Suffer the Child

Poor little Tania Langley. At the age of nine, she’s an orphan, her parents brutally murdered by her older brother, who subsequently committed suicide. Understandably, she is suffering from psychiatric problems, most notably being completely unable to sleep without medication due to horrific nightmares. Her legal guardian, a distant uncle, has had her committed and the devoted staff at the sanitarium is not hopeful that Tania will ever be cured. Tania herself is very withdrawn and shy and speaks very little. The few people that she does talk to say that she insists that a monster killed her parents.

Image by artflow.ai

Possibilities

1 Tania’s uncle is a greedy, sadistic villain. He murdered Tania’s parents and framed her brother in order to inherit. Tania managed to run away, and by the time her uncle found her, he had realized that he could still enjoy the money if he was her guardian. Unwilling to admit the reality of what she saw, she imagined that a monster had done it. Her uncle secretly encourages this belief.

2 The house that the Langleys lived in was haunted by a malevolent entity. This entity had been steadily gaining strength throughout the time that they had owned the house. Unfortunately, Tania’s parents refused to admit it and tried to ignore the unnatural happenings in their house. Tania’s brother realized what was going on, and tried to put a stop to it. His knowledge proved pitifully inadequate, and he only succeeded in allowing the entity a physical presence. The entity killed their parents. Tania’s brother made a last-ditch effort to stop the entity; he was successful, but it cost him his life.

3 Tania’s brother was a dabbler in the occult and had many books of forbidden knowledge, which eventually drove him to the brink of insanity.  He finally went over the edge after reading an old play, The King in Yellow.  His mind snapped, and he killed his parents before ending his own life.  He did in fact go through some physiological changes, caused by his proximity to the essence of Hastur the Unspeakable. (Hence Tania’s belief that it was a monster.) Unfortunately, Tania had a habit of sneaking peeks at her brother’s books, and he had left the play in plain sight on his desk.

So far, Tania’s age has worked in her favor; the mind of a child has some natural defenses that adult minds do not, and Tania neither understood everything she read nor finished the play. However, only time will tell what lasting effects this will have on her… 

© Megan McKnight

Hands

It’s late one night on a particularly isolated stretch of road. The temperature begins to drop, and the driver suddenly senses that “something else” is in the car.

Image by artflow.ai

Suddenly, a pair of hairy Hands reach over and grasp the wheel, wrenching it from the driver’s control. The vehicle spins to a halt, narrowly missing some trees. Immediately the Hands vanish, having been there for mere seconds. A careful examination of the car reveals no anomalies.

The disembodied Hands are extremely strong. Each Hand has three sinewy fingers and a thumb, each sporting a talon or claw. The Hands usually appear attached to powerful forearms that disappear at the elbow. They never attack directly, but may operate machines, prod and shove people/objects and even scratch or write messages.

The Hands usually appear out of nowhere, work their evil, and then vanish abruptly.

Possibilities

1 The “Hairy Hands” are a popular local myth. The stretch of road in question is notorious for fatal accidents, and many survivors of accidents claim to have seen the hideous Hands. Legend states that a murderer was lynched on that spot 150 years ago - and that the spirit of the murderer lives on.

2 The vehicle itself is haunted. When it was very new, it struck and killed a young man, Frederick Winterbottom. Winterbottom himself dabbled in dubious occult arts and his spirit now haunts the car.

3 The Hands were a part of a deliberate attack by the remnants of a previously vanquished cult. Remaining members, seeking revenge, have summoned a black and terrible spirit to do their bloody deed. Part of the summoning ritual involved each cultist cutting off a hand. The Hands will not cease until revenge is complete.

(Inspired by the “hairy hands of Dartmoor”.)

© Rob Illing

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.

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

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

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)

The Organ Donor

A series of bizarre murders are occurring in Arkham. Unusually, each victim has received donations of organs from the body of a Catholic man – and every single murder victim has the relevant body parts extracted – eyes, heart, bone marrow, whatever they received from the dead man. It may be that this man is not as dead as he seems, and is seeking a complete body, in order to enter heaven.

Possibilities

1 The murders are committed by the dead man himself, who has returned as a zombie-like revenant who seeks to reconstruct his own body after his wife went against his wishes by donating his organs.

2 The donor was not as good a Catholic as was suggested. He was a sorcerer, and his knowledge is much desired by another sorcerer who can resurrect the dead, as in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. However, to avoid getting “the liveliest awfulness” of his victim, he requires all his body parts and has set out to regain every single one.

