I remember standing in line at my local Egghead until midnight on a hot night in August 1995 to buy this game. Well, not just for this game, but for Microsoft Windows 95. That's the day Win95 debuted and I wanted to also buy "something" to play that required (or at least ran on) Win95.
Like a lot of folks here, I've played hundreds of adventure games in my time, including virtually everything Sierra ever made. What I remember most about Phantasmagoria is how disappointing it was. Yeah it was also short, but that's a good thing, right? I have mostly hazy memories and none of them are "good". I do remember one "puzzle" where you search a room (with a baby crib?) and there's nothing to do, so you simply search a bunch of other rooms looking for stuff to do. When you eventually get back to this room again, now all-of-a-sudden there is something in the middle of the floor that mysteriously dropped there from... another dimension? There was no reason to go back to this room, but like a lot of Sierra games at this time, you just roam around like a zombie hoping to trigger something to eventually happen somewhere else.
For some reason I also remember the female lead character combing her hair a lot, and doing this tiny little "in place dance" when she came to rest in front of something. *shudder* Hey that is pretty scary now that I think about it!