The Ghost Bottle

It’s a clay bottle, sealed, marked with an inverted cross: a ghost bottle.

According to reliable texts, ghost bottles were used by exorcists in the 18th century to capture evil spirits. The bottles were then taken and the spirits either released where they could do no harm, or stored in specially prepared vaults.

Possibilities

1 This ghost bottle was recently created. The craft of constructing an effective ghost bottle is now known only to a few practitioners, and this one was constructed by Thaddeus Henge, of Henge & Croup Professional Services. (Their mark is stamped on the bottom of the bottle.)

The Burnett family hired Thaddeus Henge to help with a problem at Bellforth Hall. Peregrine Burnett, owner of Bellforth Hall and powerful occultist, had used a restless spirit to guard his extensive occult collection. With Burnett’s passing, the spirit had turned feral and Burnett’s descendants turned to Thaddeus Henge, modern exorcist, to deal with it.

Henge trapped the spirit in the ghost bottle, which now rests on the mantlepiece in Bellforth Hall’s entrance hall.

2 The bottle is part of a collection, one of twelve. Three bottles are sealed, two are broken and the others are all unused. The collection is secured within a fine oak box with a handles for carrying; the lid contains detailed instructions, annotated by its last owner, Chester Beale.

Beale was a 17th century occultist and, so it now seems, part-time exorcist. The collection was found during restoration works in a hidden cupboard in Hobford Grange, Beale’s Wiltshire home.

3 The bottle arrives in the post, securely wrapped. Accompanying it is a note:

Dear J——. I write to you following our long conversations last summer during which you expressed interest in Uncle Johann’s sudden interest in the occult during the summer of 1964. As you will remember, this obsession lasted no more than a few months, starting when the old De Monteford mausoleum was disturbed and ending in September of that year when Uncle Johann visited Keswick in the company of the singular Cordon Paine. Since then I have learned more about Cordon Paine and discovered that he was well known in the London alternative ‘scene’ and created quite a stir by hosting the most surreal and disturbing dinner parties. From what I understand, Paine was retained by the family to ‘cure’ Uncle Johann. Paine believed that Uncle Johann was possessed by a malign spirit released from the old mausoleum, and promised to rid him of it. To this end, they travelled to Cumbria and participated in some kind of ritual in the Castlerigg stone circle, above Keswick.  That was in September 1964, after which Uncle Johann mostly returned to his old self. I found the accompanying artefact, which matches the description of a ‘ghost bottle’ that Paine refers to in the Castlerigg ritual, while clearing Uncle Johann’s attic. I can only assume that this bottle contains the malign spirit that so possessed Uncle Johann and drove him to his obsession. I confess that since finding the dreadful thing I have not enjoyed a single night of unbroken sleep, and have suffered quite vivid dreams full of graves, cobwebs and horrid scratching noises. As you know I suffer from an overactive imagination, and given your interest in things outré I thought that it might find a better home with you. I trust you and yours are well. Best wishes, K——

© Steve Hatherley

Liminal Tales of Terror

Recently I’ve been playing and running a fair bit of Liminal, Paul Mitchener’s RPG of British urban fantasy. I like my urban fantasy to be a bit dark, so I’ve been incorporating Tales of Terror into my games.

Here’s a list of Tales that I think would be absolutely fine to drop into a Liminal game.

In no particular order…

• Homunculi: A strange cabinet filled with 24 clay homunculi.
• The Witch Tree: A curious, stunted oak tree in North Dulwich.
• The Dee Signet: John Dee’s signet ring.
• Snails: Enormous snails in the cellar.
• Seven Woodcut Blocks: By Thomas Kilner.
• The Plated Skull: Find it at the Whitstable Reserve.
• The Sinne Eater: Morton Blakelock, at your service
• The Tattoo: A spider tattoo.
• Snuff: A gift from great uncle Sebastian—his snuff boxes.
• The Old Cottage: An odd coin in an old cottage.
• Gargoyle’s Watch: Evil gargoyles are watching you.
• The Tower on Dulas Island: A strange tower off Anglesey.
• The Gibbet Frame: A picture frame made from the wood from a gibbet.
• The Paper under the Bed: Mysterious symbols under your bed.
• Ghostwatch: A spectral figure in a churchyard.
• The Book: Introducing Jim Book. 
• The Old Quarry: A secret in Northumberland.

I’ve been talking about Liminal on my fourlettersatrandom blog.