3 The murders are committed by the donor’s wife. A medium has contacted the victim in the spirit world, where his ghost is trapped because he lacks his complete body. To reassemble the corpse, his wife is stealing the organs from their recipients.

Inspired by the story Donor, from the X-Files comics.

© James David Beard

Ghost Train

Over the past few weeks people have spotted an antique subway train going through the underground. It is always seen in the dead hours of the night and it never seems to stop at any of the stations it is sighted at. Witnesses have described it as having three cars and have also seen strange lights moving around inside it. The transit authority has no information on the train.

Possibilities

1 The antique subway train is being used in a film. It is on loan from a museum and is travelling to various underground stations for filming. It is only seen at night since that is the easier to transport it during the non-peak hours. The strange lights are from the film crew setting up lighting for various interior shots. The Transit Authority knows what is going on but has been asked to keep quite by the movie company.

2 It really is a ghost train. Back in the early 1900 a novice driver took a wrong turn and barrelled into a dead-end tunnel filled with fuel. Everyone on board was burned to death in a gruesome fashion. Now years later the site of the wreck is being excavated and it has disturbed the ghosts. The ghosts, in their hate for the living have used their powers to recreate the subway train and lure victims to a similar fate.

3 The train belongs to an undead sorcerer who was alive at the turn of the century. Feeling nostalgic it has returned to the old stomping grounds of its life. The train has been created by means of magic most foul and populated with rotting and monstrous servants. The sorcerer takes on passengers for the purpose of needing food or experiment subjects.

© David Kapsos

After the Funeral

One of the investigators is attending the funeral of an old friend with other investigators. After the funeral, they have drinks together and talk about their lost friend. Suddenly one of the investigators look through the window and sees the dead friend staring back.

Possibilities

1 At first, the investigator thins it’s just a trick of the mind... until he sees his friends staring at through the window too. Is it a ghost? Is their dead friend trying to send a message from the other side?

2 The dead friend is now a vampire and wants to see his acquaintances one last time before leaving for somewhere else.

3 After blinking the dead friend disappears. It was just a trick of the investigator’s imagination. But why are there footprints below the window?

© Nicolas Dao Phan

The Whitaker House

The Bradley Whitaker House has earned a reputation for being haunted. The last owner, Harvey Osbourne, purchased the house from the Whitaker family. Osbourne was killed by Frank Whitaker, who escaped from a mental institution to return to his ancestral home. Police never apprehended Whitaker who, according to rumor, still lurks in the general area.

The last person to enter the house was a college student named Jack Wadson who was preparing a Halloween feature story for a local newspaper. He entered the house during an October evening and was found the next morning at the bottom of a nearby cliff after fleeing.

Any investigation into Wadson’s past reveals he was investigating the deaths of fellow college students Claudia Jenning and Russ Mayer, who were both found dead in a forest near the house. Jenning died from heart failure and Mayer from a blunt trauma to the head. The students, who were dating, had planned on an illicit party in the abandoned house.

Anyone searching the house will find white sheets suspended from wires, hidden projectors that create “apparitions” on the wall and hidden speakers. Once these discoveries are made, investigators will find themselves locked in the house, away from each other if they are in separate rooms. They will also discover hidden passages throughout the house.

Possibilities

1 During any investigation, a fellow college student named Artemus Dane reluctantly provides some of the information on Wadson’s activities. Dane, who is a theater major, was smitten by Jenning and decided to punish her for spurning him. He used his knowledge of theatrical props to create a “haunted house,” not realizing that Jenning had a heart condition. Mayer attacked Artemus and was struck by a blunt instrument. Artemus hid the bodies in the woods, and later went after Wadson to discourage his investigation.

2 Frank Whitaker never left. He has secretly made a home in the house, which is riddled with secret passages. He will not let the investigators leave alive. A secret chamber in the home contains the bodies of a few wanderers that made the mistake of staying in the house for too long.

3 A gang of local criminals have established a hideout in the house. They use the “haunting” as a cover for their activities.

© Brian Woodman

Wrong Side of the Tracks

In the northwestern part of the city lies the old freight yard. Box wagons, wrecked buildings and huge amounts of rubble create an image of total abandonment. And then there are stories of strange noises, creepy shadows and disappearing citizens related to the site... People are advised not to trespass.

Possibilities

1 It is just a ‘normal’ abandoned freight yard – but it attracts all kind of strangers: vagabonds and wild animals, criminals and youth gangs. Plus, plus the site isn’t really the safest place with all the rust, debris and what’s left of cargo in the wagons – It is believed that some still contain coal and/or gunpowder.

