The Dinner Party

Kenneth Marsh is an eccentric traveller, writer, critic and dilettante whose frequent dinner parties are the talk of the town. Avaricious socialites shamelessly pursue invitations to these cosmopolitan events. Guests come from all social backgrounds and are chosen by Marsh for their idiosyncrasies and entertainment potential. Madonna Scarlatti, a stage actress, and Samuel Waldeberg, a would-be movie star, are among the guests this evening.

After a starter of superb herb and garlic pate, the main course appears, an ‘unusual fish dish’. The guests joke nervously, hoping that it is not calamari; a previous guest had an attack upon learning that she had eaten sauteed baby octopus. “One simply couldn’t live with the thought of eating tentacles!”

Marsh tucks in and everyone slowly follows his example. The main course is excellent. A rich chocolate and coffee pudding is the sweet, to be followed by coffee, brandy and cigars. Marsh, a radical, does not expect the ladies to retire whilst the men smoke.

Conversation turns to the host’s recent travels. Marsh returned recently from the Orient with, amongst other curios, a number of live specimens of a rare genus of venomous catfish. Marsh maintains extensive salt and freshwater aquaria. These catfish have bred extensively in the last few months; the guests have just eaten a few of them.

The Lung-Hung catfish are found only in the precincts of a Cantonese temple to a many-armed female ‘Bhudda’, referred to as The Bloated Woman. The fish are considered sacred as, reputedly, they can heal dermatitis sufferers who bathe in their pool. Marsh does not elaborate on how he obtained live specimens although there was a Reuters article on a riot in Shanghai a few months ago.

Suddenly, Marsh begins to choke. His eyes bulge, he turns purple, and he slumps face-down into his coffee.

Possibilities

1   The cook, Jules Severin, didn’t know how to prepare the fish. He sought the advice of a kindly yellow-robed Chinese herbalist monk who was collecting donations door-to-door. The monk’s recipe deliberately didn’t account for the poison sacs within the fish. Marsh sampled the dish yesterday and ate it again tonight. He has died first. Within 24 hours, all the guests will be dead.

Marsh has an extensive collection of journals in which he relates the tales of the Lung-Hung Catfish as learned from a ‘flower girl’ in Shanghai. There is a small temple in Chinatown, guarded closely by the Order of The Bloated Woman. The monks know of the antidote. It only remains for someone to fetch it in time.

2 Shelby the butler checks Marsh and declares him alive. Then Waldeberg collapses theatrically to the floor with severe cramps; he daringly had two helpings of the main course.

In normal humans the catfish venom causes cramps and fever which may kill those with a weak constitution. On Deep One hybrids the venom speeds the transformation process dramatically. The catfish can feed on dead flesh of humans, and are kept specifically for useon the moulting flesh of such hybrids. This is the background to the tales concerning their healing properties.

Marsh, unknowingly, can trace his family history to Innsmouth. He is in a coma from which he will awake in a few days, a good way through the transformation to a Deep One. Grinning Orientals hide in the bushes outside the window. They await the incapacitation of the guests. They will take Marsh to his true people and kidnap then sacrifice the defilers of the sacred fish.

3 Marsh was poisoned by Madonna Scarlatti, who sits to his left. She used an antique Italian poison ring to slip a lethal dose of cyanide into his dessert.

Marsh and Scarlatti are ex-lovers. He savaged her recent appearance as Lady Macbeth but invited her as a way of apologising for being too harsh. Hell hath no fury...

© Peter Devlin

The Butcher

Even investigators have to eat. An investigator makes a routine shopping trip, and returns home, only to discover the package he picked up at the local butchery contains, along with the usual sausages and sliced ham, a human hand carefully folded between two pieces of waxed paper.

A closer look at the package reveals that it was intended for someone with the same first and last names, but a different middle initial. The shop assistant has confused the two orders.

Possibilities

1 Some of the anthropology lecturers at a nearby university went native and developed a taste for the local cuisine while studying inhabitants of the Plain of Leng. They formed a small cult to practice the cannibalism and ritual sorcery they learned. The butcher is an affable, conscientious lunatic and multiple murderer that they employ to supply their unique dietary needs.

