Background for Ghost Game
What follows is the background information I gave to one player in advance of a Hallowe'en game, in which the players reprise their characters from previous supernatural mystery games. She was then invited to introduce the session. See here for context.
Nadine Mercredi works as Collections Outreach for oral histories and community archives at the Edmonton Valley Historical Society.1 The EVHS is a registered non-profit and charity that collects, preserves, and displays artifacts and archives related to the local history of Edmonton, including in a small museum space near the Edmonton River Valley. Nadine has concerns about a member of the board named Brian Candler, a former city councilor now running to be a Member of Provincial Parliament, who is widely believed to have aspirations for the Premier's office. As a board member, Brian has been pushing hard for certain kinds of events in the museum, ones that celebrate a specific version of local history: white, male, colonial, and patriotic. This is exactly the kind thing Nadine got into the field to oppose. Moreover, it is clear to all the museum's staff that he is trying to use the museum as an organ for his political campaign; he wants to position himself as the heritage candidate. For the most part the Executive Director, Donna Filsinger, has resisted his pressure, but it seems to Nadine that she has started to give in. Specifically, she has let Brian take charge of the upcoming Remembrance Day Memorial, which the museum is hosting for the first time.
Brian's aunt Norma Agar (née Candler) has long been a friend of, and frequent donor to, the Society. She died in early August and three weeks ago her heirs donated many of her possessions to the museum. The collections staff are backlogged and have only just begun to process what is a massive donation. Nadine has seen Brian poking around the collections room ever since the Agar collection came in; although he says it is for the Remembrance Day Memorial, there is no reason for those preparations to take him to the collections space. This Friday she noticed that one of the Agar collection boxes had been disturbed, and she suspects Brian of taking something from his aunt's estate. Curious and concerned, she looked in some of the boxes herself to see what he might be after. One box had been stored separately and she thought he might not have noticed it. And, indeed, it was still partially sealed, so she thinks he did miss it. What she found inside, however, deeply concerned her.
From what she could tell, Norma had had in her attic effects she inherited from her great-uncle William J. Candler, who seems to have been an occultist. In the box she found a varnished and upholstered wooden case containing a notebook, a statuette, a lock of hair bound with ribbon, and a dance card. The statuette looks to be made of silver, is not quite a foot tall, and depicts a woman with a sword and dove. The hair probably came from three people, woven together and bound with a black ribbon. The dance card was printed for a ball in the 1920s, and is empty. A cursory examination of the notebook led her to believe four things: first, that William was influenced by the Spiritualist movement, but dabbled in far darker practices; second, that the objects in the case with the book were part of his collection of occult objects, which he believed possessed supernatural properties; third, that these objects do not represent his entire collection; and fourth, that Brian has likely found some of the other occult objects in his aunt's estate by now.
Nadine broke museum policy and smuggled the case home with her. Her boyfriend Eric is away for a week visiting family, so she has turned for aid to her two friends with whom she has shared experiences with the uncanny: Amber Brubacher and Pansy Hamedani. It is Sunday, October 27th, and her friends have come to her apartment.
This is fictional.↩