Plague Row

It is known locally as “Plague Row”, although there are no historical records of plague in the area.

Instead, it is a run-down row of buildings, all in a poor state of repair. Those living nearby are ill, and what little vegetation there is, is twisted and diseased.

Nothing thrives on Plague Row.

Possibilities

1 Plague Row was once marked by a stone circle that was originally erected to protect against an ancient evil. The stone circle was removed in 1750s when building work started on the site. Over a period of decades the evil influence returned, contaminating everything.

The source of the evil influence is a monstrous demon imprisoned in the ground, deep below. The demon is still securely bound, but its malign influence seeps upwards to contaminate everything above.

However, Plague Row is just one of several locations where the wards imprisoning the demon have been removed. Someone, or something, is destroying them, and the demon is growing stronger...

2 Behind Plague Row is a deep well in which a cold, alien intelligence has made its home. The alien intelligence absorbs the life essence from organic matter, which results in malaise and decay.

3 Plague Row is not far from the site British Ordnance Factory No. 7, constructed in 1940 to manufacture munitions. The factory produced explosives for shells and artillery rounds, as well as phosphorus and other chemical weapons.

Although little remains of the site above ground (it is now a business park), the factory’s underground chemical storage tanks were never fully decommissioned and they have leaked, contaminating the land now known as Plague Row.

© Steve Hatherley

Wild in the Country

People start disappearing when they take a walk in the moors near a certain lake. The disappearances are gradual, taking place over years, but eventually someone is able to put together the pieces and an investigation by the police is launched. They exhaustively comb the hills for clues and go to great lengths to have the lake dredged but find nothing of the five missing people who seem to have simply vanished.

The moors aren’t normally dangerous and it’s true that sometimes walkers become stranded and die, but even then there’re traces. In this case there is nothing. No obvious factors link the victims: they’re men and women, white, a range of ages from 23 upwards, from different parts of the country and from numerous backgrounds.

Possibilities

1 The lake is home of the Great Old One Glaaki or one of its spawn, an entity that ensnares new worshippers by injecting them with one of its spines, turning them into undead servants.

With a bit more research, it turns out all those who disappeared suffered from mental illnesses and spent time in institutions, making them easier prey for Glaaki’s psychic attacks. They all had violent outbursts before setting out for the lake, but told no one where they were going.

Currently they are fully transformed into Glaaki’s servants, resting at the bottom of the lake waiting for a chance to increase the fold. The Great Old One and his followers evaded the police using Glaaki’s unusual dimensional properties, and the disappearances will continue as long as the Glaaki remains.

2 The lake and surrounding moor was regarded in the past as a magical place: a sacred site dedicated to the gods. When the gods were angry they made the animals and the crops wither, so the people would choose a sacrifice to walk out into the moors and offer themselves to the gods to appease their wrath.

Eventually people drifted off or died, until there was only one family left who still remembered the old ways. Then they died in a bad winter, a few years ago. With nobody to worship them, the gods of the moor became angry and malnourished they started abducting those walking on the moors.

Nobody knows much of the lore that surrounds these beings, but certain experts suggest they dwell in an underground kingdom, only reachable when stairs are revealed at the bottom of the lake by a shaft of moonlight.

3 Few people live on the moor today, but one who does is a loner named Isaac Lighton, known in the local village of Upstanton for his furtive and sometimes peculiar behaviour. Secretive Lighton, who often acts violently around the time of the full moon and once broke a man’s neck in a brawl at the local pub, is a werewolf and the root cause of the disappearances.

The bones of Lighton’s victims inevitably end up dumped in the lake; the bones were so tiny and fragmented that the police dismissed them as animal bones during the dredging.

Lighton lives for the thrill of hunting his prey and dispatching them in secret, taking great pride in never being caught. So far he has only taken campers or others foolish enough to stay out alone at night, but before long he’ll become desperate and attack in the village. It won’t be the first time: Lighton is at least over 100 years old.

© Paul Hebron

May Tricks

The investigators arrive in a village which, as they approach, seems deserted. As they enter, they are blocked by cars stationery in the street, and surrounded by frozen people and birds hanging in the air. The whole village seems to be under some power that has stopped time across the whole town.

Possibilities

1 This is an illusion. When the investigators enter the local pub, they note that the image on the screen of a TV (or perhaps a thrown dart hanging in the air halfway to a dartboard) is indeed moving, but incredibly slowly. The investigators have accidentally triggered a spell that slows their perception of time a thousand-fold. This spell is powerful but has its price – entropy has been massively increased; the accelerated investigators are ageing a year or two every hour that passes. They must break the spell or wither and die.

