Over on the OSR Discord they're doing the Secret Santicorn, wherein folks submit a prompt (often in the form of a random table heading) that they'd like to see fulfilled. The prompts are then randomly distributed amongst the submitters, much like a Secret Santa gift exchange. I threw my hat in the ring largely as an excuse to get this blog off the ground — and whaddya know, here we are.
My task was to create d10 false rumours about supernatural activities in a modern horror setting that are not actually supernatural. Frankly, as I'm a very casual and infrequent consumer of horror media, this is a bit out of my wheelhouse — so much so that I've just managed to squeeze our a measly d4 table. Elegias#9917, hope this something satisfies better than nothing!
d4 Non-Supernatural Horror Rumours (& Their Truths)
1. The rumour: Blockchain magnate and international playboy Tim Beard found dead in his Puerto Rica villa, paused on his Macbook in suspended animation. The cause of death? It seems a freak accident has thoroughly converted his flesh into a solid and semi-opaque amber substance.
The truth: Whilst trawling the darkweb for the latest fix to his increasingly hedonist obsessions, Beard encountered installation artist and plastination technician Doc Merle. A gentleman's agreement resulted in voluntary euthanasia — Doc having live-plastinated the playboy while he basked under a heatlamp and heavy sedatives.
2. The rumour: Winter in Nebraska. A pair of vagrants, recently arrived in the small ranching community of Burwell, have disappeared without a trace. The authorities track their footprints through the snow as they wind the switchbacks leading to the reservoir — and end abruptly, in mid-stride, their bodies seemingly vaporised.
The truth: Recently-launched SpaceX satellites, commissioned by the Trump administration's reboot of the Strategic Defense Initiative, have suffered a minor computer malfunction. It seems the technical team neglected to wipe experimental GPS subroutines targeting low-income individuals found on government property.
3. The rumour: After a minor tremor strikes northern California — registering a measly 2.7 on the Richter — six houses of worship in the area simultaneously fall 200 feet into the earth. As luck would have it, all six churches are operated by the same small breakaway sect of evangelical Mormons. Pope Francis has condemned the sect, calling the pits a message from God.
The truth: In the early 1970s, geology dropout Kenny Waterloo postulated the existence of several neodymium deposits in the region, and began buying up scrub land at cut-rate prices. In an effort to cover up his discovery, he founded the sect from half-remembered Sunday School classes and began building ramshackle churches on the land above the deposits. After 50 years of parasitic undermining, the sinkholes were a given.
4. The rumour: Citizens of Pine Ridge, a sleepy unincorporated community in eastern Oregon, have reported multiple sightings of a group of five bearlike cryptids — enormous, hairless, leathery-skinned beasts with distended bellies. In addition to the rise in livestock disappearances, Paddy down at the service station's noted significant numbers of out-of-towners in dark sunglasses and long black sedans.
The truth: Just outside town limits, you'll find the Monsanto Agricultural Research Facility, wherein several weeks prior a great vat of Experimental Growth Hormone cracked and began leaching its odd juices into the groundwater. Like most families in the region, the Meldriches are on well water — unlike most, their property abuts Monsanto's. The biotech subsidiary's on-retainer investigators have been saddled with a two-parter: analyse and document the results of the contamination, then destroy the evidence.
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