The Seance

The character’s great aunt Frieda is a devotee of Mrs Beddowes, a self-proclaimed mystic. Frieda’s daughter, Charlotte, is certain that Mrs Beddowes is a fraud, and she wants the investigators to help her prove this. Mrs Beddowes regularly holds seances for her clients, and charges a hefty fee for the privilege. Investigators who attend one of these seances experience nothing beyond the stock devices of the psychic con-artist. Music, odd knockings and noises, but nothing extraordinary. However, half-way through the seance, Mrs Beddowes drops dead.

Possibilities

1 Mrs Beddowes died of natural causes. Bad timing, but nothing more.

2 Mrs Beddowes was killed by a disappointed client. The client attended the same seance as the investigators. However, the client was more experienced in Mythos magic than Mrs. Beddowes, and when the client realised that Mrs Beddowes was a fraud he killed her with spells. The client thinks that he is a psychic phenomenon, and is desperate to find another psychic like himself. He had hoped that Mrs Beddowes was one. The client will keep looking, and keep killing any frauds that he finds.

3 Mrs Beddowes was never alive. The corpse is the host of a vampiric spirit entity who has several host bodies scattered about the city. The vampire entity activates whatever body it pleases, and keeps the others in cold storage until required. However, the vampire entity has a mortal enemy, and this Van Helsing-type found one of the vampire’s bodies and destroyed it. The shock to the entity was such that it lost control of the Beddowes-body for a few minutes. The Beddowes-body will get up again, confounding any investigators who pronounced Mrs Beddowes dead. The vampire entity wants revenge on its tormentor, and it will also want to kill any investigators who have discovered its secret.

© Adam Gauntlett

Power Trip

The investigators visit the house a leading member (and medium) of an organisation of psychics and mediums near Arkham. When they arrive they find that the house is surrounded by dead birds, insects and other animal corpses - in fact, every sentient creature in a radius of about one mile has died from massive internal trauma.

The door is unlocked, and the body of the butler lies in the hall. The medium lies in their drawing room, behind a camera set up on a tripod. All the furniture in this room is smashed, as if dropped from a height. The camera film, when developed, shows a strange man apparently levitating all the furniture in the room up to the ceiling. There is no sign of the man at the scene.

Soon afterwards, the investigators hear of a train crash in Arkham. Everyone on the train has died horribly in a similar manner - except one survivor, the mystery man from the photograph.

Possibilities

1 The mystery man is human, and a powerful psychic. However, his mind is vulnerable to a mental entity that is trying to take him over. He contacted the medium in an attempt to get help, since she is an expert in psychic phenomena. While he demonstrated his powers by levitating her furniture, the creature broke through and unleashed a lethal mental attack that killed everything around the house. He believes that the entity will unleash an even more terrible attack on his death, and he is trying to reach the coast so that he can steal a boat and take it far enough from civilisation before he commits suicide. However, his powers are desired by the US government, who have sent agents to kidnap him from Arkham.

2 The man is actually an alien being who feeds on mental energy. His levitation demonstration was a side effect of the huge energy flow while he drank the souls from the surrounding life forms. He must be stopped - and others of his species are trying to do just that. He is regarded as highly dangerous on his home planet and others of his species have come to take him home. He has gone into hiding in Arkham, and must be found before he needs to feed again.

3 The man is a tulpa - a projected body, which the medium had created from mental energy. His power is enormous, but the ritual required to animate him drained life from the surroundings, pouring it into the new body. The levitation was simply a side effect of this energy flow. The tulpa is now trying to create others of his kind, using the energy of entire trainloads of humans. If he is able to do this again, it will be the end for Arkham - and now, after the train incident, there is more than one of his kind...

© James David Beard

Little Death

Prayers are said, vigilance kept, but still it is not enough. Still they die. Some body is mutilating children. Naked, nails through both feet and one hand, heavily mutilated and wildly contorted, at least one tiny corpse is discovered per week. It is a terrible way to die, and the police are doing their utmost to catch the perpetrator. So far they have had no luck.

Possibilities

1 The children are murdered by a gaunt, white haired man. They are found in cheap hotels and derelict buildings, and enough eye-witnesses have appeared to give the police an accurate picture of the killer. However, they have yet to apprehend him, he seems to be able to stay one step ahead of them.

The man is a fortune-teller, selling his services to the highest bidder - often the underworld. He kidnaps the children, drugs and nails them to the floor. The child then dances a self-mutilating dance, and in it the man can see the future. His clients pay well for the service, which is unerringly accurate, and are able to line up further clients. Within the dance, the man can see his adversaries (including the police), and where they are due to strike next. Thus forewarned, he is able to flee.

2 The children were Dreamers, sacrificed in their sleep by a cult in Dylath-Leen. They are found dead in their bedrooms with no sign of a break-in, having mutilated themselves. The police have no leads at all, and there is nothing obvious to link the children.

The investigating authorities will soon discover that the killings are worldwide. The cult is making sacrifices at a rate estimated at one a night.

The sacrifices continue until the cult is somehow disbanded.

3 The police know the killings are ritual, but have yet to identify it. All the children have been dark haired and brown skinned, and the police have narrowed their search to the cults of ancient Polynesia.

The killings are the work of one man, the sole survivor of an expedition to an unchartered Polynesian island - home to a blasphemous temple, an ancient cult, and unimaginable horror. He stayed far too long, the experience emptying his mind of any lasting reason and sanity. In their place insatiable red demons took up residence.

He returned to civilization some months ago, barely able to function in society. He kills regularly in a vain effort to satisfy the bottomless hunger within his skull.

© Steve Hatherley

Cassandra

A psychic research institute is currently investigating a local phenomenon. After a near death experience, Cassandra Wilson, an art student who talks in her sleep, seems to be able to predict the future. However, none of her predictions are remotely happy, and most have to do with people she knows dying. Needless to say, this knowledge is not pleasant, and has resulted in Cassandra seeking psychiatric help. Her psychiatrist, Alexander Marcus, is a firm believer in her psychic abilities, which doesn’t really help her all that much.

Lately, Cassandra has predicted several events of disaster proportions, and she doesn’t know what to do or how to alter the future.

Possibilities

1 Cassandra is not psychic. She is merely a young woman who tends to have nightmares and talk in her sleep. However, Dr. Marcus is profoundly disturbed himself, and the strength of his beliefs in the paranormal will not allow him to consider the possibility that Cassandra is normal. Therefore, he has been making her “predictions” come true.

Investigation will show that every single event that Cassandra has successfully predicted can be accomplished by one person, and that only the predictions that Dr. Marcus have heard come true. He is currently planning a way to make the first of her disaster predictions come true. He will not look favourably on anyone who tries to prevent it or anyone who seems like that might be trying to prove that Cassandra isn’t the real deal. He is also extremely violent when angry.

2 Cassandra is a precognitive. She was always a latent psychic, but almost being killed made her abilities active. If she ever comes to terms with this, her predictions would prove most helpful. It is possible to alter the futures she sees, but it will be difficult and complicated.

3 Cassandra is the subject of a Yithian’s experiment. The Yithian found a way to fragment a human’s consciousness across the time stream. It transposed parts of Cassandra’s consciousness from the future and the present. The nightmares that she has are the memories of her future-self surfacing in her sleep.

As time goes on, it will be noticed that in addition to her visions of the future, she has periods when she can’t remember anything that happened recently. If left alone, the Yithian will eventually become bored with the experiment and abandon it. Cassandra’s precognitive abilities will then start to fade as time catches up to her.

© Megan McKnight