2 The severed hand is from a body dead several days of natural causes.

No murder is involved. A small group of scholars are attempting to learn more about the mythos by making a deal with the local community of ghouls. As part of the arrangement, some ghouls have temporarily moved into the scholars’ homes to assist them. The academics have made arrangements with the mortician and butchery to supply them with suitable food.

In time, they conclude their study and end their relationship with the ghouls amicably.

3 The butcher’s assistant has been experimenting with drugs. He cut off his own hand in the bacon slicer and packaged it up without even realising it. He’s bleeding to death in the butchery’s walk-in cold store, and thinks it’s the funniest thing on Earth.

If he is not helped quickly, he dies of shock and blood loss.

© Chris Kerr

The Machine Beneath the Earth

Beneath an old city, the sounds of machinery can be constantly heard. The council have tried to locate the source of the noise by exploring the sewers. So far they have been unsuccessful.

Documents in the library indicate that below the city there are uncharted catacombs from medieval times, extending beyond the sewers. The historical or religious significance of the catacombs is unknown, though they are clearly not Christian in origin. The documents do indicate that one entrance to the catacombs begins beneath the house of an eccentric. The eccentric claims to know why the catacombs were built and what purpose they currently serve, but he refuses to elaborate.

Until recently, city folk have endured the noises with admirable stoicism. However, a recent spate of clinically precise killings have the locals in an uproar. The murders have been conducted with technologically advanced equipment, leaving no trace of a culprit. Each murder victim has been found near an entrance to the catacombs, and fingers of suspicion are starting to point at the eccentric.

Possibilities

1 The eccentric is bluffing and knows nothing about the catacombs nor the murders.

2 A criminal organisation hides out in the catacombs, creating the noise with forging equipment. The catacombs, whose purpose is unknown, amplify the sounds of the equipment so that on quiet nights the sounds can be clearly heard. The eccentric is a lookout for the organisation. The murders, however, are committed by an unconnected individual hiding in the catacombs.

3 With uncharacteristic viciousness, the Great Race of Yith are trying to create a perfect vessel for their minds, using both the organs of humans and machine parts. The murders are committed by their minions to provide the necessary organs.

© Michael Blenkarn

The Terror in the Fog

In the last years of the nineteenth century, something terrible stalked the fog-shrouded streets of London. For about three months in the autumn of 1888, a madman preyed upon the poor women who had, through poverty been forced to become prostitutes. But then, just when the terror seemed at its height, the killing stopped.

Image credit

Why was this? The police didn’t have a clue as to the identity of this killer. The press thought that perhaps the killer had moved away to America. Others thought that the killer, filled with remorse, killed himself. But just one man knew what had happened to this madman, and that man was Dr Forbes Winslow.

Forbes Winslow was the son of a Doctor who specialised in lunacy. He followed in his fathers footsteps and became a leading alienist. He was a medical theorist, a practical detective and also a noted occultist. Dr Winslow became engrossed in the Whitechapel murders and after spending weeks living in the slums of Whitechapel, he formed a mental picture of the killer.

Armed with this mental picture, he began to track the man whom he believed was the Ripper, and Dr Winslow is believed to have found him on Friday 9th November 1888, shortly after the Ripper murdered his final victim, Mary Jane Kelly.

However, what transpired on that fateful night, no one knows because Dr Forbes Winslow was found wandering the streets of Limehouse early the next day. The once proud Doctor, his clothes in tatters and hair turned white, was taken to the mental institute founded by his father and where he died in jibbering madness some two years later.

During that time he muttered the same statement over and over again. “He lies below us. Do not wake the earth.”

And so the matter rested until the spring of 1926 when something terrible rocked the city of London. The killings started once more. Within a two week period three prostitutes were murdered in exactly the same way as the Ripper’s victims. London is once more in the grip of a murderer who seems to kill and then vanish without trace...

