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Supernatural Modern Mysteries 2017-08-29 01:02:41 Post No. 55112173
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Supernatural Modern Mysteries 2017-08-29 01:02:41 Post No. 55112173
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I'm preparing a campaign that has the players playing as FBI agents in the early thirties. By pure chance, the vast majority of the cases they find themselves involved in have supernatural causes and unbelievable explanations that their bosses higher up the chain of command begrudgingly accept. Eventually, if they live long enough, they'll end up being some of the first members of something dealing with things like the X-files. I'm trying to get the tone to where there isn't ever a point where someone can clearly and comfortably say "Well, it is obviously a monster, and we'll do X Y Z to defeat it". I'd much rather things work like Kolchak, a show where a journalist reports on the strange and ends up solving the problem in a conventionally unreasonable way (you stopped murders by pouring salt in the mouth of a dead body? No way) and ending up having only a story that belongs in the back pages of the paper he works for.
Anyways, if anyone has some scraps of ideas for mysteries these guys could delve into, I'd love to hear them.
I can only recycle Kolchak episodes for so long.
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>>55112173
Literally anything involving clowns is a good place to start.
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>>55112240
Some clowns aren't actually wearing a costume.
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>>55112173
Any Call of Cthulhu scenario
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>>55112173
Cleveland Torso murders plus the headless horseman/brakeman/oiler story. Dismembered spectre hunting for his missing parts; can only be settled by assembling a new body. He only sleeps, waking again when his body rots away.
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>>55113401
The poisoned dress urban legend: woman steals a dress off of a corpse, sells it to a reseller, reseller re-dyes it, sells it to the thief, who dies of embalming fluid poisoning.
You could change it so that the dress is haunted by its designer or a former owner so vain that she can't bear that anyone else should wear her things. However, she also needs a body so that she can enjoy it, so she makes the dress available to suitable girls, inhabits their bodies, and rides them until they're either dead or an empty shell. Then she searches for her next victim. The dress must be stolen and destroyed completely. Any fragment left will eventually repair itself.
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>>55113401
>Cleaveland torso murders
Thanks for reminding me, I'll definitely do something on those.
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>>55113623
Swede Hollow, Minneapolis. Literal slum area settled by immigrants: Swedes, Poles, Italians, and Mexicans. Burned by the city of Minneapolis in '57. Site of A LOT of anti-immigrant violence.
An early Swedish immigrant settled in the hollow (maybe with family, maybe alone. You decide), doing his best to follow the old ways and the new. He dies or is killed (maybe lynched or murdered, maybe in the Civil War, maybe lost to the lake) leaving his tomptenisse alone and un-honored. The nisse goes crazy over the lack of respect, as they do, and does his best to make Swede Hollow a hell on earth. I don't think nisse can be killed, but they can be averted/held at bay with cold iron. Maybe he's also looking for a master, whether they want it or not. Whatever your protagonists do, it won't be permanent. Remember, the hollow was razed in the fifties.
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Albert Fish, aka the Werewolf of Wysteria, aka the Brooklyn Vampire, aka the Grey Man, aka the Boogeyman.
he's basically a real-life Stephen King baddie.
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>>55114035
Minneapolis was also a serious hotbed of organized crime at this time, often literally owning the mayor/town council. Pretty much every mobster and gunman passed through at one point, from Dillinger to the Barker boys to Babyface Nelson.
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>>55114069
I know him well.
>>55114035
Pretty neat idea for a bit of folklore I never knew about. Thanks for sharing.
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>>55114075
Even Al himself spent a good amount of in Minneapolis.
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>>55114075
The Coast Fiend
http://malefactorsregister.com/wp/the-coast-fiend/
A series of murders targeting women between '31 and '37. They don't bear much commonality, but police at the time considered them the work of the same killer. This was also a time of heavy interest in demonology and the occult, with several cults or lodges active in the Bay Area (irl they were mostly thelemaic, Golden Dawn, or Thule Society-esque in nature; not really all that spooky, but whatever); also, American Nazis built a stronghold for Hitler to inhabit after his victory over America not too far away. There's all kinds of stuff you can do with that.
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>>55114341
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_Ranch
Aforementioned Nazi compound.
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>>55114361
Joe "The Alligator Man" Ball
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ball
Bootlegger who allegedly murdered an assload of women and fed them to his pet alligators. Killed himself before he could be arrested.
Parlangua: Louisiana half man, half gator cryptid. Maybe Joe Ball made a deal with the devil? Or was a monster himself?
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>>55112173
The MIB original comics, Alexia's Daemons (especially issue 6 since it's about a witch investigating about a mystery that isn't supernatural in the end)
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>>55112173
You could work hobos, hobo-signs and hobo-lore into the setting. Maybe they're not traveling the railways for the reasons everyone expects.
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