I will use this thread to document the important clues and information that the investigators have uncovered about the case, so that it can be easily referenced as the game progresses. This thread will be updated regularly as new discoveries are made.

• Jennifer Hargrave was found murdered one week ago in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her remains were reportedly in horrific condition. Miss Hargrave is said to be the fifth victim found in such a condition within the last four weeks.
• Miss Hargrave’s parents do not know why Jennifer traveled to the Lower East Side that evening.
• Violence and disappearances in the Lower East Side are apparently not a new phenomenon. The Hargrave family suspects that incidents related to Jennifer’s death have been going on much longer than the police are aware of, or have admitted.
• Police have indicated that, at this time, they have no credible leads regarding who is responsible for the murders. A theory has circulated that the perpetrator is an escapee from an asylum. However, none of the mental institutions in the area have reported any escapes.
• The New York Pillar-Riposte reported that Miss Hargrave’s body was found just before dawn in an alley off of Clinton Street.
• The lead investigator in Miss Hargrave’s murder is Detective Cameron MacBrady.
• While examining Miss Hargrave’s possessions in her bedroom, Jake Morris discovered an empty glass vial concealed beneath her mattress.
• Sully Quinn indicated that the author of the story that Mrs. Hargrave provided to the group from the Pillar-Riposte was one J. Mondale Crief, one of the paper’s longtime reporters.
• Jake Morris identified the substance that had been within the glass vial as having been cocaine. The container did not point him to any particular seller that he knew of, though it did suggest that it was a container used for sales to high end clients.
• The Hargrave’s butler identified several friends of Jennifer in the photographs that they found in her room. Among them were Charlotte Fisker, her best friend of many years, and Elena Santoro, another friend who currently works at an attorney’s office in Manhattan.
• On the night of her death, Jennifer was reportedly going to meet with Mollie Pratt, a friend she had made while attending classes at City College.
• Anthony Wells had indicated his intention to perform some research on the area where Jennifer’s body was found to determine if there was a history of similar deaths or disappearances.

This message was last edited by the GM at 20:53, Tue 26 Oct 2021.

• Anthony Wells’ research indicates that disappearances have been reported in the Lower East Side on an irregular basis going back into the 1870s. The vanishings all appear to have occurred within a two mile radius of the Stanton Street Cemetery, originally named the Bishop Memorial Cemetery, one of the oldest graveyards in Manhattan.
• The professor’s research coincides with what Jake Morris was able to learn about the murders which preceded Jennifer Hargrave’s death in recent weeks. According to the investigating detective with the New York Police Department, all of the victims were discovered within a two mile radius of the cemetery.
• Sullivan Quinn was able to obtain the names of the other recent victims from his coworkers at the Tribune: Percy Coleman, Faustina Abbatelli, and Kathleen O’Donnell. The fourth victim, an individual who was homeless, has not yet been identified.
• Sully also learned that diligent research on the part of his fellow reporters had failed to identify any mental hospitals in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or Connecticut that had reported any recent escapees. Morris indicated that although the police had put forth the theory about an escaped asylum patient, none actually believed it.
• Jake Morris indicated that in the crime scene photographs he had been allowed to view, Jennifer Hargrave’s body had been entirely dismembered and that it appeared that she had been partially eaten. He stated that the teeth marks were believed to be human, though the teeth themselves appeared to have been sharpened somehow.
• Arthur Flatt reported that the alley where Jennifer Hargrave had been found still showed evidence of sizable blood stains. Flatt also pointed out that there were fresh fissures in the concrete where Miss Hargrave was discovered, likely caused by a very recent impact.
• Arthur also reported speaking to a local youth who indicated that the area adjacent to the Stanton Street Cemetery is generally avoided by neighborhood locals at night as it is poorly lit and considered an easy spot to be victimized by criminals. Sullivan Quinn, a longtime resident of the area concurred that the streets around the cemetery are desolate after dark.
• Arthur further noted that the boy he spoke with, who works shining shoes at a nearby barber shop, indicated that his grandparents recalled some deaths that were similar in nature to the recent murders having occurred many years before.
• Anthony Wells shared two stories that he had discovered during his research published earlier in the year by the New York Pillar-Riposte. One related a story of a pair of Lower East Side residents being frightened by strange sounds coming from the Greenberg Family Crypt, which is located in the Stanton Street Cemetery. The other gave the account of a woman waiting for a train at the Essex Street subway station who alleged that she had encountered a “revenant”. The station is within a two mile radius of the cemetery. Sully noted that the author of both articles, one J. Mondale Crief, does not possess a reputation for careful fact checking or truthfulness among his fellow journalists.
• While photographing the alleyway where Miss Hargrave was discovered, Arthur Flatt noted that he was being closely watched by an individual on the cemetery grounds.

