The Convention

The annual International Mystical and Paranormal Society Convention is to be held soon. This year the special guest is Dr Janos Voerlocke, a well-known and often-maligned occult scholar, who has not failed to please convention audiences in the past. Dr Voerlocke claims that he has discovered something that will change the world and intends to reveal his secret at the convention. 

Possibilities

1 Dr Voerlocke reveals a strange black polygonal-shaped object about the size of a human head. He explains that he found the object sealed in a block of lead covered with dire warnings in hieroglyphs while in Egypt. After he melted the lead, he discovered the block contained the artifact in question. The artifact is not just a piece of carved black rock, but a prison for a demon. At this point, Voerlocke pushes the polygon open and a Hound of Tindalos screams forth. The Hound is in a foul temper and eager to take revenge on those who imprisoned it.

2 Voerlocke has captured a deep one, whom he summoned with a spell from the Ponape Scripture. The deep one is covered and croaking loudly as the cage is wheeled onto the stage. Voelocke makes a short speech and pulls the sheet off. Moments later, five men rush the stage, brandishing guns. The men are deep ones who haven't fully changed and are here to rescue their kin.

3 Dr Voerlocke has run up large debts to some shady characters - and they have persuaded him to act as a decoy to pay off some of the debt. After a long speech, Voerlocke reveals what he claims to be a unicorn skull. The skull is merely a doctored horse skull - a fact obvious to anyone studying it for more than a moment. While the long speech was going on, Voerlocke's shady compatriots were robbing the guests' rooms, holding up the hotel manager and clearing out the safe.

© Kevin Kaier

The Competition

Mr. Henry Paget Lowe has been arrested on a charge of sequestration of person and, maybe, of murder. The victim is Roger Curtney and, the last time that someone saw him, he was entering Mr. Lowe’s office.

Roger Curtney answered an advertisement published in national newspapers in which, the society led by Mr. Lowe, invited “American dreamers to write a short fantastic story”. The prize of the competition was a trip to a fantastic “Dream Land”. Entry was free.

Roger Curtney, among 6000 candidates, was elected “the best American dreamer.” The newspapers reported a lot about him and about the competition, until they discovered Mr. Curtney didn’t return from his trip. “The trip hasn’t finished, he will be back when he wants to be back.” said Mr. Lowe when he was arrested.

Possibilities

1 Mr. Lowe knows the way to go to the Dreamlands and he has led Mr. Curtney to the Cavern of Flame.

2 Mr. Lowe is a kidnapper. He wants one million dollars from Curtney’s father.

3 Mr. Lowe doesn’t exist. Behind all of this is the FBI chief, Edgar Hoover, who wants to detect American subversives and communists. Curtney wrote a story entitled “Red days”. Including Mr Lowe, the FBI arrested 756 people.

© Simone Bartesaghi

The Children's Room

It is a dark and stormy night. The investigators are lost - they have been travelling and the storm has blown away the road signs. Eventually, they arrive in a backwater town where the church and other buildings are in ruins. “Destroyed by a storm last year which killed Reverend Maynard, and Pauline’s daughter Sarah,” they are told, and are warned repeatedly about going back on the road since “the weather can be very ugly in these parts.”

Instead, the investigators are directed to a retired widower named James Barbarow for lodging; he has three beds in a building he built separately from the main house. Mr Barbarow shows them the place, which consists of a single large bedroom and a bathroom, readily explaining that this was for his children, now gone. Mr Barbarow implies that they are deceased; if pressed, he says only that they died in their sleep.

The place is run down, although attentive investigators will notice a fire extinguisher. There’s no electricity, and the lock is broken; James offers to lend them a lamp and put a padlock on the outside door to keep out animals or prowlers. The last casual remark he makes as he closes the door and leaves them for bed is, “Sleep well—I just hope nothing happens to you in the middle of the night.”

Possibilities

1 The most worrisome investigator can’t sleep—he or she hears scratching outside. It’s just a racoon or other animal; nothing dangerous happens that night, and the next morning Mr Barbarow won’t recall having made any ominous remarks.

2 The house is built on the edge of an ancient Indian worship site to Cthuga (the church was built at the centre of the site). Just before midnight, the investigator awakens having just dreamt of a door opening in the corner, spilling lights and voices into the room. At midnight, this door opens for real, releasing fire vampires into the room! The next morning, Mr Barbarow admits that whenever the moon is as it is now, he has a disturbing dream, but is always too frightened to investigate--his children died in that place from horrible burns, though the walls were untouched.

3 The village is being destroyed by ghouls. They have ransacked the church graveyard and torn down the church, killing Reverend Maynard when he interceded. The girl, Sarah, was carried off in the middle of the night some days later. Now, these creatures have struck a bargain with the villagers: in exchange for peace, the humans offer any travelers or new corpses to the ghouls. Mr Barbarow will contact the ghouls about the investigators, show them back to his land, and give them the key to the padlock.

© Mark W Henshaw

The Cardiss Tapes

Shortly after the invention of film reels, land developer Donald Cardiss shot a series of homemade pornographic reels featuring his friends and his own wife. The films were made in Cardiss’ home for distribution among a close-knit circle of ‘cinema enthusiasts’, in semi-open defiance of the authorities while he was awaiting trial on an obscenity charge.

The contents wouldn’t be considered particularly racy by today’s standards, being spliced together from scenes of unattractive naked people staring at the camera in drink or opium-befuddled complacency or having unenthusiastic sex in twos and threes. The most interesting moment is when one woman who’s sampled too much of Cardiss’ inducements over-balances and slides right off her partner, knocking herself unconscious on a coffee table.