2 At least three ghostly beings are associated with haunting the freight yard: Daniel o’Toole, train robber and three times murder, who unfortunately hid and finally died in a cargo train, that was sealed and placed to rest on the freight yard, Manni Olsen, a track worker, who went crazy when ‘his’ freight yard was closed down and repeatedly returned, killing two wardens before being shot by the police, and Rachel Hunnigan, ‘the Hungarian witch’, whose cottage was levelled for the freight yard and died shortly afterwards in an asylum.

The three ghosts are fighting over control of the site – for whatever purpose.

3 The freight yard is still used – as a gateway to other planets. During certain nights people might see ghostly wagons arriving and unspeakable phantoms carrying undefinable goods to the wagons – and sometimes human bodies as well...

© Philipp Mählmann

Grave Tidings

The investigators are begged to come to a small, isolated, backwater town by a native of the area, who relates an intriguing tale of dark forces.

He explains that for the last year a ghostly gravedigger has haunted his town. The gravedigger’s presence is mainly known by the freshly dug graves which are discovered in the town graveyard every few months. However, on two occasions, residents of the town have seen some manner of ghostly apparition working through the night in the graveyard. Neither resident stayed long enough to take a close look.

Whenever a new grave appears in the graveyard, someone dies in the town within a week. Thus, the ominous appearance of a new grave terrifies the townsfolk. One person at a time, the town is being destroyed.

The investigators won’t be told the townspeople’s unfortunate reaction to these occult events. At first, they remained within their houses whenever a new grave appeared, each hoping to hide from fate. However, recently, things have taken a more violent turn. The last few times a new grave appeared, the townsfolk began to murder each other, in order to ensure that the grave has an occupant.

The night that the investigators arrive in town, a new grave appears, forcing the investigators to deal with murderous townspeople as well as the force at the centre of the mystery.

Possibilities

1 The ghostly gravedigger is truly a restless spirit. In life, he was Robert Took, who was the mortician for the town half-a-century ago. However, he did not respect his job, or the clients that he cared for, and thus he frequently buried several people in the same grave, to save time, and often omitted gravestones and coffins because it seemed financially sound to do so. After he died, Took’s wrongdoing gnawed away at him, and so he has returned to do a proper job, digging a new grave whenever someone is destined to die.

Took is not malicious, but his presence has affected the town itself. He only digs a grave when he senses that a death is to occur, but recently his digging graves has become the impetus for those deaths.

If Robert Took’s wrongs can be undone, he will finally be able to rest. This will require finding out about Took, perhaps by consulting records or speaking with the ghost itself, and then repairing them. This will likely result in the grisly task of digging up most of the graveyard, and reburying the corpses properly.

2 The ghostly gravedigger is a spirit, but it has been purposefully raised by a group of malicious cultists. A group naming itself the Black Circle operates out of an abandoned house near to the graveyard. When they began to worship the Black Man, they found a need for sacrifices. They raised the spirit of a dead mortician, and whenever they needed a sacrifice for the Black Man, they would dig a fresh grave, and then make sure that someone died before week’s end.

So far, the cultist’s plan has gone perfectly. Several people have seen the ghostly gravedigger, and thus added credence to the existence of a genuine supernatural phenomena. The recent, murderous actions of the townspeople have pleased the cultists immensely, for the townspeople are now doing half their work for them.

If the cultists are dealt with, the ghostly gravedigger returns to his just rest, for it is only their necromantic rituals which tie him to this world.

3 The ghostly gravedigger is a holographic projection placed by the mi-go. Last year, the unearthly insects discovered an immensely valuable vein of minerals beneath the town. Unfortunately, its location made it impossible for the mi-go to mine it in secret. They were afraid to destroy the town because they knew that such an action would not go unnoticed, and that they would be driven away before they could mine more than the smallest fraction of the minerals.

So, the mi-go began a campaign of terror to force the humans to abandon the town. Every few months, they would dig a grave, and then ensure that there was a body to fill it within the next week. Twice, they used alien holographic techniques to allow townspeople to see the ghostly gravedigger. They understood the superstitious mindset of the townspeople well, and very soon, the legends of the ghostly gravedigger had taken on a life of their own.

If the mi-go can be driven away, the appearances of the apparition will end, and, perhaps, the town will return to normal.

