Urban Fantasy Fridays: Coven & Crucible (2023)

 I feel a little bad about this one. It has been sitting on my desk to the left of me for a very long time on my TBR pile. I wanted to get a review of it done back when it was new. Then, when the revised edition was out on Kickstarter. Now we are in between editions. This particular edition is no longer available on DriveThruRPG (which is disappointing, to be honest), and the new one isn't up yet. 

It is a good game and perfect if you are like me and want to have a focus on Witches and Witchcraft in your game. But how does it hold up?

Coven & Crucible

Raechel Henderson and Stephan Kelly
2023 13th Moon Games, 196 pages.

The product is from 13th Moon Games and the work of Raechel Henderson and Stephan Kelly. Henderson is behind the story and setting, while Kelly has put together the mechanics. The two saw the game through playtesting in 2022, and it was funded the following year. They are married and their kid does the art. The art is actually pretty good.

A word before we proceed: this review is of the original core rulebook. A second edition, Coven & Crucible: Reforged, was funded in early 2026 and should be in fulfillment soon. That version will preserve the original's collaborative spirit while streamlining the rules. For now, then, this is an examination of where the game started.

The World of Coven & Crucible

What you will find is that magic is not secret. That is the one thing that puts Coven & Crucible apart from most of the urban fantasy/horror games I have been turning over for previous Urban Fantasy Fridays like WitchCraft or Mage. There is no Veil, no Masquerade, no grand secret war to keep the rest of us in the dark. Everyone is aware of witches and what they can do. You can go online and hire one.

The game puts it on a par with martial arts, cooking, or computer programming. You could become a witch if you wanted, but it is a matter of study and discipline. I have to say I am fond of that. It means if there is some magic work to be had, you can just put out a contract to a witch.

That choice ripples through the whole of the setting and changes the tenor of the game. You get your magical businesses and professions, your occult markets and currencies, and organizations with enough history to have built up their share of wealth, grudges, and bureaucracy. The introduction paints a picture of specialists who might be stockbrokers using divination or working at a place like the Magic Beans coffee chain. The latter alone gives you a sense of the tone. It can be a dark affair but not everything supernatural has to be evil.

Chicago

I was drawn to the default setting of Chicago for the obvious reasons. And it feels right. You have old neighborhoods and the new construction all in a pile with the witch politics. This is not one of those settings where "Chicago" is reduced to the Sears Tower and deep dish pizza because someone has seen The Untouchables or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Here, the architecture, the lake, and the weather are part of the fabric of things. The supernatural is layered on top of the mundane rather than in some other dimension, which is how I prefer to run the city in my own games.

There are good details too. Take the Midnight Market, a black market for the magically inclined that runs parallel to the regular flea markets. Or the fact that witches deal in Pentacles; not because paper money is no good, but because in magical commerce discretion has a price. Favors will do as currency in some cases. It is the kind of thing that makes a world feel lived in.

The Coven and the Crucible

As for the name, it is a nod to the two big institutions. The Coven is the international organization with its Houses and internal squabbles. The Crucibles are another matter entirely, an independent network of sorts to offer neutral ground and services. You could describe it as a magical hotel, an embassy and concierge service, a meeting place and sanctuary all in one.

Then there is the matter of the Coven and the Crucibles. The Coven would be only too happy to have control over them, but does not. The two put up with one another for the simple reason that any attempt at absorption would come at too high a price. It is a fine source of tension; neither has to be evil for there to be conflict. People are after influence, organizations want their territory, families are concerned with prestige and witches with their independence. One does not need an ancient Dark Lord to rouse himself from his slumbers to make for a compelling setting.

While the focus of the book is Chicago, other Crucibles are mentioned.

The System

Coven & Crucible makes do with just two d12s, which is enough to put it in my good graces right off the bat. Characters are defined by four Attributes (Will, Body, Agility, Magic) along with nine Skills and sixty-three Sub-skills. Resolving an action is straightforward: add Attribute plus Skill and Sub-skill, factor in modifiers, and a Difficulty set by the Storyteller equals the Target Number. Roll 2d12 to come in under or on this Target Number. So higher skills are still better since they increase the Target Number. A 13 is a special case, resulting in a critical of some sort depending on the circumstances. Since we are talking about 2d12 here, 13 is the most likely result.

The formula has its flexibility, though, and that is where the system becomes more engaging. A Sub-skill may be listed under a certain Skill, but the game is open to the player and Storyteller to put together whatever combination of the three best suits what the character is set on doing. This is of paramount importance when it comes to magic. This makes it more akin to Unisystem than say a d20 based game.

Character creation is a bit more of an undertaking than the core rules might imply. With Attributes starting at 3 and Skills at 4, and a pool of 63 levels to put into Sub-skills or Traits, one has to make no end of decisions. I don’t mind that. The payoff is a degree of specialization. The game is looking for characters who are very capable in their own right, not blank slates that will take twenty sessions to become interesting. They know when they are out of their depth and will call on others.

Though, like many games I am looking at this month, it is easier since I know what I want to end up with and after doing it a couple of times. 

Magic

Unsurprisingly, this is the part of the game I like best. Forget spell lists or slots or even “named spells” in the way most RPGs have them. The witch tells you what she wants to do and the Storyteller works out the formula. Say you want to turn invisible. The book will put forward a number of options: Magic + Magical + Disguise, or perhaps Stealth or Larceny. If it is a case of evading a camera rather than a person, even Security Systems might be called upon.

Two witches can end up with the same result while going about it in entirely different ways. That is how I prefer my witchcraft. The effect may be the same mechanically, but the intent and symbolism should be the character’s own. Faye is not going to ward a house the way Sylvia does, any more than Larina will go about making herself invisible as another would. Larina would bend light around herself; Faye would simply make people not see her. Coven & Crucible handles that nicely.

There are two ways to cast: Improvised for the quick fix in combat, and Ritual for something with more staying power. You will also find alchemy, materia magica, familiars, grimoires, summoning, and all the other accouterments one expects from a game of this sort. Grimoires are of particular note. They are no run-of-the-mill spellbooks but a record of a witch’s research and discoveries. I was reminded of Larina’s Book of Shadows straight away.

The System at Its Best

One could make the case that the magic system is the game’s most compelling mechanical conceit. It delivers on what so many systems promise and then don't: a form of freeform casting that does not forgo structure in the process. There are still numbers to be had, and character specialties matter. Try something hard, and there will be consequences. Yet you are never put in the position of poring over a list to see if you have the right spell for the job. In that way, your characters come across as witches rather than mere assemblages of powers.

Teamwork fits into this nicely. Put a Divination specialist with one who is good at Warding and an investigator of some note, and the system is happy to reward them for acting like a coven of specialists. I would hazard a guess that is by design.

Where It Gets Rough

That very flexibility is a double-edged sword. Some groups will find it wanting when the player and Storyteller have to hash out which combination of abilities is in play. A group inclined to talk through their intentions will be fine with it; others may want to argue over the most advantageous mix for every roll and put a damper on the pace. Magic only magnifies the problem. The absence of a spell list is liberating but it forces the Storyteller to make judgment calls on what can be done and how taxing it should be. I have no trouble with that, though those in need of tightly codified powers might.