Possibilities

1 Dr Winslow after tracking the Ripper down rendered the fiend down to his essential salts. He then took these salts, which he had stored in a jar and placed them into a segment of the new Inner Circle Line tunnel system that was opened in 1889. However, when work began on the mid-level District Line extension, the jar was unearthed and passed into the hands of an unscrupulous occultist. The man, George Chapman, not realising who was inside performed the rite of resurrection. The Ripper, after disposing of this fool, has found himself in a world that was so very different yet still the same, and able to begin his reign of terror once more.

2 The being that Dr Winslow tracked down was a Ghoul whose nest had been disturbed by the work on the new underground line. The Ghoul, finding itself trapped above ground, and having no way to return it had killed to feed itself. However, in a strange twist of fate, the work on the new mid-level District Line has disturbed the ghouls once more, trapping one of their number above ground.

3 The present wave of killings has nothing whatsoever to do with Ripper, but are being perpetrated by Dr Thomas Neill Cream, a man who needs the parts of his victim to help feed his need for fresh organs to help his search for a serum that would stop the ravages of time.

© Rik Kershaw

Sister Rosetta

Dr. Matthew Devereaux is a well-known psychologist. He also works with a local paranormal research institute, providing specialist knowledge when called for. He believes that paranormal phenomena have rational explanations that can be discovered through scientific means. This does not mean, however, that he believes that the rational explanation is necessarily something that science is already familiar with.

Recently, Dr. Devereaux was investigating supernatural occurrences at a local cemetery. He was the only survivor of his team, and was found clinging to a large vine-covered stone gravestone in the shape of a cross.  He was half hysterical, muttering incoherently and behaving in an alarming manner. He has been sent to his own sanatorium for observation, and his co-workers are unsure if he’ll ever recover. He only says one thing that anyone can make sense of: “Sister Rosetta.”

Possibilities

1 Sister Rosetta is a nun at the church the graveyard is located at. She also isn’t particularly pious or chaste; she’s been using the graveyard to have secret meetings with her multiple lovers, some of whom are quite influential figures.

Dr. Devereaux’s team caught her and one of them (a particularly violent underworld figure) in a compromising position. Being the only one with the presence of mind to hide before he was noticed, Dr. Devereaux watched helplessly as the sister and her lover calmly and systematically murdered all the witnesses.  The doctor is suffering from shock, and will recover in time.

2 The cross that he was found clinging to marks the grave of Rosetta de Mar, who was a nun in the late eighteen hundreds. She was found murdered in the graveyard where she was later buried, and the murderer was never caught.

Research will show that since that time, the graveyard was thought to be haunted by her angry spirit. It was clear that something was attacking people foolish enough to be in the graveyard at night, particularly young men. Unknown to anyone on Dr. Devereaux’s team, a young man, Charles l’Orosi (an employee of the institute), is a direct descendant of Sister Rosetta’s murderer. The enraged spirit attacked what she perceived to be her enemy, killing him. Then she turned on the others who tried to help him. Dr. Devereaux used her gravestone as cover, and thus survived her wrath; but he did not escape unscathed.

3 Sister Rosetta is a gifted psychic employed by the institute and was part of Devereaux’s team. The graveyard was being raided on a regular basis by a pack of Ghouls in search of their next meal. The team interrupted them, and the Ghouls were only too happy to take something a tad fresher. Sister Rosetta became hysterical shortly before the massacre (the result of a premonition), and fled before the ghouls arrived. Currently, she is wandering around the countryside with stress-induced amnesia.

© Megan McKnight

O Apple Tree

On the edge of town there is an apple tree that stands alone in a field, its branches picked clean of fresh green apples around summertime by the town’s children. This year is no different as the children make the journey across the field, keeping below the line of the hedges to avoid the farmer’s eye line, and filling their upturned shirts with apples before making the return journey back to market to sell the apples to the market stall, eating the choicest ones on the way.

However, something is different this year. The children fall sick and are confined to their beds, and a few even die. Thankfully no one else eats the apples and gets sick, but the town is still looking for someone to blame for the deaths of the children.

