Why is this codebase failing to run on my computer

Im on mac sequoia 15. I wanted to work with this repo:

https://github.com/matthewp/haunted-starter-app

To make it run locally I did:

1 - git clone https://github.com/matthewp/haunted-starter-app.git
2 - cd haunted-starter-app
3 - npm install
4 - npm i -g http-server
5 - Changed package.json to include "scripts": {"start": "http-server ."}
6 - npm start

which showed the following in the console:

> [email protected] start
> http-server .
Starting up http-server, serving .
http-server version: 14.1.1
http-server settings: 
CORS: disabled
Cache: 3600 seconds
Connection Timeout: 120 seconds
Directory Listings: visible
AutoIndex: visible
Serve GZIP Files: false
Serve Brotli Files: false
Default File Extension: none
Available on:
  http://127.0.0.1:8080
  http://192.168.1.100:8080
Hit CTRL-C to stop the server

Then I go with browser to:

http://127.0.0.1:8080
or even
http://192.168.1.100:8080   
or even
http://localhost:8080   

I always see this error in the dev-tools console:

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ':' (at haunted.js:21:67)

I tried both with Chrome and Safari. Same result.
The failing row in haunted.js contains this https url:

https://unpkg.com/lit?moduleElementVersions

Could it be the issue? That Im runnig on HTTP locally?
On the other hand, for some reason, even if I go to codesandbox:

https://codesandbox.io/p/sandbox/github/matthewp/haunted-starter-app

I still seem to have the same issue. How is this possible?
I mean, going here directly (note that it is running on https):

https://6y47ko75xz.csb.app/

generate the same error message in my devtools:

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ':' (at haunted.js:21:67)