The Phantasmological Society

An undistinguished row house in South Kensington, not far from Hyde Park and the Natural History Museum. A discreet brass plaque by the green front door proclaims this to be the headquarters of the Phantasmological Society. The doorknocker’s wrought in the shape of a lion’s head. You could walk past every day of your life and never see it.

A waiting room like a doctor’s with the latest periodicals and some rather good nineteenth-century watercolours of fish. A small office where the club’s secretary (currently Olive Nutbright, bespectacled, one-handed, 23) processes the latest correspondence. Who writes in? Cranks, amateur warlocks, people who think the Gods of Atlantis tickle their feet every night in bed. About one in ten reported ghost sightings will be deemed to have some merit to them and it’s these the players will be sent to investigate.

Upstairs, a well-stocked private library. A few scattered specimens, a slimy carcass under glass that might be a dead ghost or just the dry corpse of a slug. A unicorn head that’s obviously fake and nobody will pretend otherwise. A Jenny Haniver. A decanter of brandy and some samples of black lotus powder from the Limehouse docks. A comfortable armchair by the fireplace for you to sit in and watch the rain patter on the glass.

A storeroom for the ghost hunting equipment. Tongs, goggles, capture bottles, handheld lamps with red lenses for detecting ectoplasmic residue. Electric pentacles that keep out dark forces for as long as the batteries hold out. Radios attuned to spectral frequencies. A gigantic flashlight designed by lighthouse keepers for communicating with the planet Mars. You may have to pay a small deposit in case you don’t bring it back.

Founded in 1893 by a small group of Fabian reformers, effective altruists and Cambridge dons, the Phantasmological Society has since fallen on hard times. All the serious people quit in the last few years and the organisation has been reduced to soliciting the assistance of deadbeats such as yourself, in order to pursue its founding mission of establishing the veracity of occult phenomena and determining the true nature of Life After Death.

The current membership is as follows -

Sir Henry Carstairs, chairman. Tall, gaunt, bearded, hollow-eyed. Famous solicitor. Has been convinced of the absolute truth of Spiritualism since three of his sisters and one of his nieces were lost in a boating accident on the river Nile in 1909. Two sons dead in the war; only living descendent a feeble-minded albino who lives in a cloth-lined room at a Quaker-run private retreat outside York.

A. A. Pestonji. Private secretary to Sir Henry. Falsely convicted in 1913 of a series of donkey mutilations in a tiny Sussex village where his half-Parsi father was living as a vicar - got off the hook by Henry’s diligent research and has been fanatically loyal to the old man ever since. Devout vegetarian, only drinks water. Shy. First man to interview prospective employees.

Millicent and Mavis Lyttleton-Browne. Twins. Ancient. Dotty. Filthy rich. Communicate in a private language and have never worked a day in their lives. Proud co-owners of an elderly and very badly behaved miniature bull terrier named Ladysmith, who bites. If they ever die or get pissed off enough to quit the Society will lose about two-thirds of its funding.

Dr. Wenceslas McKinnon. Skeptical red-bearded Scotsman who has not yet given up hope that his old friend Sir Henry can be convinced to give up this whole ghost-hunting lark and settle down to a more mundane hobby. Owner of a private estate in the Scottish highlands. Expert in diseases of the spine. Stuck by the Society after all the other bloody-minded rationalists gave up in disgust.

Simon Blackthorne. Fat. Bald. Talks like Orson Welles. Professes to be an arch-mystic who communed with devils on the isle of Patmos and set a world record for most lions shot on a hunting expedition in the Gambia. Eager to talk to you about a magical practice he refers to as the Higher Sodomy, if he thinks you’ll oblige. Kept on retainer by Sir Henry, to McKinnon’s disgust.

From all over England, and further afield, the Society gathers reports. A translucent hound sighted in the Lake District. Mermaids lurking in a Cornish bay. Nude headless women walking the streets of Birmingham, pig men in coracles spotted off the Hebrides. Most are bullshit. Some are real.

Who are you? Doctors, conjurers, out-of-work sailors, upper-class twits and retired mining engineers. Returned servicemen like Bulldog Drummond, ex-cops and professional investigators like Carnacki who have seen things mankind was not meant to know. The Society isn’t picky about who it recruits. After a preliminary interview with Pestonji in the Crown and Lion pub down the road, you’ll be handed your choice of plot hooks and sent off to investigate at your leisure.

The Society publishes a small journal, which is taken seriously by no-one. You get paid for every successful report, and more for every piece of occult evidence you can bring home to add to their permanent collection.

Carstairs is convinced that the world as we know it is constantly under assault by dark forces, and only the courageous efforts of dedicated men are capable of keeping the chaos at bay. He may be right. You could devote yourself to exposing the things of the underworld to the light of day. Of course, if you’re too good at it, certain entities will start to notice.