Ah, dear, sweet Wraithford. A quaint little harbor town perched upon the gray New England coast. Stroll through the fog along weathered docks and rotted pilings. Tour the magnificent railway station, a symbol of the region’s growth and prosperity. Gaze upon the tall black spire on the hill, which no one built and no one can reach. Peer into the vast chasm swallowing the road, or visit the historic downtown district for a day of shopping.
Wraithford is proud of its history. It is very committed to the idea that nothing important has ever happened here. But secrets have a way of surfacing like drowned bones. We heartily encourage you to pry up each one. And if you are very unlucky, you may find your way below it all, beneath harbor mud and old graves, where something vast and patient still sleeps with one eye open.
In a town with this much charm, you may never want to leave. Wraithford, for its part, will try to ensure you don’t.
So do come stay a while. If you lived here, you’d be home by now.
Join the conversation on Discord:
https://discord.com/invite/nightholme
Fishermen’s Rock
Ever been to Wraithford?
I have. Before I was a Grimrunner, if you can believe it. Back when it was still just a little fishing town instead of… what it’s become.
What are the chances, right? It’s odd, watching the cycles of fate turn my life. But I think Wraithford is just one of those places. Dialed in, somehow. A stronger link to the beyond. I felt it then. Maybe it called me back.
I was doing a segment on small-town legends for some online rag. Not Bloody Mary or sewer gators, I was chasing the kinds of stories you only know if you’re born and buried within the same 10 square miles. Stuff you can’t even find online, the unwritten idiosyncrasies of a town’s character. In my experience, those kinds of myths always hide a vein of truth.
Wraithford had character in spades. The land is old, and haunted to the root. I suppose the town itself is incidental. Whatever cursed that place was there long before its founding.
The locals were tight-lipped, which is how I knew I was onto something. I couldn’t even get the high schoolers to tell me tall tales. The witch trials are a matter of public record, obviously, but Wraithford hadn’t tourist-trapped itself like other notable East Coast burghs. The restraint suggested something buried there. Shame, maybe. Generational and deeply ingrained.
All I had was a deadline and one thin lead. Some kid near the marina mentioned an island offshore where five fishermen vanished back when the town was founded. He said they left something there. He wouldn’t say what.
So the night before I left for Chicago and the stale romance of Resurrection Mary, I rented a little outboard and paid a visit to Fishermen’s Rock.
Rock was right. Not an island, just a dead slab jutting from the sea, peppered with gull droppings and rusted beer cans. I climbed to the far edge to look out to the horizon.
The silence crept up on me. It had been a choppy day, and I’d worn a rain slicker, expecting seaspray and icy wind. But up on the rock, the water looked like black glass. Still and smooth. Ever see an ocean hold its breath?
For a moment, a sickly green reflection lit the surface.
I turned, expecting a patrol boat, some idiot clambering up with a lamp to ruin my fun.
No one was there.
Instead, my beam hit a boulder planted on the shoreward edge of Fishermen’s Rock. Something was carved into it, so deep that four centuries of salt and wind hadn’t eaten them. What the five fishermen left. Two words:
“black lighthouse”
As I read them, the green flash came again from directly ahead, like the boulder was pointing it out across the water. It shone from an impossible inland point, high above Wraithford, above the tallest tree. Had a structure been there, it would have cast its shadow over the whole town.
It flashed once more, on then off. A lighthouse signal from a place no lighthouse stood.
Then it was gone, and all was dark. I stared down at the town for a long time. Ostensibly quaint. Peaceful, even. But the dread that settled over me, standing on that dark rock, was like none I’d ever felt.
I know more now than I did then. I know about the screams from the sanatorium and the figure watching from the woods. I know about the strange death of Wraithford’s founder and the things that happened on his grave. I know a dozen more, enough to fill a book. And of course, I know all about the Black Lighthouse.
History. Legend. The blurred lines between. All the beauty and terror that make up the soul of Wraithford. And I understand now why the locals wouldn’t talk. Fear keeps more secrets than shame ever could.
Come talk with us on on Discord. Share your ideas, give feedback, and connect with other players.
Discord:
https://discord.com/invite/nightholme
Stay vigilant, Grimrunners,
— Studio Ellipsis Team