© Shannon Appel

Fear and Amnesia

You think you are being haunted. Small objects are not where you left them, and you feel like you are being watched. You even dread stepping around corners and looking in mirrors. This is disturbing enough, but there is more.

You think you are suffering from amnesia. You cannot remember conversations that your friends say took place. You have been seen doing things that you have no memory of and would certainly not ordinarily do. Handwritten notes turn up, which you are certain you never wrote.

Are you haunted or are you losing your mind?

Possibilities

1 The peculiar events all have mythos links. Case notes are tampered with, artefacts moved. Sometimes clues appear, sometimes evidence vanishes. It does not make sense.

You are haunted by the ghost of a recently deceased investigator. This ghost does not possess any consciousness; it is merely “psychic residue” trying to fight the never-ending fight. In order to continue the battle against the mythos it occasionally
possesses your body to manipulate events, thus causing your periods of amnesia.

The ghost is occasionally helpful in an investigation, sometimes providing an important clue. However, it is equally likely to draw wrong conclusions and chase red herrings.

2 Meddling in strange magics, unknowable entities and alien intelligences can have unpredictable effects. You are being gradually displaced from reality by a doppelganger, or double. Two copies of you are trying to exist at the same place and time.

As time has passed, the doppelganger has grown strong, and has created a material body. This materialises from time to time - and when it does, you cease to exist. Eventually the double tires and its body dissipates (so you and your double are never seen together).

You obviously have no memory of the doppelganger’s deeds, because you didn’t do them. Unless you get help the doppelganger will eventually replace you completely. Oddly the doppelganger is equally confused and believes itself to be haunted . . .

3 You really are mad. Pushed to the limit one time too many, your mental defences have collapsed, releasing your evil thoughts and desires. Worse, due to the unearthly energies you have been exposed to, these have been given an independent existence, creating a mental entity composed of malice.

While you continue with your life, this “shadow” tries to destroy those people and things that you care the most about. Although unable to exert much physical strength (moving a small object such as a pen is about its limit), the shadow influences people’s memories, thus manipulating others to further your destruction.

© Matthew Grossman

Jenny Beckett’s Ghost

Whilst travelling late one night by car, the investigators spot a shadowy figure by the side of the road as it enters a wood. A young woman paces backwards and forwards and looking in their direction. She seems to be wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather. Should the investigators stop to help, the young woman vanishes before their eyes.

If the investigators are in such a rush that they drive right past, at the last moment the woman steps in front of the car, seemingly unaware. There is no impact, no crash, no body bouncing across the windscreen. When the investigators’ skid to a halt they find no body, nor any evidence of one.

Instead, all they find is a small stone dedicated to the memory of Jenny Beckett sitting in the verge.

Further investigation reveals that Jenny Beckett was murdered at the roadside on the night of June 21st, 1826. The killer, Arthur Langton, was caught and hung, but reports of Jenny’s ghost soon became common. A local gypsy pronounced that unless a special inscribed stone was set to remember her death, then Jenny would continue to haunt that stretch of road.

Once the stone was put in place, the ghost vanished. The stone was blessed by the gypsy and inscribed thus: “To the memory of Jenny Backett, that her soul may rest in peace and she need wander no more”.

Now, however, it seems that Jenny Beckett is haunting the road once more, and it is not long before she causes a fatal accident.

Possibilities

1 Recently, road repairs have been carried out, and the road widened. The stone was taken up during the repairs and then replaced. Unfortunately, to be truly effective it needs to be blessed by a gypsy again.

2 Jenny’s ghost is waiting still for the man she was meant to meet at that spot – Thomas Longstock, her sweetheart. Jenny’s ghost appears sporadically in the area of her death and always around the time of the murder.

The gypsy was only partly right about the stone, which in itself is not enough to lay the ghost to rest. That can only be done by placing something that belonged to Thomas Longstock beneath the stone, no easy task considering he’s been dead for many years.

3 Michael L. Withers is the great-grandson of the man hanged for Jenny’s murder. His family has always maintained that Arthur did not commit the crime, but the Langton family were forced to leave the area after the hanging. Michael was always an impressionable boy and his grandmother’s stories have sent him to the scene of the crime.

© Lynne Wilson

Dirty Curtain

Sat at home doing nothing much, the investigator hears a light tapping at the window. Upon drawing back the curtains to see what is causing the noise the investigator is greeted with . . . nothing. No sign of what caused the tapping is visible. Perhaps it was the wind?