• From their investigative efforts and research, the group determined that the Stanton Street Cemetery, at least by proximity, factored into a number of disappearances over the past several decades, including the recent spate of murders. The investigators elected to pay a visit to the cemetery itself.
• Anthony Wells, possessing fluency in the Spanish language, was able to speak with the graveyard’s groundskeeper, Carlos Cortes. Mr. Cortes apparently recognized the description of the man who Arthur Flatt observed watching him as he photographed the alley where Jennifer Hargrave perished. Mr. Cortes that the man in question worked for the cemetery’s owner and undertaker, Nathaniel Bishop, but did not disclose anything further.
• Mr. Cortes declined to speak further with Professor Wells while at the cemetery, citing a fear of jeopardizing his employment there by not keeping busy. Although Wells ascertained that the groundskeeper’s concerns about his job were genuine, he was also certain that Mr. Cortes was sincerely afraid of Nathaniel Bishop himself.
• Mr. Cortes agreed to speak with Professor Wells again after he had finished his work for the day. During that subsequent conversation, Mr. Cortes indicated that he believed the Stanton Street Cemetery to be haunted, stating that he had heard strange sounds coming from some of the crypts and the mausoleum when working late. Mr. Cortes further reported that he had once seen a figure in a hooded robe prowling through the graveyard late at night. Mr. Cortes indicated that the frightening incidents had been enough to compel him to begin arriving at work early in the morning, so he could complete all of his tasks and depart the cemetery before nightfall.
• Mr. Cortes further stated that he believed Nathaniel Bishop to be a bruja, a sorcerer or witch, though he did not provide further details to indicate why he held this conviction.
• While still at the cemetery, the investigators met with Nathaniel Bishop, posing as employees of a family seeking to find a location for a family crypt.
• Mr. Bishop treated the investigators congenially, clearly well practiced at the salesman’s trade, though both Professor Wells and Arthur Flatt noted that the undertaker demonstrated some odd mannerisms during their conversation, smiling at inappropriate moments, as though amused by private jokes, or even by the investigators themselves. Both men also noted that Mr. Bishop seemed oddly detached from the discussion.
• Mr. Bishop took the investigators on a tour of one of the family crypts at Stanton Street Cemetery, the Tapley Crypt, to show what sort of construction the cemetery could provide. The investigators noted, while inside, that the crypt was clean to the point of appearing sterile and unused. Jake Morris was able to surreptitiously make a wax impression of the key to the crypt before the group departed.
• Arthur Flatt was later able to speak with the barber shop’s shoeshine boy’s grandfather, Gregori Lebedev. Gregori recalled Nathaniel Bishop’s predecessor, William Bishop, as an odd man who always slept late in the day, but who was a competent undertaker. Gregori indicated that at that time, the cemetery was known as the Bishop Memorial Cemetery. He stated that most who resided in the Lower East Side at that time believed that the graveyard was haunted by numerous restless spirits. He also related a story in which, during his youth, he and a group of other boys visited the cemetery late one night on a dare. He stated that the boys saw a stopped figure walking among the tombstones and that they had fled the graveyard in fear. Gregori told Arthur that he had asked that his family not bury him at Stanton Street Cemetery after he passed away.
• After further discussion, the investigators elected to pay a visit to the cemetery after dark, to see if they could locate any evidence that tied the establishment, or its owners and employees, to the disappearances and murders in the surrounding Lower East Side.
• During their after hours survey of the Stanton Street Cemetery, the investigators determined that no one was interred within the Tapley Crypt. All of the marked places of burial within the structure that they examined were empty and apparently unused.
• The investigators were also able to gain entrance to the Greenberg Crypt, which had been identified in anecdotes and newspaper stories as a source of strange, unsettling noises. The burial places that were opened in the Greenberg Crypt were empty of remains, but it appeared as if the bodies had been taken after burial. In each of the internment spaces were found broken fragments of the deceased’s casket, along with shreds of clothing. In one space, a gold wedding ring was discovered.
• Also within the Greenberg Crypt, the investigators discovered a loose marble panel, behind which was a crawl space sized tunnel that had been crudely dug through the earth, having the appearance of a burrow. The strong scent of decay arose from the tunnel and Jake Morris observed that some of the walls bore marks that appeared to be made by claws. The detective saw that the tunnel ultimately descended deep into the earth.
• The investigators gained entrance into the Bishop Mortuary. After looking through the cemetery’s carpentry shop, the group happened upon the garage, where a Rolls Royce and Duesenberg hearse were parked. On a table in the garage, a well perused album was discovered, in which was collected clippings of newspaper articles regarding murders and disappearances of individuals in New York City, primarily in the Lower East Side. The articles dated back to the 1850s.
• Sullivan Quinn visited one of the mortuary’s washrooms and noted that there was dust on all of the appliances, suggesting that it had not been used in some time.
• The investigators subsequently examined the embalming room. While there, Sullivan Quinn discovered a small, hidden closet set in the wall above the drawers which held bodies awaiting the embalming process. Within the closet were a set of glass vials, numbered 1 through 30, each of which contained a blue-gray colored powder. Sully was able to take one of the vials, which bore the number 29.
• Also in the closet were a pair of stainless steel tablets, each etched with a crude inscription:
  
  ”y’ai’ng’ngah
  Yog-Sothoth
  h’ee-l’geb
  f’ai throdog
  uaaah”
  
  ”ogthrod ai’f
  geg’l-ee’h
  Yog-Sothoth
  ‘ngah’ng ai’y
  zhro”
  
• Anthony Wells was able to take the two tablets. The professor did not understand the words inscribed on either of them, though they did remind him of an unusual find he had once studied in South America.
• Before the investigators were able to explore the premises further, two of the drawers holding bodies in the embalming room opened, seemingly of their own volition, and the corpses stored within them climbed out, somehow fully animate. The dead men attempted to attack the investigators, but the group was able to escape, fleeing the cemetery grounds.