One of the encounters I wanted to make really emotional was the adventurers coming across an undead horde for the first time and the undead version of a wizard they wanted to find. They would find these as they're walking towards their recently inherited property.
At first I thought of having everything happen in an open field, but then I decided to layer the combat and everything else, and to add an extra level of creepyness, I added the manor factor.
It is a two stories tall manor, with the basement floor (in black) and the first floor (in red) very evident to the party. My strategy was to place enemies at strategic places to overwhelm the players if they didn't care much for placement or strategy.
Then, through exploring, they'd encounter the first underground floor (in blue), either by going to the back of the house and down the stairs, or by exploring a secret entrance in a mausoleum in the front yard.
After fighting off the undead and necromancers, the part would fight against a zombie troll that would pop out in the front yard, revealing the entrance to an even deeper underground below the house, where they would find ruins of an ancient temple along with the undead wizard.
I'll be posting the map for the ruins later, for they are extremely big and my party is still exploring them, but no worries, I have more maps to show in the mean time! :D