Possibilities

1 Farmer Evan Wolcott’s farm is failing, and every year he has had a smaller harvest, and had to sell on a little of his land to neighbours. Wolcott has turned to extreme measures to protect his interests, and a few months ago he turned to the books locked away in the attic that had belonged to his brother, the one who had travelled east to learn about magic and summoning.

On the first day of summer, Wolcott carried out a solstice ritual from the book and asked for the old gods of fertility to bless his farm, which they did, infusing the farm with a vigour that Wolcott had never known before. The nature spirits that guard the farm against ruin are ruthless. The spirits struck out against the children for stealing from the farm, and the sickness will kill the rest of them if something isn’t done.

2 The apple tree had a name a few hundred years ago; the Gallows Tree. A notorious witch was hung from the tree by the name of Jane Williams and her last words were reputed to be that she’d live on forever. Williams used magic to bind her spirit to the tree, and she has remained within the tree since then. She has strived to recreate her old body by exerting her limited influence on anyone who lingers near the tree and has been responsible for a small number of murders and suicides in the town.

When the children came this year, she tried a new tactic by transferring a portion of her soul to the apples the children picked. The cursed apples will eventually kill all the children and Williams plans to reanimate their bodies and then enact a ritual to restore her body.

3 The apples have nothing to do with the sickness of the children, but the man who bought the apples from the children did. The apple vendor is a serial killer who travels from town to town poisoning children. He gave the children some poisoned sweets as thanks for the apples, which cause the sickness. 

© 2009 Paul Hebron

In the cards

A friend of the characters reads Tarot cards. Their latest client drew the death card as the final card. The client, a middle-aged man, was murdered shortly after. The cards may contain significant clues to unmasking the killer -- if, of course, divination is real.

Possibilities

1 The cards do indeed reveal the identity of the killer. He is a professional criminal who was hired to kill the client and make it look like a random mugging. The victim’s wife and lover hired the thug, who is not a full-time hitman.

2 The cards are meaningless. The death of the client is a coincidence. The culprit is a hitman hired by business associates of the victim. As the card reader says, “the death card is actually positive -- it signifies change”.

3 The fortune teller actually killed the man to boost his own profile as a fantastic reader. The victim described the reading to friends before his demise. The card reader will try to mislead the characters with false clues and red herring suspects.

© Brian Woodman

The Missing Body

It’s been a big topic of conversation for three days now. Renowned anthropologist Marvin Reardon was found dead in his home with a knife in his chest. At the morgue, his body disappeared without a trace. However the investigators get involved, a few things come out. Reardon’s lover Cordelia Loomis was the last person to see him. Her story is she had an argument with him but left him alive. Loomis is a rich girl, and there are many rumors about her past and source of money, including criminal activities. She often vacations at seaside resorts.

The coroner Jackson Walters has been acting nervous since the body went missing. He took a week off and has rarely left his house. Friends are mystified at his odd behavior.

Possibilities

1 An alien worshipper of the Outer Gods is hiding in Jackson Walters’ attic. Walters has been feeding it dead animals, but it has demanding more so Walters stole a body from the morgue. As the thing tells him about the mythos Walters loses more of his sanity. It won’t be long before he steals another body or worse.

2 Cordelia Loomis is a deep one cultist. When Reardon was drunk she took him to a cult ceremony where he drank the blood of a deep one while the cultists chanted. The blood and the ritual turned him into a deep one hybrid. When Reardon found out he didn’t take it well and threatened to stop the cult forcing her to kill him. Later the body was stolen to keep the secret. Jackson Walters found evidence of Reardon’s transformation and was shaken up.

3 Loomis was mad at Reardon and summoned a star vampire to kill him. When it was done she stuck a knife in him to make it look less suspicious. Jackson Walters found him drained of blood and received a threatening note in the mail to get rid of the body or be killed. He did what it said and this is the reason for his nervousness.

© Randi Drysdale

The Elderly Man

Outraged and astounded witnesses have no idea why he didn’t report it to the local police, when an elderly man gets verbally humiliated by a band of local teenage punks.