When he closes the curtains however, the investigator sees an image ‘burnt’ into the material. The image of a face. The face is human, non-descript and not completely clear but is definitely there. The image is reminiscent of the Turin Shroud. The face appears to be that of a human male, clean-shaven, hawk nosed and bald. There is no discernible expression except possibly an air of expectation.

Possibilities

1 The image is impossible to remove. The night after its appearance footprints start appearing on the carpet. Footprints very similar in style to the image in the curtain; bare feet, definitely human and nothing more than a dark stain on the carpet: a stain impossible to remove. Night by night the footprints disappear and reappear a little bit closer to the investigators most prized possession, be it a picture, a tome, a pet or a child. If no action is taken this most prized possession goes missing along with the footprints, but not the face, never to be seen again.

2 Recent investigations have left the investigator more than a little paranoid. This severe paranoia combined with a windy night and a few condensation and smoke stains have driven him to believe that the face is real. Nobody else sees it as clearly; “Yes, there’s something there,” they say. “A faint stain but nothing to be worried about. It’s just your paranoia, relax, stop worrying, it can’t do you any harm.” Can it?

3 No matter what the investigator tries the face cannot be removed. It can’t be washed out and stain removers don’t work: it’s there permanently. If the investigator replaces the curtains, the image reappears in the new curtains. Even if he removes the curtains completely the image just comes back, but this time in the glass. Worse, the investigators work against the Mythos starts to go downhill. Every move he makes the cultists seem to be expecting, they always know what the investigator is going to do next. It is almost as though the investigator is being watched…

© Ric Norton

Ghost Train

The investigators are travelling by train, scheduled to arrive at midnight. The witching hour comes and goes, but still they do not arrive at their destination. The conductor and other staff on the train are reticent and surly about the delay. The conductor eventually makes an announcement: “Everybody remain seated. The train is behind schedule.”

“But we passed my stop,” complains a woman.

“There will be no more stops tonight,” says the conductor. He then retires to his office and refuses to answer questions and complaints.

Possibilities

1 If the investigators speak with the train staff they begin noticing anachronisms, such as dates and references to popular people or events. The staff are all ghosts from a decade ago. The conductor is a man called Josiah Brand, a ruthless and evil railroad man. Brand hated people of colour and threw hobos from the train if they were black or Mexican. White hobos were merely subjected to beatings and extortion.

Josiah Brand and his fellow trainmen were killed ten years previously (as the investigators discover after interviewing the other, equally dead, passengers) on a similarly rainy night when the train crashed over a bridge and into a raging river.

As the investigators learn this there is a horrific screech, the mournful wail of the engine’s whistle and a violent lurch as the train derails. Then--

--the train slows as it arrives, finally at its destination. Everything is as normal again.

2 The investigators are dead. They actually died a short while ago and are now on the legendary hell-bound train. The other passengers are all damned souls as well. The conductor is an evil spirit, entrusted with the task of ensuring that his charges reach the gates of hell.

3 The train has been hijacked by cultists (of which the conductor is one) of the Valusian Order of Valka. The Order is using the train to summon Ithaqua as their ritual requires that the participants are moving faster than 60 miles per hour. The cultists also need a large number of sacrifices to appease Ithaqua - which is the role they have planned for the passengers. Any attempt to leave the train will be dealt with harshly, although nobody will be killed: Ithaqua likes his sacrifices properly served.

And as the train gains speed, the cultists make their move…

© G W Thomas

The Attic Window

On the top floor of that long-abandoned house with the shady history is a coffin-shaped window. The house has an ill reputation; its last owner supposedly practised black magic and was murdered in the room behind that curious window 30 years ago. The murder was never solved.

The window itself is supposed to be haunted. It is whispered that the dead owner is sometimes seen in it, and strange lights shine from it by night.

An urban legend says that if you look through the window from the inside, the world outside would look strange and wrong.

Breaking into the house and looking through the window has now become a teenage rite-of-passage. But be careful, for you can go mad if you are unlucky...

Possibilities

1 The windows glass has a strange, but unmagical, ability to store images (and to a degree, sound). The images are replayed from time to time, sometimes long after they were imprinted. Some images are repeated time after time, others appear only once. (This is how the long-dead owner is seen.) If you look through the window from the inside, you can might see the street as seen long ago.

And at some point, if you are looking in from the outside, you will eventually see the murder.

2 The window is not made of glass, but from an unknown material made by a pre-human civilisation. It stores images over a nearly infinite time. Under normal circumstances, it looks like a normal window – but things can look wrong (as latent images beneath the surface merge with the normal view).