2 The Great Race of Yith have frozen time over the village using their stasis cube technology, in order that they or their cultists may study it for them, taking a few human specimens for later dissection. The device generating the stasis field has been secretly built by the cultists in a hidden laboratory and must be shut down to return life to the town.

3 An antiques dealer in the town has discovered an alien artefact which allowed him to communicate with a long-dead sorcerer of the serpent people. The sorcerer tricked him into opening a time warp to the modern age so that he could escape the decline of his people. However, the ritual went slightly wrong and time was frozen around the warp. The sorcerer was able to pass through and reclaim his artefact (the antiques dealer is frozen in the middle of his ritual with his hands clasped as if to hold the absent artefact) and the sorcerer has made the dead town his lair.

© James David Beard

Woman in a Robe

When locale police officers enter an abandoned office building, they stumble upon the gruesome mutilated corpses of three men and a woman.

Also found at the crime scene is a smashed camcorder, and when checking what it may have recorded, the following can be seen: An unidentified woman, not the same woman found dead, is seated on a chair, clad in a monk’s robe. It’s dark outside, indicating that it happened in the evening, or at night. Then one of the men found murdered, steps into view as he walks behind the sitting woman. He asks the woman about her name, but before she’s able to answer the question, all goes black, followed by horrifying screams. Then the recording ends, as the camcorder is smashed.

The question is now; why was the robed woman not found at the crime scene? Where is she now? And who, and why, murdered the others?

Possibilities

1 The murderer is a heavily armed and mentally unstable bible-thumper. He goes around striking against anything that he finds morally depraved and sinful. When he learns that someone was making low budget porn movies in his town; he chose to deliver God’s punishment on those impure filth-peddling bastards.

As soon as he found the location of the porn-movie set, he donned a night vision goggle, cut off the power and then went on a killing spree, targeting everyone involved in the filthy porn movie.

The reason why the roped woman isn’t found at the crime scene is that she was severely wounded and was thus able to flee the bloody carnage. But the crazed bible-thumper sees her escaping, and he chases after her. Her corpse is never found.

2 The robed woman, now missing, is the oldest daughter to the murdered woman and one of the men. But she had been lured by an esoteric and very religious cult, much to her parent’s dismay.

After several futile attempts to make the locale law intervene, the parents chose to hire a renowned private investigator that’s specialized in deprogramming brainwashed members of religious cults.

He, and his assistant, snatched the daughter and brought her to the abandoned office building, rented by the investigator, as a place to initiate the deprogramming, monitored by the girl’s parents, and recorded on camcorder.

But when the cult leader, a deeply religious Vietnam veteran, realizes that one of his favourite cult members have been taken away, he immediately summons a byakhee, which he, in his sick mind, actually believes is one of God’s glorious angels, and orders it to track down, punish those who took his favourite cult member, the daughter, and then bring her back to his waiting arms.

The deprogramming was just beginning, when the byakhee found them. But as the byakhee flies off with the daughter, she sees it, and her mind bends out of shape.

3 The missing robed woman is the murderer, or one of them. She is in fact a vampire, who has been terrorizing humans for several decades, along with a group of fellow vampires.

While stalking a prey, she failed to realize that it was a trap, orchestrated by a team of skilled vampire hunters. They quickly managed to subdue and bring her into the abandoned office building, where they were planning to interrogate, and then destroy, her. All recorded on cam recorder that has been custom made to allow vampires to be filmed.

But the interrogation had barely begun, when the fellow vampires located their imprisoned friend and moved in to save her. They all then attacked and killed the entire team of vampire hunters.

© Tim Deer

New Bugs

At the local university, Doctor York of the biology department is prepared to show the board an incredible discovery he has made. He claims to have discovered a whole new species of insect just this morning!

As he places the large glass case at the table, he dramatically pulls back the covering over it revealing...

Possibilities

1 Hundreds of tiny, scuttling white spider like creatures. They are still tinged red with blood and internal organs.

Josephine Thayer was a student at the University. She was also a powerful dreamer, who wandered into the labyrinth of Eihort. She accepted Eihort’s dread bargain. A week later, she felt her whole body alive with pain. She was trying to get to the medical room, when she stumbled into Dr York’s room. She fell apart into hundreds of tiny white spiders, which York, his mind now broke, scooped up into a specimen case.