But when some of the offending punks are found brutally murdered, the suspicion quickly falls upon the elderly man. That is, until it is verified, that the elderly man has watertight alibi.

Besides, how could a man of his age ever manage to assault and murder several young and strong teenage boys?

Possibilities

1 The elderly man dabbles in the occultic powers of the Mythos. After the humiliating incident, the elderly man swore a gruesome vengeance. He summoned a Byakhee and ordered it to track down and kill the offending punks. When the Byakhee takes off, hunting for the punks, the elderly man went to eat his supper at a restaurant nearby, comforted by the fact that the humiliation will be avenged.

2 The elderly man is the head of a criminal syndicate. But he is hiding from the authorities, which have forced him to resume a fake identity. After the humiliation, the elderly man contacted some of his goons and ordered them to track down and teach the offending punks not to be so disrespectful. Knowing all too well about the power of a strong alibi, the elderly man chose to eat his supper at a local restaurant, comforted by the fact that the humiliation will be avenged.

3 The elderly man is just a normal elderly man, that dare not face the offending punks, knowing that he can’t stand up against them. The real killer is a local vigilante-wannabe, who witnessed the humiliating incident. Deciding that enough is enough, the vigilante armed himself, tracked down, fought and murdered the punks. All that happened while the elderly man ate his supper at a local restaurant.

© Tim Deer

Mrs Whathernam

Mrs Wathernam is a nice old lady living down the street in a small but cozy home with a little garden. Mrs Whathernam adores children; many parents, who can’t afford a place in the kindergarden, send their children to her. There, they can play in her garden, Mrs Whaternam knows lots of games to play, never gets angry and bakes wonderful cakes.

Possibilities

1 Mrs Whathernam is really just a nice lady - with a tragic past: her husband returned from the war, but body and spirit broken. One night, he couldn’t stand it any longer, took a gun and turned on his family before killing himself. Mrs Whathernam survived, but her husband murdered their child.

By day, some of the children claim to have played with an unknown young boy; by night, people tell of a dark figure in a uniform staring out of the windows.

2 Mrs Whathernam has a dark secret: she is a murderer. Years ago, she and her husband were members of a dark cult and sacrificed people in their occult rituals. The cult was infiltrated by the authorities, and the cultists were arrested. Some were hanged, some committed suicide. Mrs Whathernam (not her real name) escaped...

3 Mrs Whathernam really, REALLY likes children - especially served with honey orange marinade and added spice...

© Philipp Mählmann

Drinks from Strangers

One of the characters is invited to a convention for occultists at a hotel. During the event, a character encounters a woman who invites him to have drinks with her and her husband. After some drinks, the couple invites the character to their three-story house in a nearby bedroom community.

Possibilities

1 The couple has been enslaved by an undead sorcerer who thrives on draining psychic energy from unsuspecting victims. Victims are reduced to dust by the creature. The couple chose the convention because what little free will they possess is bent on getting free from their condition.

2 They are dangerous serial murderers seeking prey. The man, who is deranged, favors victims that have what he thinks are reservoirs of personal energy that he can harvest to prolong his life. The character is in for a bad evening unless help arrives.

3 They are harmless swingers. The husband wants to watch from the closet while the character has sexual intercourse with his wife. Unfortunately, burglars in the employ of a rival occultist who wants a rare occult manual owned by the couple choose to raid the house during the “festivities.”

© Brian Woodman

Where are you, Sister?

A millionaire shipping magnate invites some old university buddies to a reunion get-together at his manor in Liverpool, England.

While they’re halfway through the reunion dinner, a couple of local police officers arrive and inform their host that they have apprehended a suspect in the matter of his sister’s disappearance. When asked what happened, the friend informs his old buddies, that his sister mysteriously disappeared a few days ago, and that they suspect foul play.

Possibilities

1 The sister has been snatched by ghouls who dragged her to their underground warrens and killed her. The ghouls have been battling a local coven of witches and sorcerers, led by their host, the millionaire shipping magnate.

The coven knows who took the sister, and what has happened to her, but they maintain a veil of normality, while they gather strength to deal a final blow to the ghouls.