Then there is character creation, which is more of an undertaking than the resolution mechanic. With sixty-three Sub-skills and Traits to account for, there are plenty of little numbers to wade through before you start. Once the character is put together, however, things move along much faster.

As for the book, in spots it has the feel of a first core offering from a smaller publisher. The visual design is striking enough with its black-and-white art and sharp color in the chapter pieces, but some of the rules are dense and call for a re-read. It did not deter me from wanting to get behind the table. If anything, it left me curious to see what the designers would put in place after a few years of use, and that is what makes Reforged so interesting.

Building my Characters

I went with a couple of the Jackson teens for this one; the setting suggested another approach. So I put the clock forward (from Jackson, backward for us) to 1990. I have been considering a "sequel game" for some time, and I know it will be set in Chicago in the 1990s.

Sylvia is here because she causes trouble and this is exactly where she would end up after being chased out of Jackson.

In my "Jackson Universe" version of Chicago, I have Larina Nichols and Faye Thorne. They are both twenty. Larina is at the University of Chicago and well on her way to being the scholar she will become. Faye is new to the city, having transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago from the sister school, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Faye is still Faye, but you can see the growth that will cause her to reclaim her birth name, Fiona Voss. She has found her life increasingly tied up in music and the supernatural side of the city’s nightlife. And there is Sylvia, the older witch with experience to spare. Three different witches with three different goals.

Building Larina was almost too simple. Her character sheet says it all:

Will 7
Magic 7

Academics 7
Magical 10

You have your extremely intelligent, strong-willed, and magically potent type, physically unremarkable but with a head for Academics. Add in some solid Occult, Linguistics, History, and the like for Divination or Warding, and you have her. 

Since the poor girl was always getting her ass kicked in physical fights, she is taking a judo class now. She is not very good at it, but at least she won't get knocked down as much. 

Faye is the other side of that. Less concerned with theory, she is more physical and instinctive, a streetwise sort. Athletics, Underworld, Hexing, and Warding are where her strengths lie, as is the nascent Artistic side that will take on greater significance in time. Then there is Sylvia, the Veteran. She puts decades of experience to work alongside her natural talent and shows me what those rules mean in practice. It is a good thing she does; it keeps Larina and Faye from coming across as finished products. They are very good, but Sylvia makes plain how much ground they still have to cover.

What Did I Learn About My Characters?

I have been going round and round with this for some time (with many games), but Coven & Crucible has put it into perspective: a witch is not made by her spell list. Her approach to magic is what defines her. Larina will research and name things, looking for precedent. She needs to know who first did the magic and why, what language or symbols were involved, if anyone put it to paper. Faye goes about it by feel. And Sylvia has done it enough times to tell you which rules are worth following and which can be let slide. The end result may be the same, but the method should not be. Coven & Crucible offers a rules language for that kind of distinction, and one I can put to use elsewhere.

What Can I Use in NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson?

More than one might think. I am not going to bring the whole setting over; the assumptions do not hold up, and my NIGHT SHIFT magic is not so open. But there are ideas I want to make my own.

Take Formula Flexibility. Not the mechanics per se, but the notion that two characters versed in protective magic need not employ it in identical fashion. Or the idea of coven specialization. A coven ought to be like an adventuring party: one for spirits, another for wards or divination, one for combat, one for the old books. It is far more compelling than having five people with the same Witch class.

I already do this, to be honest. Stephanie’s protective magic looks like blue flames. Larnia’s like a mult-sigiled ward, and Faye’s looks like a growth of thorns and brambles. 

The concept of the Crucible is also something I can put to work. I won’t use the institution itself; it is too tied to this setting, but a neutral piece of supernatural turf is excellent for lending a setting instant history and politics. Be it a hotel or a club where factions agree to certain terms, it is useful. As is the magical economy. Favors, obscure ingredients, information, introductions. Occult types have their priorities, and money is not always at the top of them. It is an idea I have toying with in Nightlife as well. Another game set in Chicago.

Final Thoughts

It is no surprise I am fond of Coven & Crucible. It is a game of witches and d12s that gives me a supernatural Chicago and lets me build a character based on what they know rather than a prewritten selection of spells. What I value is its particular view of a witch. Here, magic is not a superpower or a religion. You learn it, study it, improve upon it. In theory, anyone could, but most will not put in the effort. It has a different taste to the mages of Mage or the arcanists of Beyond the Supernatural.

That is what I was after for this year’s Urban Fantasy Fridays. I have no interest in five games that are cut from the same cloth. I want to see how the supernatural exists in our world. Coven & Crucible says it has a job and bills to pay and family troubles and a favorite coffee shop. And it has politics. And before lunch, it might hex someone. That is fine by me.

This does make me want to pick up the new edition of Coven & Crucible when it comes out. Maybe I'll give these characters a run set in 2027 when they are all close to 60. Sylvia will be a lot older than that, but I am not asking her age, and neither should you.

My Jackson Chicago Kids: Larina, Faye, and Sylvia

So I created sheets for many of my witches in Jackson, IL. But since this game is set in Chicago and I already had some ideas about who would be there, I decided to focus on just Larina and Faye. Both are growing in different directions, which is about to cause a rift that won't be addressed until 1995. Vague, I know; it's supposed to be. These are just broad strokes that I'll figure out at the game table. But 1990 is still a few years away from my current year of 1986.  

I threw Sylvia into the mix because I want an NPC who would know things. 

Larina Nichols

Gender: F, Age: 20
Height: 5'4", Weight: 125

Pentacles: 18

WILL 7
BODY 2
AGILITY 3
MAGIC 7

Initiative 10
Speed/Sprint 18/6
Health 17
Magic Resistance 24

Magic Resistance (Tattoo) 3
Linguist 2
Attractive 1

Skills and Sub-Skills

Academics 7
 - Computers +1
 - History +3
 - Linguistics +3
 - Lore +1
 - Psychology +1
 - Theology +1

Magical 10
 - Alchemy +4
 - Divination +2
 - Forging +1
 - Hexing +5
 - Occult +7
 - Summoning +5
 - Warding +6

Strategic 6
 - Awareness +1
 - Tactics +1

Artistic 5
 - Dancing +1
 - Drawing +1
 - Performance (Sing) +1
 - Writing +2

Martial 3 
 - Unarmed (White-belt Judo)

Technical 5
 - Animal Handling +1
 - Survival +2

Athletics 4
 - Sleight of Hand +1
 - Stealth +1

Social 5 
 - Appearance +1
 - Conversation +1
 - Ettiquette +1

Underworld 4
 - Intimidation +2

Faye Thorne
Gender: F, Age: 20
Height: 5'3", Weight: 114

Pentacles: 11

WILL 5
BODY 3
AGILITY 4
MAGIC 6

Initiative 10
Speed/Sprint 30/12
Health 19
Magic Resistance 23

Impulsive 2
Fearless 2
Creative Soul 2
Sneaky 1

Skills and Sub-Skills

Academics 4
 - Lore +2
 - Psychology +1
 - Theology +1

Magical 8
 - Alchemy +2
 - Divination +2
 - Forging +2
 - Hexing +7
 - Occult +4
 - Summoning +3
 - Warding +7

Strategic 4

Artistic 5
 - Drawing +1
 - Performance (singing) +4

Martial 5 
 - Dodge +4

Technical 4
 - First Aid +1
 - Survival +2

Athletics 7
 - Acrobatics +1
 - Endurance +2
 - Sleight of Hand +2
 - Stealth +2

Social 5 
 - Conversation +4
 - Persuasion +3

Underworld 4
 - Deciet +4
 - Force Entry +1
 - Intimidation +2

Stephanie is at UIUC. Vera is still in Jackson. And Renee is back home in Finland.  I have Sylvia's sheet, but I wanted to redo her numbers again. She should be more powerful than the notes I have written. But I like how these two came out. 

