The Reservoir (Spooky Spots #2)

March 16th, 1938 was a dark day for Haidale County, MA. On that day the township of Sefield was accidentally submerged under over 30 feet of water as a dike for a nearby reservoir completely failed. The small valley where Sefield was located flooded, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives and the complete decimation of the entire town. While the dike was repaired, the resulting lake was not drained - leaving the flooded town in a relative state of preservation underneath the surface. The tops of dead trees that have not succumbed to the water jut from the surface of the water and, depending on the water level, occasionally the rotted spire from the church tower can be seen.

Today, the area around the lake is fenced off and the larger area is part of a national forest, administered by the US Forestry Service. A small monument with a plaque commemorates the tragedy that occurred, and there is a small museum - really little more than a cabin - that contains a few historical artifacts and exhibits. It's maintained by one of the flood's survivors, a spry 80-year old named Helen.

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Inside the fence, numerous warning signs dot the area to warn off people from entering the water. The remaining submerged structures, murky water, and fluctuating water depth makes the lake dangerous when boating and swimming. Still, the lake is a magnet for teenagers, the curious and occasionally criminals. Thrillseekers love to dive down to get mementos from the town below, or just boat out over the decayed buildings and streets. Only one death on the lake has been confirmed - a college student who became trapped while diving - but multiple unsolved disappearances are suspected to have happened on the lake. Very few agencies are willing to venture into the water to try to solve the cases. The Forestry Service doesn't have the manpower or the inclination to police the area too vigilantly. They have an informal agreement where when they do find interlopers on the lake, they just call the local Sheriff. Typically the Sheriff just drops the trespassers off at their car or (in the case of minors) their home, letting them off with a warning.

Venturing on to the lake at night is even more treacherous for obvious reasons. Beyond those, local legends say that on some nights the town underneath the surface appears as it did before the tragedy struck. Streetlights illuminate and ghostly figures can be seen walking the streets. The legend has built up over countless campfires, adding on elements such as waterlogged corpses wandering up on to the shore. A very common warning is to never enter the water at night, or else the spirits of the townspeople will drag the interloper down to be drowned. Some claim that even sticking their fingers or hand in the water at night can trigger a strong pulling sensation. Helen is also rumored to be at lake at night on occasion (usually during a full or new moon), leading to rumors that she is a witch or even a ghost herself.

At least one local historian, Ray Carman, disputes the claim that the dike which flooded Sefield failed. A professor at a local college, he points to evidence of a scandal surrounding Ingram Leighton, a local council person. Carman believes that the flooding was engineered to cover up...something. The descendants of the council person's family - one of the most prominent in Bellbrook, the town that was founded shortly after the accident - dismiss his account as muck raking, pointing to their ancestor's establishment of a trust for the survivors and a campaign to drain the lake and recover the remains of the deceased that continued until he passed away. On the subject of the scandal, Leighton, and what might actually be going on on the lake, only one person might be able to clear up the mystery - Helen - and she isn't talking.

North Hall (Spooky Entry #1)

Last week I touched on the types of places that I felt made good creepy locations for RPGs, so now I'll continue with an example. I already kind of tipped my hand with this one in the previous post, so I'm going to see what I can do to add a twist to it.

North Hall is one of the oldest buildings at the High School. It's a two story building with a basement, consisting of classes and offices on the first floor and more classrooms on the upper floor. It is representative of the late 1800s and early 1900s architecture that comprises the older parts of town - solidly constructed of stone, aesthetically pleasing but still functional. Along with the auditorium, library and science building, it is a defining edifice for the school. It has had a few minor renovations but still retains a lot of vintage elements - radiators in the classrooms for heating, hardwood floors, door locks with keyholes, etc.

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The basement is used for records storage and consists of a short hallway with two rooms. The larger of the two rooms contains jumbled stacks of old school desks. A door - welded closed - is located at the far end of the room, behind the desks. Officially, the door leads to a section of the basement that was used during World War II by the Army, who maintained a training garrison on campus (which, at the time, was actually a college). The area is considered off-limits due to structural concerns. It's thought by many, and backed up by historical records, that the area is a much larger sub-basement connecting to other buildings on the campus. It's known that there are also sub-basement entrances in the library and science building.

