The Family Mystery Deepens

When I announced the games I was making based on a mysterious stack of photocopies I had been given (see the blog Immersive Storytelling from a Forgotten Family Mystery), I didn’t expect a sudden flood of interest in the stories I wanted to tell. Sure, creating games from some 150+ year old letters and images of card was novel idea to me, so I thought it might interest some people. I was just getting started with this project, though, and the announcement was just the first step in what I expected to be a long journey, one where I can tell the stories in more detail as the games come out.

What I didn’t expect was the family secret to very suddenly get much, much deeper.

About five weeks after I made my initial Instagram posts about The Turning and this project I am calling The Saga of El Castigo, I was contacted by someone who only called himself Joe, which I think is a nod to the name of my game company.

This is the initial message from Joe:

Hey,

I saw your Instagram posts about the photocopies and your game project. You don’t know me, but we’re distantly related.  You mentioned a letter to your great-great-grandmother, Tryphena Depue. I saw that name and it hit me like a hammer.

I’ve been sitting on this message for a while now, trying to decide if I should even send it. You’re probably not going to believe me, but I need to tell you what I know about that box you discovered.

I don’t know how much digging you’ve done on your mom’s side, but I’ve been working on some family legends, and it ties into you because that name meant something to me. A lot, actually. I confirmed it and it turns out we share great-great-grandparents.

You come from John Wesley Depue. I come from Martha Depue, his older sister. She died in 1900 in a fire. Her son, Curtis, survived. Barely. He was only eleven.

Here’s the part that matters: when the house burned and killed Martha, some neighbors and family managed to pull a few pieces of furniture and valuables from the downstairs. One of them was this small side table. I don’t know why they grabbed it, it wasn’t  worth anything, but it must’ve been dropped or cracked open, because they found a hidden drawer. Inside was a sealed package. Unopened. Stuffed way in back.

After the fire, as family history goes, your great-grandfather John showed up the very next day, making the trip to Illinois from Colorado. No one knew how he’d even heard about what happened so quickly, but they figured maybe he’d already been on the road.

When he saw the table, he fought for it. Literally fought.

I have a letter, written by Charlie to a cousin, telling his side of the fight. Says he and John wrestled over the table. Charlie said he was just trying to pull it away, but John knocked him down hard and raised the table over his head like he was going to hit him with it. Charlie never forgave him for that. Said the look on John’s face scared him more than the fire. The fight split the family. My mom even knew about it, passed down from her mom. They never spoke again, and Charlie died not long after.

John must’ve taken the table home. Somehow it stayed in your family and ended up with your grandmother.

Now here’s where it gets even stranger.

That table originally belonged to Tryphena, Martha and John’s mother. And yeah, I knew about the package too. The one you mentioned being delivered in 1872.

Martha, my great-grandmother, was about fifteen at the time. She wrote about it in her diary, which I still have. The package came during a rainstorm. Her mother hid it away right after it arrived. Later, Martha wrote that her mom would just sit by the fire with the box in her lap, tapping on it. She called it her “tapping box.”

Martha said it was kept in the same table their father used to hide his pistol. All the kids knew better than to open that table.

Another entry said her mother gave her the table as a wedding gift, when she and my great-grandfather moved into their new house. She wrote, “Mother entrusted me with the tapping box table.” That’s her exact wording.

What you found has to be the same box.

I don’t know how or why it resurfaced now, but if you’re building games out of it, there’s a lot more you need to know about what you’re doing. A lot more.

I don’t know what your plan is, or how far you want to go with this. But if you’re serious about telling this story, then you deserve to know more. I’ve been digging into this for a long time now.

It’s not just about the symbols. It’s what happens after they’re used.

And some people don’t want that story told. I don’t know who exactly. But I’ve been threatened. And I think someone’s watching me.

And, sure, you can post this letter.  I’ll send you more when I have time.

–Joe

I haven’t heard from him for a few weeks, but I think that’s just how Joe is. My family knows nothing about this table or box, and no one alive has heard anything about some family feud, but that’s no surprise given how long ago it happened.  

I’m curious, though, what Joe means by what happens when the symbols are used…