Links

• 13th Moon Games
• ... on DriveThruRPG
• ... on BlueSky
• ... on Patreon

October Horror Movie Challenge: A Sorority House Double Feature

Heading into the homestretch here, and I like doing more double features. Just like being at the old 67 Drive-in! For tonight’s double feature I am going back to my college days with a pair of slashers set in sorority houses, namely 1982’s The House on Sorority Row and the 1986's Sorority House Massacre.

They are not subtle films by any means; honestly, they are just excuses to have college girls run around in various stages of undress, but both have ideas I can get behind, especially for my own West End Girls adventure for Jackson.

The House on Sorority Row (1982)

Mark Rosman directs this one, with Kate McNeil as Katey and Eileen Davidson as Vicki, and Janis Ward, Robin Meloy, Harley Jane Kozak, Jodi Draigie, and Ellen Dorsher playing the rest of the sorority. The film opens on seven sisters getting ready for graduation under the thumb of their house mother, the imperious Mrs. Slater. When a mean-spirited prank turns deadly and appears to have killed her, the girls put the body out of sight so the graduation party can go ahead.

Then someone starts killing them off.

What makes it a better-than-average early-eighties slasher is that there is more to it than a killer in a room full of young women. The crisis is of the girls’ own making. They do something terrible, then panic and compound the problem in an effort to cover it up. The murders have some consequence to them instead of being random. In trying to hold onto the secret and the party, they only open themselves up to more trouble. It is a trope I have seen many times, but it works.

There is history to the house as well, which gains in importance over the course of the movie. It is not just the apparent death of Mrs. Slater that is the horror, but the older secret tied to the place and its inhabitants. That is what holds my interest. A sorority house is a location with memory, not just where the characters reside. By the final act, the girls are not being made to pay for a prank so much as having come across a story that was underway long before they got there. Very effective horror.

This movie is also a great example of the Generational Horror that I really want to achieve in Jackson. The sins of the past are not necessarily revisited by the younger generation, but most often it is the younger generation that has to pick up the bill. This one also has that empty college campus I am looking for in West End Girls.

Sorority House Massacre (1986)

Four years on we have another bunch of college women in a house with a past. Beth comes to the sorority following the passing of the aunt who brought her up and at once has nightmares and déjà vu about the building. At the same time, Bobby, a murderer in a mental institution, feels that she is back at the house and gets out.

Beth/Laura is a psych major, but she also has a lot of visions and/or memories. Could be both given the bad psychology in this one. But it's a horror movie and not my PSYCH 212 lecture I used to give. 

He has his reasons. Bobby is Beth's brother. He killed the rest of the family some years back and went after her too. She lived and was raised somewhere else, repressing the memory to the point where she does not know the sorority is her old home. Yeah. We have seen this plot device as well.

Then, of course, all the girls stay the night in the house he killed everyone in.

Carol Frank wrote and directed the film for Roger Corman's New Concorde. Having done The Slumber Party Massacre with Amy Holden Jones, Frank's hand is evident. One can also see Halloween all over it. Bobby is your typical escaped killer coming home to put things right and Beth has her psychic warnings and dreams. I find the psychic side of it the most compelling. Beth has no conscious recollection of Bobby. Her mind does, however. She will have dreams of the murders before she can put any meaning to them. The house is what brings back the memories she has put away, and Bobby in some fashion is aware of her from miles off.

Once more, the building has the memory before the person. In that way, the sorority house is something more than mere scenery. It is almost a character in its own right.

West End Girls

These two films have me thinking about West End Girls right away.

The setting for that one is set during Memorial Day week in 1985 by which time the students at Illinois Beecher and MacAlister Colleges have for the most part vacated their dorms. A nearly deserted campus is what makes it work. The buildings are there, and the few students left are in them, but the college’s ordinary social life has run its course. It is not unlike the sorority houses in the other movies, only you do not need a sorority for it. The women’s dorms turn into isolated communities where all are privy to each other's routines, yet there are not many witnesses on hand should anything come to pass.

Then there is the buried history.

With The House on Sorority Row, the violence is set off when present day students let an old family secret tied to the house get in the way of them. In Sorority House Massacre, Beth goes back to the scene of her family’s murder without really knowing she is doing so.

West End Girls covers the same ground, if on a bigger scale. I still need to detail more of the adventure, but it is based on a rumor that used to float around my hometown. In some ways this is the Ur-Adventure of Jackson.  Some fifty years back, Edwin Harrow killed five freshman women and Clara Deane in an attempt on Marian Ashcroft. The colleges did their part to cover up the truth, putting Edwin down as one of the victims instead of the killer.

In 1985, that kind of violence starts to happen again.

It is the notion I find with these college slashers. From a student’s vantage point, the place is transitory; you live there for a while, get a degree, and leave. The building endures and with it the stories.

The girls in West End Girls are not targeted because they were unwise or went into the wrong house. They have come to a spot where something awful was done and never properly put to rest. There is a difference. They are living in the wrong place and it is up to the player characters to stop it.

Edwin is not just another slasher after college girls. He is what remains of a wound the institutions refused to acknowledge, half a century ago. It lends the piece more of a ghost-story air than your average slasher, even though I want it to start like one.

Again. If I am waxing political in the adventure, well, no one lives in a vacuum. 

The opening death(s) should be of a type we are very familiar with. A young woman by herself in a largely vacant dorm at night. A figure at the end of the hall. A door that ought to have been locked.

After that, the PCs try to find out that the pattern predates them, and the adventure takes a turn. This isn't a slasher movie. This is a ghost story.

For the most part, the girls in these two films are hemmed in by someone else’s secret. With West End Girls, my girls will try to get to the bottom of it and put an end to the role history has for them. That is how they are not like the ones Edwin put to death long ago.

The old tale has five young women dying. But not the West End Girls.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
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Tales of Jackson: Edge of Seventeen

 It might be fairly obvious now, but I am not doing any adventure here in order. Some are playtests; others are fully thought-out ideas...in my head, if not on paper. And some start out as one thing and then become something very, very different at some point.

Such is the case with Larina's birthday on October 25, 1986. 

Aaron and Larina share chips in her VW Bug.

The Edge of Seventeen

"Sometimes the ghost doesn't want to haunt you or scare you. Sometimes it just wants to share a bag of chips or for you to hold your hand before they move on."

