Graven Images

Edward Appleton is a thriller movie director of some note. Despite being an anarchic independent type he has completed three very successful films in the last two years, making him a hot property in the US movie industry.

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Now he is in town to shoot his latest masterpiece, a ghost/love story called Love Conquers All. The plot revolves around recluse Daniel Graves, a handsome young man who is haunted by the malevolent ghost of his deceased fiancee Celeste Severin; women he meets turn up dead and the police pursue him to a final confrontation where he is burned to death in his mansion.

Appleton has a big budget and has two-star actors, namely Nancy Page, a classic beauty ideal for tragic heroine roles, and Robert Hunter, a debonair romantic action-man. Their arrival in town is greeted with much publicity as Appleton has chosen the (infamous) sprawling Schottky Mansion as the set for the haunted house which features in the film.

The Schottky Mansion quickly lives up to its reputation as a genuine haunted house. Two days after setting up their equipment the movie crew are in turmoil. One of the make-up assistants, Mary White, is found horribly murdered in the dining hall.

Possibilities

1 Appleton is a classically disturbed sociopath who wants as much recognition as possible.

He debates with an inner voice which he perceives as his Devil’s Advocate. On previous occasions, he has listened to this voice, followed its suggestions and as a result made some very clever and disturbing films a la Alfred Hitchcock (whom Appleton worships as a movie genius but would probably dislike intensely if he actually met him).

Researching Appleton thoroughly will reveal details of his Svengali-like personality and obsession with detail (not necessarily unusual in a movie director). Researching his recent history will uncover unconnected murders near the locations of his previous movies. All such murders could be seen as dummy runs for scenes from the movies. Some victims are stalked and terrified, others killed outright; methods of despatch include auto accident, stabbing, shooting, strangulation, falling from a great height, drowning, bitten by spiders, etc.

Appleton is a master of cinematic tension, playing on common phobias as inspiration. Anyone who attracts his unwelcome attention had better be psychologically stable.

2     Robert Hunter recently rejected the amorous advances of Nancy Page. As Nancy Page considers herself a screen goddess, she did not like her rejection by the up and coming Hunter. Then Nancy saw Hunter laughing with Mary White and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Nancy had a red rose and a letter delivered to Mary, the letter asking her to meet Hunter on the set. Nancy then confronted Mary and stabbed her to death in an identical fashion to that laid out in the script. She hopes to throw the police off the track and more importantly to be around to console Hunter through his grief. 

Hunter is a closet homosexual and does not want his promising career ruined by a public scandal; Mary knew his secret but died before she could tell Nancy the real reason for her rejection.

3     The Schottky Mansion is owned by Pennywell Properties who purchased it for a song some 15 years ago. It has had a history of odd occurrences and has never been let for more than three months at a time. The local kids refer to it as a haunted house, nobody seems able to stay in it overnight, weird music comes from it at inauspicious times and it has been researched by a number of psychics and mediums.

Pennywell Properties has let the mansion to the studio who plan to burn it to the ground for the climax of the movie. Official permission has already been granted.

The mansion is indeed haunted, by the wraith of Abraham Schottky, its original owner. He was a talented Jewish-Polish physicist far ahead of his time, working in the field of acoustics. His researches accidentally opened a gate through which a Servitor of the Outer Gods passed, killing him and devouring his body before returning to Azathoth. The gate is only fully open at times such as Walpurgis Night.

To end the hauntings the gate must be fully closed, a dangerous process as at least one Servitor will come to interfere.

Schottky’s deranged wraith is taking its own illogical steps to ensure that the mansion is left alone. It can possess psychically sensitive humans and cause parapsychic phenomena to occur. It possessed the sensitive Robert Hunter during an innocent assignation with Mary White and he is deeply troubled because of the blackout he experienced and the resultant memory gap. He has no occult or specialist knowledge beyond a talent for empathising with people.

© Peter Devlin