North Hall has more than its share of unusual occurrences - odd sounds, electrical malfunctions, random air currents, etc. All pretty standard fare for an older building. Students over the years built up quite a bit of lore around the happenings within the building and the school in general. Beyond typical stories about the ghosts of students that have died on the campus, there are a number of legends regarding the door in the North Hall basement. The most persistent are students who claim to have heard knocking, banging or rattling coming from the other side of the door - one story goes that if you knock on the door, something on the other side will knock back. Another is that the door was welded shut after a group of students were found in a state of catatonia just inside the door.

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Exactly what is behind the door depends on the nature of the campaign. In conspiracy-oriented campaigns, the rooms behind the door might hold information needed to solve some other mystery. Older faculty or staff may be aware of the content of the rooms, or might possibly even be actively trying to keep it a secret. In a horror game, the rooms beyond might harbor some supernatural threat - spirits, a demon, vampires, whatever works best for the campaign. In survival-horror game, the PCs might even be trapped or held captive within the sub-basement - possibly by whoever originally built it.

A connection to the Army presence on the campus holds quite a few possibilities. There had to be a good reason that they would set up some kind of operation underneath the campus, and using the school as a training garrison is questionable (and probably full of a number of holes). Perhaps it's tied to the location of the school, and what was underneath was already there. The Army operation was to unearth or otherwise utilize whatever could be found underground. It may have been a simple retrieval operation, and whatever is left only holds clues. Experimentation might have gone on as well, and depending on who or what the subjects were, they might still be around.

October Blog Carnival Post: Spooky Spots

The October RPG Blog Carnival topic is spooky spots. I think I'm going to do several of these.

Growing up in the Inland Empire (aka The Valley of the Dirt People aka The 909), there were plenty of spooky spots. Old buildings, in particular, are some of the creepiest. On top of having history, they tend to have architectural features that more modern Southern California buildings don't - basements, boilers, cellars, tunnels, sealed off rooms, etc. Remodeling and renovations can lead to anomalies in a building that makes you wonder, "Why is that there? Where does it go?". Out of those older buildings, high schools are prime real estate for creepy goings on. This is usually because there are a lot of hormone-riddled, over-imaginative kids filling them who like to make shit up. Rumors and stories get started by the upperclassmen to freak out the freshman, and coupled with a dash of truth, these places can be very creepy indeed.

The original Chaffey College building has creepy written all over it

Chaffey High School in Ontario, California is very definitely one of those places that can be very creepy. There's a huge, well-outfitted auditorium complete with trap doors under the stage and a sub-basement with prop rooms, and a building with a clock tower that was permanently closed off. Up until relatively recently, a boiler room sat in the middle of the campus - the remains of the mechanical plant - which means there have to be steam tunnels running to the older buildings. Rumors persist of a bomb shelter underneath the campus - for sure, there are basements in at least two of the buildings. Some doors in those basements are locked or welded shut. When I was going to school some friends and I tried to find ways to get into the tunnels, including being in buildings at night (the statute of limitations is seven years, right?). Renovation of one of the buildings unearthed rooms dating from World War 2 that contained cots, rations, medical supplies and even an indoor shooting range . The high school had an aeronautics department starting in the 1930s, and I've seen pictures of army bivouacs on campus and remember reading the Army Air Corps trained mechanics there (but oddly can't find any confirmation of this). The Army presence on campus isn't too far-fetched though, because Chino Airport - only a few miles away from Chaffey - trained pilots during the war. This place is totally Mazes and Monsters-ville.

So, over the next few weeks I'll use rampant conjecture and a few facts to spruce up a few roleplaying locations inspired by my own experiences. I might even try out some of the cool mapping tutorials I've seen lately to provide some visual aids.