One of the things I have been working on for my Jackson, Illinois setting is making sure that not every adventure follows the same formula. Yes, Jackson is a town filled with witches, ghosts, demons, monsters, and all sorts of supernatural trouble. And yes, the teenagers living there seem to have an uncanny ability to find themselves in the middle of it. But not every encounter with the supernatural needs to end in a fight. Not every ghost needs to be busted, every demon defeated, or every mystery solved.

Sometimes the supernatural is simply part of life in Jackson. Sometimes it can even give someone something wonderful, if only for a little while.

That is the idea behind my Season 2 adventure, "Edge of Seventeen."

Honestly, I was always going to do this adventure.

A Birthday Near Halloween

The adventure takes place between October 19 and November 1, 1986, during the 1986–87 school year. Larina Nichols, our resident teenage witch, is about to turn seventeen. Her birthday falls on Saturday, October 25, just six days before Halloween. 

Of course, she is just a stand-in for your characters, but it works well if their birthday is near Halloween.

For most teenagers, having a birthday that close to Halloween might mean a costume party, some scary movies, and plenty of candy. For a witch living in Jackson, Illinois, it means something else entirely.

The Veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is exceptionally thin around Halloween. Spirits can cross over more easily, strange things happen in places that are normally quite ordinary, and the dead sometimes walk among the living.

Naturally, a character would like to have a birthday party without anything supernatural getting involved.

Naturally, that isn't going to happen.

In my game, Larina is a 16-year-old senior at Jackson Public High School who has been advanced academically, and she also attends advanced Greek classes at St. Michael's Catholic School. One afternoon, while eating lunch alone in her purple Volkswagen Beetle, she is approached by a handsome young man wearing a St. Michael's school uniform.

His name is Aaron Michaels. He's seventeen, with blond hair, green eyes, and a friendly smile. He sees Larina sitting alone and asks if she would like some company. Soon they are sitting in her Beetle, sharing a bag of potato chips and talking.  It's a perfectly ordinary meeting between two teenagers.

My players immediately distrusted him, calling him "Witch Bait."

And for Larina, who spends an extraordinary amount of her time dealing with extraordinary things, that's rather nice.

The Boy Who Wasn't There

Aaron and Larina hit it off almost immediately. He's intelligent, funny, thoughtful, and genuinely interested in her. They start spending time together, going on dates, listening to music, and doing all the things teenagers do when they discover they really like each other.

For once, Larina has a boyfriend who isn't intimidated by her intelligence, doesn't expect her to solve some supernatural crisis, and doesn't seem to have any ulterior motives.

So yeah.  Aaron has a secret. Aaron Michaels is dead.

He was the son of Professor Michaels, a chemistry teacher at MacAlister College and attended St. Michael's Catholic School. He died in a chemistry laboratory accident while saving two children who snuck in from exposure to chlorine gas. Aaron wasn't a criminal, a villain, or someone whose death was the consequence of some terrible supernatural bargain. He was a good kid who saw two children in danger and did what he could to save them.

Now, with Jackson's already thin Veil growing thinner as Halloween approaches, Aaron has somehow returned.

And this is where I want the adventure to depart from the usual ghost story.

Aaron isn't trying to haunt anybody. He isn't seeking revenge. He isn't possessing someone or attempting to drain the life out of Larina. For approximately two weeks, he is, for all practical purposes, alive again. He can eat, laugh, feel the autumn cold, hold Larina's hand, and experience the ordinary pleasures of life.

When he's with Larina, he even sometimes forgets that he's dead.

Is that because of Larina's magic? Is it because the Veil is particularly thin? Or is it because the two of them have formed a genuine emotional connection?

I don't know.

More importantly, I don't think I want to know. Some mysteries are better left unanswered.  Besides, all the other characters spend their time trying to figure it out. That is when they are not trying to plan a birthday party.

That is my design hook here. I have split the party. I have one character away (the Birthday girl) and the others planning the party and noticing this new guy who is taking all her time. Which is convenient since they use the distraction to get the party planning done.

Happy Seventeenth Birthday, Larina

Larina doesn't discover Aaron's secret until her seventeenth birthday party on October 25.

By this point, she has been dating him for almost a week and has developed genuine feelings for him. Aaron has become someone important to her, and suddenly she discovers that the boy she's falling for has been dead for years.

Naturally, Larina didn't take the news particularly well.  Though better than I expected.

She is hurt that Aaron kept the truth from her, confused about what is happening, and more than a little frustrated that the first decent boyfriend she's found in a while turns out to be a ghost.

Her friends, of course, have opinions. But here is the important part of the adventure. Larina doesn't reject Aaron because he's a ghost.

After they talk about it, she decides she still wants to be with him. She likes Aaron for who he is, not whether his name appears on a list of the living.

For the next week, they continue dating. Aaron even gets to give Larina a birthday present, a silver pentagram necklace that shows how much he respects her beliefs, despite his Catholic school upbringing.

They spend time together knowing that the approaching end of the Halloween season will separate them.

And that knowledge changes their relationship. They no longer need to pretend that everything is normal, but they also don't need to spend every moment worrying about what comes next.

Sometimes they just want to sit in her car, listen to the radio, and share another bag of chips.

Happy Birthday Larina!

The Ghost Who Doesn't Need Busting

Originally, Aaron wasn't supposed to be the main story of Edge of Seventeen.

My first idea involved a ghost girl who had died before her seventeenth birthday. With Larina's birthday approaching, the girl's spirit would return, threatening to steal the life or future she had been denied. That would provide the supernatural mystery and danger, while Aaron would serve as the romantic B-plot.

It was a perfectly serviceable supernatural horror adventure. There would be a mystery to investigate, a dangerous spirit to confront, and some sort of climax at Larina's birthday party.

But the more I developed Aaron, the more interesting his plot became. The more I had him show up, the more the players wanted to know more about him. 

I found myself spending more time thinking about the boy who had died saving two children than the ghost girl who was supposed to be the antagonist. Aaron didn't have an evil agenda or a sinister secret beyond the fact that he was dead. He was just a good kid who had been given an unexpected opportunity to experience some of the life he had lost.

And Larina was giving him that opportunity without even realizing it.

Eventually, I decided to drop the ghost girl entirely.

Aaron was promoted from the "B plot" to the "main plot", and Edge of Seventeen became a very different adventure.

There is no evil ghost to defeat. No demonic mastermind is manipulating events. No sinister ritual is required to send Aaron back to the grave.

Instead, the adventure is about two teenagers who find each other under impossible circumstances and decide to make the most of the time they have.

That doesn't mean there isn't a mystery. The characters can investigate Aaron's death, explore the circumstances of his return, and try to understand what happens when Halloween ends. There are opportunities for the other characters to become involved, particularly when Larina learns the truth.

But solving the mystery isn't the point.

The point is just two teens getting to be regular teens for a little bit. It doesn't matter that one is a ghost and the other is a witch. It is the type of adventure you can have in Jackson and nowhere else.  

Everyone Needs a Hand to Hold On To

On November 1, the Veil begins returning to normal, and Aaron can no longer remain in the world of the living.