The apprehended man is just an innocent crook.

2 The sister’s husband, a renowned solicitor, killed the sister in a jealous rage because he discovered the sister was fooling around with another man. When he realized what he had done, he chopped the sister up and incinerated her remains in his furnace.

The apprehended man is the sister’s lover.

3 The sister was seduced by a visitor from Scotland, whom she met at a society ball. He convinced her to go with him back to his home in northern Scotland. She gladly followed him.

Unfortunately, the man was a member of an old cult that worships an avatar of foul Shub-Niggurath. When the sister arrived, the cult claimed her and performed a fertility ritual. Now, as her brother searches, the sister is trapped in northern Scotland with a foul entity growing inside her. Her sanity is unlikely to hold out for long.

The apprehended man had been courting for the sister’s love - but without any luck. The police now suspect that he’s behind her disappearance.

© Tim Deer

Who do voodoo?

A string of ritual murders is rocking a small town, and the people are starting to panic. The victims have no obvious connection. The police have enlisted the investigators for help in identifying some strange items found at the scene, and research reveals that they are items related to voodoo magic. This leads the investigators to believe that someone is practising voodoo rites somewhere in town. But what is puzzling is that voodoo isn’t a religion that condones multiple bloody murders like these - voodoo may be strange, but it is not murderous. Something is amiss.

Possibilities

1 The victims were all attending a small fundraiser at a picnic ground on the same day an important voodoo ritual that was being performed in the nearby woods. The town’s mayor is involved in the voodoo group, and would be thrown out of office if people knew he cut the heads off chickens and drank their blood in strange, secret ceremonies. (Voters can be so picky!) Someone witnessed the ritual and is trying to blackmail the mayor. After obtaining a list of the donors at the fundraiser, he is now systematically killing off people who were at the picnic ground that day in an attempt to silence his would-be blackmailer. If the blackmailer is still alive, he is too afraid to go to the police, and rightly so; the police keep the mayor well informed on the progress of the case.

2 The murders are being performed by an insane preacher whose church’s attendance has waned considerably since his hellfire-and-brimstone sermons have gotten a bit too graphic and vitriolic. In an attempt to rekindle a god-fearing attitude in the town, he is murdering people at random and making it look like ritualistic voodoo murders, thinking it will scare people back into the pews. When it doesn’t work, he gets more frustrated and kills again. Checking up on him will reveal that he has a book on voodoo checked out of the library, which he is using as a reference to decorate the murder scenes. If there is any pattern to the slayings, it is that all the victims are either his rival clergy or his vocal critics.

3 The leader of a group of voodoo practitioners has stumbled upon a dread tome of magic written by a madman from the jungles of Brazil, and doesn’t realize that it describes rites that aren’t a part of voodoo (they’re actually Mythos rites). Since finding it, he has tried to incorporate what he has learned from the book into his teachings, and the result is a cultish cross between voodoo and the worship of a Great Old One. While on the surface, the murders and trappings of the cult are reminiscent of voodoo, a darker secret lies within: the Great Old One is demanding sacrifices, and the leader is providing them. Investigators are likely to be quietly helped by the voodoo practitioners who realize that something is wrong, but cannot show themselves for fear of being implicated in the murders.

© C C Chamberlin

I am not dead yet!

The investigators are approached by the police to identify a body. The officers are strangely reticent about who it is they are about to show in the morgue, and why the investigators specifically have been approached.

This small mystery is quickly resolved as the coroner throws back the white linen sheet from the body - it is one of the investigators. Fingerprints are near identical, as would be DNA if technology allows. The character knows nothing about having a twin.

Possibilities

1 The person is the character’s identical twin, separated at birth, who recently found out about his sibling. He (or she) was on his way to visit when he met his murderers - cultists, who thought they had caught one of their old enemies. They killed him (or her) in their traditional and easily recognizable way, and will be more than a little surprised to find that the person they thought dead is still walking.

2 Strange markings on the body, that are only be identified by consulting obscure books, reveal that the dead person was attempting a shape-changing spell. Presumably they intended to impersonate the investigator, when something went wrong. But why?