Looked through in certain angles and light it shows aeon-old images of the laboratory that created it.

The former owner found the glass and learned much forbidden knowledge by looking through it. Unfortunately, he attracted the attention of one of the hounds of Tindalos...

3 The former owner dabbled in black magic and as a side effect trapped a weak astral entity in the glass. The entity is bored, and hates humans. It has learnt how to alter and corrupt the view through its glass prison and uses this ability to confuse and scare humans.

© Stefan Jonsson

The de'Vere Pool

Possibilities

1 The pool is haunted by the tormented soul of Charles de’Vere.

A lesser known manifestation is that each time the water turns to blood, the portrait of Charles de’Vere hanging in the hall cries real tears.

2 The soil beneath the pool is on a clay base and occasional natural movement of the earth’s crust brings the clay to the surface, staining the water red.

3 Deep below the de’Vere house a nest of Cthonians festers and seethes. It is their burrowing and worming which disturbs the soil beneath the pool.

© Garrie Hall

The Old Quarry

The rusting corrugated metal shed sits in a fenced off section of an old quarry, now used as a car park in dismal Northumberland seaside village. Stone was last extracted from the quarry in 1955, and the fenced off land is overgrown with brambles and bindweed. It radiates neglect.


The corrugated metal shed was originally part of the mine workings, but is currently used as storage by the council.

Possibilities

1 The shed houses BANDED GROUSE, one of seven government occult installations located around Britain’s coastline. BANDED GROUSE and similar facilities are the UK’s frontline defence in an ongoing secret magic war. The shed conceals a deep underground bunker, constructed after the government bought the quarry in 1957.

Within the bunker, a small team of intelligence officers serve the three government sorcerers responsible for maintaining the magical wards and barriers that protect the country against her enemies.

2 The quarry never turned a profit. The owners, Neptune Facilities Ltd, invested several million pounds into the project, before closing the quarry down and renting the land to the council in 1955. The council uses the old quarry shed to store highway maintenance equipment.

At the back of a shed is a small office, and beyond that is another space, with no doors. (The council has no record of this space.) In the floor of this space is an old trapdoor, which hasn’t been opened in decades.

The trapdoor reveals a rusty metal ladder which descends 20 metres to a cold, damp chamber. A short tunnel leads to a larger, ornately carved chamber that is filled with what appear to be 36 stone coffins, each sealed with wax. The stone coffins contain the true owners of Neptune Facilities, their families and key advisors. Disturbing them before their allotted waking time is unlikely to be wise.

3 Nobody visits the old quarry after dark, as it is haunted by the ghosts of three workers killed in a quarrying accident. The workers had fallen into a deep shaft that had been opened by the quarrying, and it proved impossible to recover the bodies. The accident was investigated but the true cause (neglected machinery and a callous disregard for life and limb) was ignored.

The quarry owners escaped justice, but a run of bad luck following the accident resulted in the quarry being closed in 1955. Until the owners (or their descendants) atone for their crime, the dead workers’ souls will continue to haunt the quarry.

© Steve Hatherley

Peverill Manor

Possibilities

1 After the curse had struck, the witch’s grave was exhumed and found to be empty. Her corpse was never found and is still buried near the house. Her presence is disturbing the other ghosts, when she is returned to her true grave they will fade away, at peace.

2 Peverill Manor is built upon a ritual serpent people grave. Residual magic in the reptilian corpses is mistaken for ghosts.

3 Psychic emanations from a demon trapped below the manor are picked up by those above and turned into ghosts. The Church-Peverills do not fear the ghosts so the ones they create are benign. Visitors, however, are less relaxed and create terrible creatures that haunt them from their own nightmares.

© Steve Hatherley

The Ghost of Heddon Manor

Taken from Fleming’s Old Country Houses, 1917.

Possibilities

1 The Water-Spirit is an old deep one that lives in subterranean caverns beneath Heddon Manor. It is trapped there by an ancient spell, only able to escape into the manor and feed from the larder at limited times.

2 The Water-Spirit is a genuine ghost. The restless spirit of a fisherman haunts the manor. Lord Poppleford wronged him, sending the fisherman to his death in a terrible storm. He now haunts the great house and those that live there.

3 The Water-Spirit is mere legend and superstition. The combination of a damp, old house and some unusual, windswept, caverns (which produce the sloshing sounds) caused Lord Poppleford to imagine rather more than there was.

© Steve Hatherley