Larina cannot prevent this. Despite her considerable magical abilities, she cannot simply make Aaron alive again. Nor should she have to. There is no mystery to solve here, but I don't need the players to know that right away.

One of the lessons I want Edge of Seventeen to explore is that magic cannot, and perhaps should not, solve every problem.

Aaron isn't asking Larina to resurrect him (she couldn't anyway). He isn't demanding that she find some way to keep him in Jackson forever. He just wants to spend what time he has with her.

And when that time ends, he wants someone to hold his hand. Neither wants to say goodbye, but they both know they have to.

And then Aaron is gone.

No explosion of supernatural energy. No terrible curse. No triumphant spellcasting.

Just a girl standing alone on an autumn evening, missing a boy she loved for a little while.

I don't plan to bring Aaron back in a future adventure. His story has an ending, and I think it should remain that way. Not every character needs to return, and not every loss needs to be reversed.

Sometimes that is simply how life works.

Aaron says goodbye

What I Want from Edge of Seventeen

I want this adventure to demonstrate something important about Jackson and about the kinds of stories I want to tell with NIGHT SHIFT. 

This likely reads more like a Monsterhearts game than an OSR-adjacent NIGHT SHIFT game, but that is the point. 

Not every supernatural encounter needs to be a combat encounter. Not every ghost is evil. Not every mystery must be solved, and not every adventure needs a villain.

There are plenty of monsters in Jackson. The teenagers will have more than enough opportunities to fight vampires, confront demons, break curses, and save the town from terrible things.

But sometimes the supernatural gives us an opportunity to tell a different kind of story.

A story about kindness, first love, friendship, loss, and growing up.

For Aaron Michaels, the extraordinary event isn't coming back from the dead. It's getting to experience things he thought were gone forever. A first date. A birthday party. A girl who really likes him. The simple pleasure of being seventeen.

For Larina, the adventure is about learning that something doesn't have to last forever to matter, and that loving someone sometimes means accepting that you cannot keep them.

And for the players, I hope it becomes a reminder that the characters in Jackson are teenagers first and supernatural investigators second. Their friendships, romances, heartbreaks, and ordinary lives deserve just as much attention as the monsters lurking beyond the Veil.

Because sometimes the ghost doesn't need to be busted.

Sometimes it just needs someone to share a bag of chips with, and a hand to hold before moving on.

October Movie Challenge: Poltergeist II & III (1986, 1988)

 I wanted to do these two movies back-to-back since they are more connected to each other than they are to the first movie. The original Poltergeist is not just a great horror movie; it is a great movie, full stop. Spielberg shows the promise here that will earn him the accolades he gets with ET and Shindler's list. 

Sadly, Poltergeist directors Brian Gibson (II) and Gary Sherman (III) don't quite live up to the bar Spielberg set, but then again, who can? But if you ignore the first movie and take these two on their own merits...well, they still don't live up, but there is a perfectly serviceable horror movie here.

Niether of these re first time views.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

"They're baaack."

I can't say with 100% certainty that the title of this movie didn't have a roundabout way of influencing the name of this blog. The name of my blog comes from an older website of mine, which in turn came from a newspaper column about weirdness I used to write for my high school newspaper. Though I am pretty sure I started that in 1985. In any case, the movie and the blog both take their name from the same sources.

In another bizarre connection. I guess I connection I used to talk to my dead grandmother on my play telephone too. But in my defense, I was only 2 at the time. 

The Freeling family has moved from their haunted house, now a hole in the ground, to live with Diane's mother. Missing and unexplained is older daughter Dana. The script for the movie has her at college, but that sequence was cut from the final shooting script due to the murder of Dominique Dunne, the actress who had played Dana. I have to admit that bothered me a lot at the time.

A dig at the former site of their home reveals a burial pit under the graveyard already there. Yes, it is an extra graveyard! BUT this becomes the key feature of this and the next film, introducing Rev. Henry Kane (played by Julian Beck), one of the creepiest horror movie villains in a long time. So the movie is redeemed by this alone.

We get a Magical Native American, Taylor (Will Sampson), to help the Freelings against Kane. This would be the last film roles for both Sampson and Beck.

What follows is fairly predictable, but not unenjoyable. This film has an uphill battle afterall. There are some great special effects. The "Worm" stands out, but the "Spielberginess" of the movie is gone.

Poltergeist III (1988)

In some ways, I enjoyed this one more. This movie only has Carlo Anne (a sadly very sick Heather O'Rourke) and Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina Barrons, as in the previous two movies. Henry Kane is back, played by Nathan Davis, with voice-overs by Corey Burton. The setting switches to Chicago, a place I was already in love with, so there was that.

Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are out as the Freeling parents as Carold Anne is sent to live with her aunt Patricia (Nancy Allen) and her new husband, Bruce (Tom Skerritt). I like both Nancy Allen and Tom Skerritt, so I was fine with this, and if the plot contrivance was to send Carol Anne to a special school, well that is fine, though I did have concerns about parents sending their child away after two traumatic experiences.  

We do learn from Tangina that there have been no incidents since the last movie and they only start now because Carol Anne's psychiatrist, Dr. Seaton (Richard Fire) dredges it all up again via hypnosis. 

This movie also features an early outing for Lara Flynn Boyle as Bruce's teenage daughter Donna Gardner. 

This moves the action from haunted houses built over graveyards to the modern John Hancock Center in Chicago. A good example of my "Horror Comes Home" theme. 

The Poltergeist Tragedies

I do at least want to acknowledge the various deaths that took place. Dominique Dunne was just 22 when she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 1982. Her death really bothered me at the time. Later on, both Will Sampson and Julian Beck would die soon after the second movie, and of course the most famous was Heather O'Rourke, age 12, who died in February of 1988 after filming, but before the movie was released in June.

Poltergeist 2015

I wanted to watch the 2015 Poltergeist with Sam Rockwell, but honestly I am a bit tired now. This was a lot easier to do 15 years ago.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

Both NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson, IL can draw on ideas from both Poltergeist II and III, though for different things. And honestly this is why I picked these two for tonight even though I have already seen them both.

With Poltergeist II it is the notion that one can get away from the supernatural and not have escaped it for good. The Freelings in Cuesta Verde have left town to put their lives back together, doing as much as anyone would in their position to leave it all behind. It does not keep Reverend Kane from putting in an appearance. I think of this with Jackson. Put down a haunting, and you are not guaranteed a clean ending. Some things have a memory of those who hurt them, some places hold on to former residents, and a family can be tied to something that will follow them anywhere.

I want room in NIGHT SHIFT for such stories. A bunch of characters can put an end to an artifact or a terrible encounter and go home to finish school and grow up. But come five or ten years, and something happens that makes them realize the experience has left its mark. They thought the matter was settled years ago, but then they have to consider they may never have understood what went on. In Poltergeist II at least, getting out alive and leaving something in your past are not the same.

Poltergeist III is in some respects more interesting to work with. The move to Chicago alters the whole mood. Carol Anne is older and with relatives in a high-rise. The supernatural is to be found in the elevators and mirrors and parking garages rather than another suburban house. That is along the lines of what I have in mind for my Chicago 1992 campaign.

