Hi everyone,
Hope this is the right place to ask.
Basically, as the title says, I'm looking to run an RPG for my friends set in a haunted American house. Discussion of weird WASP American dynasties gives me the creeps anyway, so I figured I'd set it in something that scares me and hopefully that transfers to the players. Unfortunately, I'm not a yank so my knowledge isn't too good, and googling "spooky wasp dynasty stories" doesn't come up with much.
Sort of stuff I'm looking for:
- My creepy WASP family, the... Vanderchilds... had a daughter that caused them difficulty so they had her lobotomised. Her vengeful ghost will be amongst the spirits in the mansion that the players must help have their vengeance on the cruel Vanderchild ghosts.
Would also like help coming up with a better family name than the Vanderchilds.
Thanks homies.
The Collyer Brothers story is pretty creepy. They're well educated, father is a doctor, they have good jobs and are a part of their community. They live in a four story brownstone building in Harlem, NY, they're father left it to them after he died. It's the two guys and their mother. Mother dies, she leaves them a big hunk of cash. They live it up in that big ass house.
The depression hits, and the demographics of Harlem change from WASP to more and more black people. So the brothers stop leaving the house, they're scared shitless. It's 1933. Everyone in the neighborhood thinks that they're insane, so of course they start harassing them from outside, leading them to board up the house completely. They've horded a bunch of crap which leads to people trying to rob them thinking any of it is worth stealing (its really not). So they set up booby traps. Into the thirties, one of the brothers ends up completely blind and completely paralyzed, the other brother focuses on caring for him, only going out in the dark of night for food and essential trips.
Forward to 1947. A report comes into the police precinct that there may be a dead body in the house, neighbors can smell it. The police arrive at the house to find it completely locked up. When they do get the doors to open, they find the entrance way completely stacked with crap floor to ceiling. They find the paralyzed brother had died of starvation. It's March 21st. There's no sign of the caretaker brother. They expect him to turn up. He doesn't. They set up a manhunt to apprehend him and find out what happens as they continue to clean out the 120 tons of trash from the house. The brother's body is eventually found, snared in his own booby trap, eaten by rats. He had suffocated in the dark, crawling through his trash maze. No longer able to care for his brother, the paralyzed brother died shortly after.
You even have a fucking good dungeon in there!
When you're so racist you build racist trash labyrinth and end up killing yourself in your own racist booby trap lmao
This is like an Aesop myth but more gory.
Oh jesus that's so disgusting. Good inspiration though. I can have the players trapped in maze of the Vanderchild's hoarded possessions, but what is the mysterious smell...
You should look at the Winchester house, basically was built to confuse ghosts which makes it eery as shit.
Technically catholic but the kennedys famously lobotomized their problem daughter Rosemary if you want to look into that for some inspo
Vanderchild sounds like a good old-money WASP name to me tbh, a lot of wealth Dutch put down roots in early New York
Edit: again maybe not WASP but the most fucked up tale of rich Americans I can think of is Delphine LaLaurie in New Orleans, def NSFL, basically did mengele type shit on the people she had enslaved — serious warning about reading up on it, it still has me really fucked up
Winchester house looks great (horrible). I'm looking to have the house be really confusing to get around so I could probably just cheat and steal the floor plan!
I did base the above plot point on Rosemary Kennedy. I tried to do further research but panicked so I'm going to have to make it up. I don't know, nonconsensual surgery scares me more than anything else for some reason.
Delphine LaLaurie also sounds awful. I don't know, I have a feeling this game is just going to be me scaring myself with a spooky story while my friends patiently wait for the dice to come out.
I don’t know, nonconsensual surgery scares me more than anything else for some reason.
Jeez, I know what you mean. The account of them having her sing "God Bless America" while they dug around in her brain is horrifying
Look into the Veiled Prophet society in St Louis. there was a TrueAnon ep on them and it’s pretty wild.
You can probably just look up some names of Boston brahmin families and maybe try a google with “controversy” or “scandal” tied with some of the more we’ll known names like Lowell.
Will do! This is how ignorant of this stuff I actually am It turns out Boston Brahmin families is exactly what I wanted I just didn't k ow the term to Google it.
Not family but a guy I met in college had the last name Cockfoster
Instructions unclear, dick stuck in an aloe vera. Send help.
I always thought the Southern practice of a father giving a chastity ring to his teenage daughter and doing a "marriage" ceremony was fucked up. It's only fringe psycho Christians, but it's real.
Of course there's the BTK Strangler, who scoped out his victims by installing home security sensors. I always thought the concept of "home security" industry was a good representation of WASPy distrust of others.
Could also style it after the Winchester mansion that was built as the widow started feeling as if her family's wealth via gun manufacturing and genocide was creating massive angry mobs of spirits (so the mansion was built like a maze to confuse them, I visited as a kid and it's creepy as fuck). So there could be a part in which the players help angry spirits (former native inhabitants, mine workers left to die, etc) tear down the mansion and take the family to Hell.
