all “other” set. Here is what every wish does and the price you pay for it.
| Wish | Effect | Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| I wish to see the ghost | Forces a ghost event at the ghost’s current spot, locking all exit doors right away. | After 5 seconds a cursed hunt starts and your vision is buried in dark fog until the hunt ends. |
| I wish for activity / I wish the ghost would do something | Doubles all ghost activity for 2 minutes. | Breaks the fuse box permanently and locks all exit doors for 2 minutes. |
| I wish the ghost was trapped / I wish to trap the ghost | Cleanses the ghost, teleports it to its favorite room and locks it in for 1 minute so it can’t hunt, roam, or use abilities. | Also locks the doors of your current room for 1 minute, then starts a standard hunt. There’s a 25% chance doors only unlock after the grace period. |
| I wish for sanity / I wish to be sane | Sets every player’s sanity to 50%. | Passive sanity drain is multiplied by 1.5 for the rest of the contract, and the ghost’s favorite room becomes a new random room. |
| I wish to be safe | Unblocks the nearest blocked hiding spot. | The lights in your room shatter, and the ghost can hear you and sense your active electronics from any distance, even on other floors. |
| I wish to leave | Unlocks all exit doors at any time, even mid-hunt. | Your speed and vision drop for about 5 seconds before slowly returning. |
| I wish for life / I wish to revive my friend | Revives the first dead player in the lobby order. Can’t be used if nobody is dead. | 50% chance of killing the wisher. |
| I wish for knowledge | Removes one incorrect evidence type and its ghosts from your journal. | The ghost teleports near you and starts a cursed hunt, with fogged vision and muffled hearing until you die or the contract ends. |
| I wish for [weather] | Changes the weather to Clear Sky, Fog, Rain, Snow, or Sunrise. Rain is a 50/50 split between light and heavy. | Blinds all players briefly and drains 25% of your sanity. Can’t be used below 25% sanity. |
| I wish for anything | Randomly grants one unused wish from the list. | You also inherit that wish’s penalty. |
A few of these are far harsher than they look. The knowledge wish, for example, locks you out of seeing and hearing properly for the rest of the run, so it is best saved for the very end when only a couple of ghost types remain. The “I wish for life” trade is worth it mainly when a dead teammate is carrying important gear or when the XP and insurance payout outweighs the risk.
Monkey Paw spawn location on every map
When the Monkey Paw is the cursed item for a contract, it sits in a fixed spot per map. Here is where to look on each one.
| Map | Location |
|---|---|
| 6 Tanglewood Drive | After the March 2026 rework, in the garage on a bag of soil beside the gardening supplies. |
| 42 Edgefield Road | Upstairs in the kids’ room (the orange bedroom), on the baby changing table. |
| 10 Ridgeview Court | Upstairs in the blue/teal bedroom, on the desk. |
| Nell’s Diner | In the kitchen, on the cutting board next to a large knife on the middle prep station. |
| Grafton Farmhouse | In the first-floor double bedroom, on the desk in the corner. |
| Bleasdale Farmhouse | On the second floor in the bedroom (second door on the right), on a chest next to the crib. |
| 13 Willow Street | In the dining room, inside the glass display cabinet. |
| Brownstone High School | Often in the main lobby area, on a cardboard box. |
| Point Hope | On the eighth floor, on the desk with the wooden horse. |
| Maple Lodge Campsite | At the end of the pier on the right side of the campsite, on a blue camping chair. |
| Camp Woodwind | Near the small purple-and-blue tent, on a wooden surface. |
| Prison | At the entrance, on the far right of the table as you walk in. |
| Sunny Meadows | Straight ahead from the front door to the end of the hallway, in the room with candles. |
Learning the wishes and grabbing the photo reward
You don’t need to memorize anything to use the Paw. If you do want to study, the wish tags are scattered around Sunny Meadows and look just like the tag on the Monkey Paw itself. Picking one up records that wish in your journal. The “I wish for [weather],” “I wish for anything,” and the Paw’s own tag don’t get recorded.
| Wish tag | Sunny Meadows room |
|---|---|
| I wish to see the ghost | Manager Office |
| I wish for activity | Chapel |
| I wish the ghost was trapped | Female Dorm Room |
| I wish for sanity | Kitchen |
| I wish to be safe | Matron Office 1 |
| I wish to leave | Hospital Wing |
| I wish for life | Classroom |
| I wish for knowledge | Restricted Area |
| I wish for [weather] | Morgue |
| I wish for anything | Waiting Room |
Like other Cursed Possessions, the Monkey Paw is also a photo objective. Snapping a picture of it, no matter how many uses are left, gives you a photo labelled Monkey Paw and rewards up to $7 and 7 XP depending on your Photo Camera tier.
Used carelessly, the Monkey Paw chains hunts together and ends contracts early. Used with a hiding spot lined up, your electronics off, and an escape route agreed on, it is one of the most powerful tools in the game. The trick is simple to say and hard to follow: only wish when you can already survive the cost.