By 1992, the Jackson kids have put some distance between themselves and their former home. They are at college or at work, sharing an apartment, having relationships, and paying bills. They have obligations and have let some of their old friends go. This is significant because in Jackson they had a support system. If something odd happened, there were people around who knew what it was, and even if the adults didn’t believe them, they had each other.

In Chicago, none of that applies. Old friends are hundreds of miles off, and no one at work or in college has any idea what transpired in Jackson. It is hard to tell someone who has never seen anything supernatural why you are afraid of a certain sound or reflection. The characters are more capable, but their support system is gone.

The city also puts the horror in a different light. In Jackson, I see it in the woods or an abandoned house outside of town. Chicago has its share of forgotten spots, but there is something about having the supernatural in the heart of a crowded city. An apartment building can have hundreds of people who don’t know one another. You might hear screaming through the wall and be told to mind your own business. The elevator could stop on a floor where a tenant is not remembered. There is a reflection in an empty hallway. You can be in the company of others all day and find nobody to put stock in what is happening to you.

That is the horror I am after in Chicago 1992.

There is a contrast too between the supernatural and the demands of being an adult. As a teen, a haunting might mean missing school or lying to your parents. At twenty-two, you still have to be at work in the morning, and the landlord wants his rent. Your classes do not stand down because you saw a dead woman in the lift, and your partner may well think you are losing it for not looking in the bathroom mirror. Those pressures put a different spin on the story. The characters have more freedom but also responsibilities they cannot shirk.

And that is how Jackson and Chicago differ. In Jackson, the kids are coming to realize that the world is stranger and more perilous than the adults say. They are young enough to hope an older head has the answers. By the time we get to Chicago 1992, they are the adults. They have to make the calls and make sure everyone is alright when things go sideways. There is no parent or teacher standing by with the solution.

Poltergeist III stays with me for that reason. I have no desire to rework Reverend Kane, the film’s mirror tricks, or Carol Anne’s tale. I want to see what happens when the supernatural tags along from childhood into adulthood.

The Jackson kids have made their way and put down new roots. But the trouble they ran into back home may have done the same.

Now I am in the mood to do a Chicago-based horror movie marathon. I bet there are enough movies. According to IMDb, there are 152 movies tagged "Horror" and "Chicago, Illinois." I might have next year's theme! Though I do want to do psychic movies sometime as well.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 31
First Time Views: 19

Witchcraft Wednesday: Coven 13, Issue #3

We are back with my October exploration of Coven 13. The first issue established Arthur H. Landis' vision of a modern successor to Weird Tales and Unknown Worlds, while the second made his editorial philosophy even clearer. The supernatural should not simply be dropped into a story because the author needs a monster. It should be part of the world around it, with its own history, rules, and consequences.

Now we get to Issue #3, dated January 1970, and are now into the decade that would see the 70's Occult Revival, "The Exorcist" and "The Wicker Man", not to mention "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and Dungeons & Dragons, and all the other material I return to in these pages.

Coven 13, Issue #3, January 1970

The contents page actually labels this "Vol. 1, No. 2," even though the November issue was already #2 and the following March issue is #4. I am going to chalk that up to a simple production error. More importantly, this issue gives us Alan Caillou, Ron Goulart, Robert E. Howard, Dennis Quinn, Pauline Smith, James Benton Carr, and Part Three of James R. Keaveny's "Let There Be Magick!" We also get another installment of Bell, Book and Tarot, two poems by Wade Wellman (son of Manly Wade Wellman), and an essay on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.

Landis' editorial is once again worth reading because he continues to define what he thinks Coven 13 should be. This time he complains about the number of manuscripts arriving that simply recycle vampires, werewolves, pacts with the Devil, and familiar monsters. He isn't rejecting those subjects. What he wants is originality. He again insists that writers should look at the world around them rather than simply copying the "mouldering pages" of earlier writers, pointing specifically to Rosemary's Baby, Bell, Book and Candle, and Psycho as examples of stories that combine the strange with contemporary life.  

The rest of the editorial concerns the less glamorous problem of magazine distribution. Landis explains how printing tens of thousands of copies means little if large numbers never make it onto newsstands, and how long publishers can wait before actually getting paid. His declaration that "COVEN 13 WILL MAKE IT!" reads a little sadly in hindsight. There is only one more issue of Coven 13 in this form before the magazine changes hands and eventually becomes Witchcraft & Sorcery.

It is a supply-and-demand issue we still see today in the RPG publishing industry. 

Let's get to the stories that did make his cut.

The lead novelette is "Leona!" by Alan Caillou, again illustrated by William Stout. Christian Althing has lost his daughter Leona and refuses to accept her death. He has an old magical book, an altar, ritual tools, sacrifices, a cauldron, and a growing belief that he can use all of this to bring her back. His grief gradually consumes every other moral consideration.  

This one gets at something I have been thinking about quite a bit in my own games. Death should matter. Witches can speak with ghosts, summon spirits, learn secrets from the dead, and get into all sorts of trouble with necromancy, but actually restoring the dead to life is another matter entirely. "Leona!" is essentially about what happens when someone refuses to accept that boundary. Christian does not want to understand death. He wants to force death to return something it has taken from him, and the results are appropriately (and predictably) horrific.

In my Advanced Witches & Warlocks book, I specifically keep spells like Raise Dead and Resurrection out of witches' hands. It violates their moral and ethical systems. If a witch gets to the point where she wants to bring someone back from the dead like that, she either needs to get a cleric or be satisfied with necromancy.

We also get two poems, "Song of the Undead" and "Nightmare," by Wade Wellman. An important distinction here is that this is Wade Wellman, the son of Appendix N author Manly Wade Wellman. The poems themselves fit comfortably into Coven 13: graves, undead things, banshees, haunted houses, moonlight, and the dead walking where they shouldn't.    

The latest "Bell, Book and Tarot" by Jean Cirrito turns to the Evil Eye, and this is probably my favorite nonfiction installment so far. We get the Italian mal'occhio, protective gestures, amulets, serpents, horns, crescent moons, horseshoes, rue, animal charms, and other ways people have tried to protect themselves against an envious or dangerous gaze. The piece ranges from classical mythology to European folk practice and customs still familiar to the writer in the twentieth century.

This is exactly the kind of material I want for Sunny Valley. Folk magic works best for me when it consists of small things people have always done: a sprig of rue, a hand gesture, a charm over a doorway, something your grandmother insists you carry even though she also insists she does not believe in such nonsense. That feels much more convincing than everybody knowing elaborate ceremonial magic.

"The Strawhouse Pavilion" by Ron Goulart brings us back to Landis' idea of the contemporary supernatural. A modern couple is being haunted by Wendy's dead father, but he does not simply appear as a transparent ghost. He was a bandleader, so he brings an entire 1940s dance pavilion with him, complete with music, cars, dancers, and the atmosphere of another era. Eventually Wendy realizes that her father has essentially brought back the whole ballroom because merely appearing as a ghost would not have been impressive enough.   