However, anyone who watches the reels and doesn’t get distracted by the bumping and grinding in the foreground will notice that set up behind the participants and carefully framed in every shot are a series of canvas dropcloths crudely painted with erotic symbols and other, less recognisable (and faintly disturbing) marks.

The making of the tapes contributed to Cardiss’ conviction on the obscenity charge, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. During his time behind bars, there were a series of unexplained deaths among his friends who watched the tapes. Cardiss himself seems to have had a change of heart during his time in prison -- upon his release he made a frantic effort to re-acquire and destroy all copies of the reels. However, he died of a heart attack before completing the job, and the Cardiss tapes are still out there.

Possibilities

1 The Cardiss home was situated in an area where another reality is close to intersecting with our own. The frequent use of drink, opium, and other perception-altering chemicals made the household’s members receptive to outside influences. The weird symbols on the backdrops in the reels are concepts and ideas from outside our universe.

The senders are so alien to our way of life that there’s no knowing what their intentions were, but in our world their message, when completely assembled by watching all the tapes, takes on actual physical shape -- it hatches in the form of a worm in the viewer’s brain, which slowly eats the surrounding flesh, driving the victim mad and eventually killing them.

Cardiss felt the worm hatch in his own brain, and spent his time in prison in the horrified knowledge that a parasite was slowly destroying his faculties. The re-acquisition of the tapes was an attempt to find a cure for himself, and stop the malady from spreading, but in the end, there wasn’t enough time left to him. Anyone who watches the complete series of tapes is in danger of suffering the same fate.

2 The symbols in the backdrops are just a distraction. Anyone who studies the tapes carefully will notice that there are occasional frames spliced into the reels which have nothing to do with pornography -- they’re texts copied from a magical tome venerating Y’Golonac and laying out the materials and method of casting spells peculiar to Y’Golonac’s cult.

However, one of the viewers who was a quicker study than the others transcribed the tome and began using its spells to murder his fellow cultists and potential rivals. Cardiss was unable to do anything about this while behind bars, but when released, he tracked down and confronted the killer. Three years without practicing had made his skills rusty enough to lose the fight, though. The other cultist and the remaining tomes-on-tape are still at large.

3 There is nothing unusual about the tapes, the weird symbols are just Cardiss’ idea of good cinema.

When his corrosive influence was removed, his wife Dorothea (who fell pregnant during the shoot) set about reinventing herself. She moved away with her infant son, concocted a fictitious background to protect her reputation, and married well. The destruction of the tapes was a peace offering made by Cardiss in an attempt at reconciliation, and the deaths were just Cardiss’ friends falling victim to their other vices.

However, Dorothea’s family can still be hurt if her past comes out. Their money is in a complicated series of legal trusts set up by a conservative religious ancestor, and the bulk of it will revert to another branch of the family if the line is revealed to include an illegitimate birth. If evidence of the her activities on film is made public, the trust’s executors will strip them of their rights as beneficiaries.

© Chris Kerr

The Cairbh Gorge

The Cairbh Gorge, Ireland, is a deep, steep-sided valley that is impossible to climb out of. It is in a heavily wooded area and is far from civilisation. It is impossible to see the bottom of the valley. Sometimes, travellers hear horrific moans coming from the valley. Many claim the valley is haunted by a ‘bogey’ or evil spirit.

Possibilities

1 Several hundred years ago, a group of druids sought the area for its isolation. They were casting a spell that would give them immortality. At the climax of the ritual, a group of bandits attacked the druids and murdered them. After taking anything of valley, they dumped the corpses in the valley. Because the ritual was not finished, the druid’s spirits are still bound to their bodies in a horrible sort of half-life, screaming out in agony.

2 The IRA is active in the area and has found a novel way of disposing of prisoners. The prisoners are tied up and dropped into the valley, from which they can’t escape.

Anyone passing through will be terrified by the screams from the valley and attribute them to an ‘evil ghost.’ The valley floor contains three decayed corpses and one still living man, screaming into the night.

3 During the Victorian Era, the Irish explorer, Eamon Fitzgibbon, was deeply disturbed by an expedition to Africa. He also had a horrible mouth-like gash along his arm. Returning home, he raved about ‘deathless savages’ and ‘the accursed pits’ before dying. The horror happened at his funeral when Fitzgibbon rose from his coffin and began trying to feast upon the villagers. Not knowing what else to do, and not wanting to damn his soul, they flung him into the valley, from which he could not escape. He is still there today, horribly decayed, but still hungry.

© Paul Hebron

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 Bus Survivor

The investigators are riding in a tour bus. They are having a pleasant time and enjoying the view. Eventually, one of the investigators notices that his neighbour is quite nervous. The investigator asks her what is wrong. His neighbour explains to him that she gets nervous on buses due to an incident a year earlier. She was on a similar trip and noticed that her neighbour was nervous. He told her about a curse that killed everybody on a bus leaving only one survivor who would carry the curse onto another bus which would then cause the death of every passenger except another one and so on. He then told her that he was the only survivor of a bus accident year earlier. The investigator’s neighbour then tells that, by all rights, she shouldn’t have survived when her bus fell off a cliff.

Possibilities

1 The curse is real. The bus the investigators are riding on will soon have an accident which will cause the death of every passenger except one, unless the investigators find a way to stop the curse.

2 The whole story is made up. It is only a joke to scare the investigators.

3 The accidents and death are real. But the story about the curse isn’t true. The woman was the only survivor of the accident but she imagined the curse as a post traumatic experience.

© Nicolas Dao Phan