3 Upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that the dead person has marks and scars only recently acquired by the character. Upon even closer inspection, the characters realize that the still-living version, their friend and fellow investigator, does not have them. Obviously, the original investigator really is dead and lying in front of them - and whatever is standing with them is some kind of impersonation!

© Felix Girke

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

Crystals

Thomas Redding, a middle-aged wealthy landowner disappears from his estate during a snowstorm. Two days later he is reported missing by a neighbor. During the search of the house the police finds clear signs of struggle and destruction in the house. Furniture and windows have been broken and several shots have been fired inside the house, but no weapon has been found. They also found something much, much stranger; several large crystal clusters vaguely humanoid and arachnid in shape.

Mr. Redding has no enemies according to his relatives, friends and neighbors. In fact, he has a very good reputation and donates large amounts of money to the local university. Neither the neighbors, his friends or family know anything about the purpose of the crystals, no one has even seen them before.

Mr. Redding’s best friend Jonathan Dawson was the last person that saw Thomas before he disappeared. Jonathan had been invited to dinner, some whiskey and a few cigars three days before the storm. They had stayed up until midnight talking about old times before Mr. Dawson’s driver had driven him home. Mr. Redding seemed troubled by something and Jonathan was surprised by topic of the conversation since Thomas usually never talk about the past.

Possibilities

1 Thomas Redding is dead. Mr. Redding attempted to create life from a non-organic “primordial soup” he had created after reading the instructions how to from a book. It worked. Crystalloid life forms grew from the “soup” that he had in the basement. As time passed they grew more and more advanced... but also more and more aggressive. They scared him and soon he simply locked the basement door and tried to ignore them. But it was impossible, he could hear them move around down there. He sent down his housemaid downstairs to find out what was happening down there. The maid tried to flee when the creatures attacked her, but Redding had locked the door behind her. The creatures seemed to calm down for a while after that but soon they made sounds again. He figured that they must be hungry and feared for his life. After the dinner with Mr. Dawson he forced his cook, his driver and his butler down into the basement as well under gun threat. This time he watched as the creatures sucked his servants dry from fluids. The crystals they creatures were made of seemed to “infect” the bodies and they were soon transformed into human-shaped crystal clusters. The creatures grew larger and larger because of the fluids until they broke free and killed Thomas during the snowstorm. He shot a few of the smaller spider-like creatures but was eventually overwhelmed, devoured and crystallized. The gun became overgrown with crystals and remains in his hand.

2 Thomas Redding was murdered by his sister, Rebecca Harding and her husband Lars Harding hoping they would inherit Thomas’ fortune. Lars bought a stolen gun, shot Thomas, cleaned up and then dumped the body in an abandoned cabin in a nearby forest. Rebecca will try to plant a fake will in the estate she or someone else can “find” which will give her right to the money. But what no one knew was that Thomas was dying, he had a severe case of cancer. Only he and his doctor knew about it. He had invited his friend Jonathan over for dinner to tell him this, but he didn’t have the courage to do it. The crystals caused Thomas’ cancer. Thomas had recently bought these strange crystals from a friend. But neither of them knew that the crystals contains traces of uranium and is dangerously radioactive.

3 Thomas Redding was in deep debt. He had made bad bets with the wrong people and now that he couldn’t pay up they made an example out of him. They kidnapped him during the snowstorm and now they’re keeping him in a industrial warehouse where they occasionally torture him. But not too soon they will end his life unless someone finds him. The crystal clusters were merely works of art made by Thomas using crystal clusters glued together to form strange creatures and is a hobby that Thomas had taken up recently.

© Björn Hanson

Butter knife

As you walk into Mary Heff’s kitchen the first thing you notice is a tub of butter placed in the middle of the counter.

As you step closer you notice a rusty old butterknife sticking precariously out of the tub of butter.

You pull back the slippery lid and see a pool of blood slithering on top of what little butter remained, and there in the blood sits a human heart, still pumping...