I love this idea! It feels like something that could happen in Jackson without changing the setting at all. A haunting does not have to be a figure walking down a hallway. Maybe an entire building comes back. Maybe music plays from a ballroom demolished thirty years ago. Maybe a street looks exactly as it did in 1947 for ten minutes and then snaps back to normal. That is a much more interesting supernatural event than another chain-rattling ghost.

In fact. Jacksonville has a rather famous band stand/gazebo. It was supposed to have been dismantled and shipped to the Smithsonian Institution. I can't recall if it was or not. BUT I have very distinct memories of it, especially sitting on it and reading "The Best of Dragon vol 2." Also, when the infamous "I attack the Gazebo" rumor was floating around in the early days of the internet, that was the image I had. So thank you, Ron Goulart. Jackson now has a ghost gazebo. 

Next comes the biggest literary name in the issue, Robert E. Howard, with "The Little People." Howard died in 1936, making this a very posthumous publication, and this January 1970 appearance was the story's first publication. The story explicitly invokes Arthur Machen's "The Shining Pyramid" and plays with the idea that stories of elves, trolls, fairies, and other "little people" might preserve distorted memories of an older population driven into caves and remote places by later peoples.     

There is plenty here that has not aged well, particularly Howard's racial and pseudo-anthropological assumptions, and I have no interest in importing those into my games. But there are some very solid ideas as well. What does interest me is the underlying weird-fiction idea that folklore may remember something real without remembering it correctly. That comes close to ideas I have been developing for Jackson and Sunny Valley, where an old legend might describe something genuine while completely misunderstanding what that thing actually was.

That does not make Howard's Little People my Ur-humans, nor do I want to collapse either of them into Faerie or the Sidhe or even the Sr. Wellman's Shonokins. What interests me is the older literary tradition of asking what might exist behind the folklore. Howard also gives us the direct Appendix N connection in this issue. I am still not suggesting that Coven 13 influenced D&D, but once again we can see these literary circles overlapping just a few years before D&D appears. It would have certainly influenced me had I been in Gygax's shoes. In January 1970, at just six months of age, I am not even sure I owned shoes yet. ETA: Asked my mom, I had a little pair I wore in an "Olan Mills" photo portrait. I was a chunky monkey back then, and my little fat fingers weren't well suited for typing.

This issue does solidify the connection to the earlier pulps that Landis loved so much. Securing the first run rights to this tale must have been a wonderful feeling for him. 

There is a reader's letters column that is a fun read. 

The issue also includes Arthur Jean Cox's essay on Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw." Cox digs into the famous question of whether the ghosts are actually present or whether everything is being generated by the governess herself. The essay is valuable less because I need another interpretation of James and more because it demonstrates what Coven 13 wanted to be. This was not simply a magazine printing spooky stories. It wanted readers to think and argue about supernatural fiction as well.

Then we get "Witch Fish" by Dennis Quinn, which may be my favorite story in this issue. Abat is a witch who transforms himself into an enormous brook trout as part of a revenge scheme against the warlock Marag. That is strange enough, but the real fun for me is the background Quinn casually establishes.

The New England countryside has places known by one set of names to ordinary people and another set known only to witches and warlocks. There is a Federation, a Grand Council, magical territories, familiars, regulations on the use of magic, and punishments for breaking those rules. Abat has only recently finished serving a twenty-year ban on practicing witchcraft.      

That immediately gives me ideas for Jackson and West Haven. There is the map everyone sees, and then there is the map witches know. Same roads, same rivers, same cemetery, but with completely different meanings and boundaries. The mundane map tells you where a place is. The witches' map tells you what happened there and why you should not cross a particular boundary after dark.

"Last Rites" by Pauline Smith is another very 1969/1970 occult story. It even comments on witchcraft, necromancy, divination, parapsychology, and "Cosmic Consciousness" entering colleges and universities. From there we get young people experimenting with the Key of Solomon, the Atharva Veda, ritual circles, lunar timing, a photograph, and a cat. Really captures what I feel was going on in the early 1970s.  

One little detail really captures the entire Coven 13 approach. The old magical texts recommend isolated crossroads, forests, caves, abandoned houses, and other secluded places for ritual work. The characters note that in the age of automobiles and subdivisions, finding such places has become increasingly difficult.

Ancient magic has to deal with modern zoning.

That may be the most Coven 13 idea in the entire issue! 

"Don't Open 'til Xmas!" by James Benton Carr takes us into contemporary urban occult horror. Paul Benton is planning to spend Christmas with his younger girlfriend when a mysterious package arrives. He initially thinks it is from her, but it actually comes from his estranged wife Helen, who has recently been to Haiti. Inside is a doll, and Paul eventually realizes that Helen has used magic to transfer him into it.    

Some of the treatment of Haiti as shorthand for sinister magic is very much of its period, but the basic concept fits perfectly with Landis' editorial philosophy. The occult doesn't require a ruined castle. It can arrive by special delivery at a modern apartment. Sometimes the witch just needs your mailing address.

It also fits well with the themes I have been exploring all month of "Horror comes Home."

Finally, we return to Part Three of "Let There Be Magick!" by James R. Keaveny. By now the story has become increasingly recognizable as the sort of fantasy environment an RPG player could enter without much explanation. We have knights, sorcerers, strange animals, magical wards, hostile creatures, reanimated dead, castles, wilderness travel, and a wizard's stronghold.

What continues to interest me is how the protagonist approaches magic. He sees something everyone else accepts as supernatural folklore and immediately starts asking how it actually works. The "dead-alives," for example, are terrifying to the inhabitants of Camelot, but he begins testing assumptions about them, separating what they actually do from what people believe they do. That is exactly the sort of thing players do in an RPG.

Again, this is not evidence that Coven 13 influenced D&D. What it shows is how many of the ingredients were already circulating together before 1974. Sword & Sorcery, Science Fantasy, occultism, weird fiction, ghosts, witches, monsters, magical societies, necromancy, and ancient forgotten peoples were all part of the same imaginative landscape.

Final Thoughts

Of the three issues I have covered so far, I think this one brings the various pieces together the best. We have a warlock trying to defeat death, a ghost who brings an entire ballroom with him, folk protections against the Evil Eye, a hidden society of witches, young people experimenting with grimoires, Robert E. Howard reaching back into the older Weird tradition, and a Science Fantasy serial becoming increasingly recognizable as the sort of world fantasy gamers will soon inhabit.

Coven 13 still doesn't seem particularly concerned about whether something belongs to horror, fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, folk horror, occult fiction, or Science Fantasy. It is all part of the same supernatural landscape. And frankly, that is fine with me. 

In fact, that is probably what I like most about it.

Sadly, only one more issue to go.

October Movie Challenge: Eternal Evil / The Blue Man (1985)

 I would be remiss if I didn't watch some more psychic-phenomena movies. And Eternal Evil, aka The Blue Man, lets me dip into some Astral Projection and Reincarnation. I just wish it had been a little better. 

Eternal Evil / The Blue Man (1985)

Paul Sharpe is a successful director of television commercials living in Montreal with his wife and son. He has a nice house, a good job, and what appears to be a comfortable life. He is also deeply dissatisfied with all of it. He is married and has a kid.