2 A strange, blob-like creature.

Dr York is an ambitious but flawed cultist. He is more concerned with making cash than worshipping anything nasty, but he finds an odd invocation to Zathokkwua necessary when he wants to learn how to transmute lead into gold.

His latest experiment was trying to summon a servant creature for himself. He ended up calling on the “Primal Slime” to grant him one of its children. He received a small disgusting blob like creature, which he was very disappointed with. He decided to make some cash by claiming it was a new species of insect and selling it to the university.

It is one of the protozoa like spawn of Ubbo-Sathla. In time, it will grow in size and sprout many tentacle-like appendages. It will then begin to absorb every living thing around it.

3     An empty box.

While Doctor York was having his breakfast this morning, he found a centipede like creature in his melon. Excited, he thought it was an unknown creature, and bundled it into a box to take to the University. When York pulls back the covering, the box is empty.

The centipede is in fact a known poisonous species, and York has somehow unleashed it on the university. It won’t be long before students start to drop dead.

© Paul Hebron

March Madness

Miskatonic University has never been known for its team athletics, that is until recently. This year began differently, as 7’4” Seth Whateley strolled onto the campus and was almost immediately given a full basketball scholarship.

There was initially some trouble with Seth because he couldn’t produce any health or school records and he refused to submit to a physical. Miskatonic U’s basketball coach soon cleared these obstacles with some help from some basketball-loving administrators. Seth was able to pass the universities most stringent entrance exams and his refusal to take a physical was waived on religious grounds.

Since then Seth (#44) has broken nearly every single season scoring and defensive record in Cephalopod and conference history. As the big college championship tournament approaches, many people have lots of questions about Seth and several interested parties are willing to find out more about this strange giant out of Dunwich County. Seth refuses to be interviewed and has no friends on campus. Anyone who has tried to find out more about him has come up against strong resistance from family and university officials alike. That’s where the investigators come in – they’ve been asked or hired to find out what exactly Seth Whateley has to hide.

Possibilities

1 Seth is kin to Wilbur Whateley who tried to steal the Necronomicon for his own evil purposes. Seth, like Wilbur, is not totally human. He plans to continue his cousin Wilbur’s work by becoming a college athletic superstar. With free reign as far as the universities restricted books shelves are concerned, he plans to steal the Necronomicon and free the Great Old Ones from their exile.

2 Abraham, Seth’s father came upon an old Whateley grimoire and with a little study he came up with an arcane method to grow his young son Seth to his current size. Money, not the Necronomicon, is the motivation for Seth’s fathers plans. He will do anything to protect his son and his secret, even murder. Abraham has some grasp of what the Whateley grimoire contains, so investigators should beware of spells and other mythos horrors if they should dig too deep or pry to hard.

3 Seth is totally free of any evil ulterior motives. He just wants to get an education and leave the backwoods of Dunwich behind. He is deeply religious and wants to be left alone.

© Kevin Kaier

Mysterious Death

A resort town on the East Coast is supplied with water by a large tank at the top of a hill. The body of rich old Mr Marchmount is been found there one night, his throat horribly crushed. The wet mud around the tank bears no footprints.

Dr. Tointon, the local physcian, examines the tank and finds it full to within a few inches of the top. He also finds traces of slime on the railing. Despite this, the police investigator, Inspector Slago, suspect Dufirst, the tank-keeper. Dufirst is found to have Marchmont’s watch but claims he took it from the already dead body. The police begin to believe him when a second body is found....

Possibilities

1 The tank is home to a large snake which strangled Marchmount, then returned to the darkness of the reservoir. The tank has not been cleaned on a regular basis and strange chemicals in the water has affected the reptile. The slime was left by the snake as it passed back and forth into the tank.

2 Marchmount is a cultist and has been using the tank at night as a landing pad for his experiments with Byakhees. His spell failed this one time and the flying horror strangled him then dropped his body. The slime is supernatural ooze excreted by the Byakhee. A mystical whistle was dropped at the site but picked up by a child, the second victim.

3 The tank holds the remains of Sidney Belton, a man who has been missing for four years. Belton’s ghost haunts the reservoir, waiting for the three men who murdered him and hid his body. Marchmount was one of them, as was the second victim. The ghost will remain hoping to kill the third man. The marks on the dead men's neck is made by the ghost’s deadly grip.

Inspired by William Hope Hodgson’s The Terror From the Water-Tank (1907)

© G W Thomas (illustration © Sam DeGraff)