Possibilities

1 Mary Heff was killed by her husband, a surgeon, because he loved another woman. He sliced out her heart with a rusty butter knife, and put it in the tub of butter. Whoever sees the heart will have a horrible love life.

2 While scooping through the tub of butter, poor, depressed Mr. Heff ‘lost his heart’. He cut away the only artery that attached him to it. Then he kept it in the tub and put it in the freezer. He decided to take it out and give his heart to a lady who he loved more than his wife. But Mrs. Heff saw it and she shot him in his head.

3 Mrs. Heff loved another man. She found that this man was in love with a much finer lady than herself. In anger Mrs. Heff cut off, and stole the heart of the young man, and kept it with her in a cool butter tub. Now the man can`t love anybody else, other than her.

© Sakuni Egodawatte

Bloody Mary

The investigation begins when a number of teenage girls are found to have been horribly murdered during a sleepover. Their bodies are found in a circle on the floor, around an old, circular mirror. Only one survived, and she has gone insane, endlessly repeating the words ‘Bloody Mary’.

Possibilities

1     The mirror is enchanted, and forms a gate to a distant world. It was enchanted by the distant ancestor of one of the girls and has remained in their family ever since. The weird visions occasionally glimpsed through it have given it a reputation for being haunted. When the girls performed the famous ‘Bloody Mary’ ritual game at the sleepover using the mirror, it attracted the attention of one of the planet’s inhabitants, who burst through and killed them, and has now taken a liking to Earth and developed a taste for its inhabitants...

2     The girls were performing a ritual from an internet site to contact a ‘spirit’. Unfortunately, this spirit was Nyarlathotep and when he appeared in the mirror several of the girls went insane and killed their friends and each other with kitchen knives.

3     The murders were committed by a psychopath who later strikes again, in each case recreating a well known urban legend with his killing. But witnesses descriptions suggest that a different man commits each crime, and this suggests paranormal involvement.

© 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

Bad Dog

There hasn’t ever been a problem with strays in the neighbourhood, until about three weeks ago. A huge, black dog has been seen and has caused all kinds of mischief. Bins have been overturned, cars have been chased and the local children routinely terrified when something sleek and threatening bursts through the undergrowth, teeth barred. Cats refuse to go outside. Nobody’s really gotten a good look at the dog, so its breed hasn’t been identified. Nor has any owner.

Things change when a man is found dead in an abandoned house, savaged and ripped to shreds. The victim is identified as homeless man Ken Charles, and for a time the police comb the area hoping to catch the dog, but have no luck. The predator remains at large and the sound of howling echoes through alleyways, to the terror of man and beast alike.

Possibilities

1 The dog is normal in body, but not in mind. It contains the spirit of a murder who vowed to survive death and return to have vengeance on those who condemned him. The murderer, Wilbert Johns, was a homeless man who shared an abandoned house with Ken Charles and another man, Tom Warburton. Johns murdered Warburton as part of an occult ritual but didn’t realise he was being observed by Charles, who went to the police. Johns died fighting with the officers sent to arrest him, but not before he had put certain plans in place for his survival. He viciously killed Charles by trapping him in the house they’d squatted in, displaying intelligence highly uncharacteristic of a normal dog. The only problem for Johns is that he has to share his mind, that of a coldly psychological killer, with that of a dog, sometimes causing him to act out animal impulses.

2 The dog is a creature of a magical nature (demon, faerie or ghost, etc…) that was attracted to the neighbourhood by the magical energy radiating from the abandoned house which had a powerful artefact hidden away within it. Charles was killed when he disturbed the dog while it was searching the house. The dog isn’t really a large problem, but the artefact is going to start attracting things that are smarter and more dangerous in the hopes of claiming its power.

3 Ken Charles was not a simple derelict, but in fact a disgraced professor who had been researching the possibilities of time travel, requiring isolation to perfect his research. In a secret room in the basement he designed a machine that could facilitate the opening of a portal to the past, but to his misfortune it let through a prehistoric wolf that gravely injured him and ran off into the streets. Charles was able to drag himself into the basement and seal off the time machine room, but didn’t manage to close it off before he died.

© Paul Hebron