Paul becomes involved with a mysterious woman named Janus, played by Karen Black, who teaches him how to leave his body through astral projection. At first, the experience seems liberating. Paul can travel outside himself, move invisibly through the world, and escape the ordinary life he finds so frustrating.

Then people around him begin dying.

There is a lot happening here, and it looks like Paul is doing the killing, but instead, it is our psychic vampires who are preying on others to take over their bodies. 

I like some of these ideas, and Karen Black is always fun, but it just wasn't put together in an interesting way. I wanted psychics and astral projection, and I got all that, including some psychic vampires. I should have been happier, but mostly I was a little bored. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 29
First Time Views: 19

October Horror Movie Challenge: Hold the Dark (2018)

Tonight I am stepping outside my usual range for this year’s challenge. This one was my wife's choice because she likes werewolves and Alexander Skarsgård. 

Most of what I have been watching has been from 1984 to 1987, but as I was watching, I began to think about something specifically for my Valhalla, Alaska, setting. It has wolves, isolation, strange local beliefs, and the tournaq, or tornrak, wolf-demon.

Hold the Dark seemed like a good choice for all of this.

Hold the Dark (2018)

Medora Slone (Riley Keough), a young mother from the Alaskan backwater of Keelut, puts in a call to wolf expert and naturalist Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), with an urgent request. Her six-year-old Bailey is gone, and with two other children having vanished in much the same way, she believes wolves are to blame. She wants him to come up north and put down the animal before her husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård) comes home from his tour in Iraq.

Core makes the trip thinking it will be a hard but straightforward job. He is relieved of that notion rather quickly. What he uncovers about Bailey is far worse than Medora let on, and when Vernon does return, he sets off on a course of violence all his own. In time, the film sheds its missing-child premise for something stranger and harder to pin down.

You could almost, but not quite, call it a werewolf movie or even a supernatural horror in the conventional sense, yet for most of its running time it leaves you in doubt as to whether it might be one. I find that uncertainty to be its best quality.

Take the wolves themselves. They are present from the start, though the film is cagey in how it presents them. Core will study them and insist they are animals, not moral agents; he can make sense of a pack culling its own young as a matter of nature, which is violent but not evil. The villagers of Keelut have a different take. Once Core gets to the bottom of what happened to Bailey, some are quick to say Medora is under the influence of a wolf-demon, or tournaq as the movie puts it.

You will not get a tidy resolution on that here. There is no scene of Medora breaking out in fur, nor does Vernon undergo a full-moon metamorphosis. No one is on hand with an old tome to lay out the rules. The wolf imagery is there in the hunting and predation, in parents turning on their children, and in people acting on instincts others cannot fathom. Whether you see it as supernatural or merely human is left open, and that is more to my liking than a run-of-the-mill creature feature.

Then there is the village of Keelut, perhaps the most effective horror element of all. It feels cut off from the world, not by some contrived fantasy setting but because the distance imposes its own order. An outsider like Core will notice right away: the people know each other, and they know things they are not sharing with him. The landscape is vast, cold, and indifferent. It is exactly what I was looking for in this movie. Alaska is a character in and of itself, it was one of the reasons I began Valhalla, AK.

Director Jeremy Saulnier and writer Macon Blair seem to have an eye for dark fantasy rather than for Alaskan realism. As someone considering an Alaska setting for inspiration, I can put that aside. Hold the Dark is not a documentary, but it is invaluable for atmosphere. The silence and the sense that the modern world thins out once you are far enough from the centers of population are very well done. There is something about the cold, the dark, and the isolation that keeps ideas like Valhalla, AK alive for me.

The masks in the film do this well. Vernon and Medora both wear them, and the movie leaves us wondering what they mean. Ritual, identity, a change in the person beneath without any physical alteration. That could serve Valhalla nicely. A wolf-demon need not make a man into a werewolf; the mask is transformation enough. Wear it and your thinking changes. You stop feeling the cold; you smell blood and recognize fear. There comes a point where you can no longer fathom why the rest of the world is so put off by your actions. That's a different sort of creature.

Violence Without Explanation

What makes Hold the Dark violent is its suddenness and brutality. You have an extended gun battle at one point that could be mistaken for something from another film, yet it serves to make a point: here, violence is hard to put a lid on once it starts. Saulnier has a way of rendering it ugly instead of heroic, and this story requires that. Vernon is as dangerous as they come but never an action hero; he is unsettling because his conduct follows a logic that eludes everyone else. Medora is no different. They are both driven by something older and more instinctive than what we would call morality. Whether one wants to call it supernatural is beside the point. For Core, it might as well be. My wife kept thinking they were werewolves. I don't think she was wrong.

Valhalla, AK and the Tournaq

My Valhalla is quirkier than Keelut, somewhere nearer Northern Exposure and Resident Alien, where the oddities and monsters are local complications rather than an unending tragedy. But humor only goes so far. You need places where the jokes end. Put some miles between you and town, lose the road and the radio, and you will hear wolves. Then you are in another place entirely.

I went to see the movie for the wolf-demon. The film refers to its possible wolf-spirit as a tournaq, but I would not put much stock in that as a mythological artifact. Inuit lore has its share of helping spirits for the shaman or the hunter, but "wolf-demon" is the film’s own construct.

If I were to put Valhalla on paper, I would fictionalize it. Let us say the locals use the term tornrak for it, though no one can tell you where the word originates. An anthropologist will say the name is incorrect, and an old-timer will reply, "Yeah. So is the thing." That is the sort of place Valhalla is.

The beast is not a werewolf in the sense of a man becoming a wolf. A tornrak is what gets people to become wolves in every way but the physical. It latches on to someone who is already isolated or angry. At first it is just a presence at the periphery of vision, a wolf at the window with no tracks in the snow to account for it. Then there are the dreams of hunting and running with blood in the mouth and snow on bare feet. When the person wakes, he feels better than he has in years. One should not overlook that. A proper supernatural corruption gives you something before it takes anything: strength, a release from guilt or fear, the means to endure the cold. Before long the victim is thinking in pack terms. Family is pack, outsiders are to be put down, and instinct has done away with moral choices.

And then the tornrak wants something. Hunger does not require words.

Final Thoughts

There is a strangeness to Hold the Dark. It sets out as a mystery over children being killed by wolves and devolves into a crime thriller of the most violent kind, all while skirting the edge of the supernatural without fully committing. You could be left frustrated by the ambiguity and the questions the film has no intention of answering. Even the director and writer seem content to let the atmosphere be dark and mythic rather than literal. To my mind, that is precisely what makes it such good material to draw from.

I don't want the tornrak explained. I do not want somebody to find a nineteenth-century book saying it has 8 Hit Dice and can only be killed by silver. At least not at first. I want people in Valhalla to disagree about whether it even exists. I want the old locals to tell contradictory stories. I want the rational explanation to remain possible long after the players have stopped believing it.

And I want the wolves to remain wolves. 

Because the most disturbing possibility in "Hold the Dark" is not that human beings can turn into animals. It is that maybe there is not as much difference between humans and animals as we would like to believe.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
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