Who is Scott Dance?

I can’t decide how faked these news articles are that keep popping up. The first one being the one that comes with Box 1, Item 1:6. The author, Scott Dance, also authors some other articles that seem to be clues for the case. The questions then become, which articles are clues, which are innate, and were these articles written with the intent to be clues or are they retrofitted to become clues post hoc?

It’s possible that this isn’t about The Baltimore Sun either. I found Scott Dance bios on several different news websites from around the country: Los Angeles Times, Daily Press, Orlando Sentinel, Chicago Tribune to name a few. All the same picture and bio.

One of his more popular articles is about the 2015 super blood harvest moon; it’s published in several of the local papers: Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, and of course The Baltimore Sun. But this article was published back in 2015, which is before the game even started as far as I’m aware. According to the HaK blog, the game started October 2016.

There are several articles by Dance that report on crimes, as well as weather. And then there’s the Kepler article that spoke of the Summer Triangle, which can’t be a coincidence because of the swan/vulture connection. Again this one was written in 2015, or was it? Does it matter?

I guess the real question I’m trying to get at is, how did the makers of HaK weave fiction into fact and how do we tell the difference between dead ends and clues to the mystery? Especially considering we’re not told what the mystery is we’re trying to solve. History is full of mysteries to explore. Is it that this game decided to leave clues for us to find existing mysteries?

From what I can tell, Scott Dance is a real person or a very elaborate ruse. Where as Lloyd, mysterious female patient, Dr. Richter, LFoA, and any institution Lloyd went to are completely fabricated. My guess is that Scott Dance was approached by HaK to be part of this game and he obliged them. Gets his name out there right? I’m guessing something similar for Alexander D’Agostino as well.

They’re both from Baltimore right? This game must have originated in that area considering the address for the LFoA is a camp ground in Darlington, Maryland (where the live event is scheduled to take place in October) which is northeast of Baltimore. So it started as a live event, and then became a monthly subscription game.

This leads me to investigate the creators of the game to see what kind of resources they may have had when they first started the game last October. I just received an email from HaK in which they mention the name of one of the founders: Derrick Smith. The other founder, after a quick google search is found to be: Ryan Hogan.

I found an interview with Ryan Hogan (it requires signing up to read the article in full). Ryan mentions that he is a subscriber as well, and that Smith is in charge of the story telling aspect of the game. There’s a quick blurb about them in The Baltimore Sun. They’ve known each other since grade school. Someone named Adam Mueller is apparently the senior write of the game. Derrick Smith has a company: Copy Dog Writing, that he founded in 2014 and still currently runs. In fact, he has no mention of Hunt-a-Killer on his linkedin or website, but the picture of him lines up with another picture I was able to find of him.

The point being, the creators of this game originated from Baltimore, Maryland. So any people that reside in the Baltimore area are suspect of being “in on it.” While people that reside outside of Baltimore are less likely to be part of the story.

June 1, 2017 – B1:D2

The investigation continues as I start piecing some of the clues together. But I honestly feel more lost than I did yesterday. Today I decided to focus a little more attention on the constellation map (item 1:4). And how it relates to the swan (item 1:3). I found out the origins of both these items came from really old books.

The constellation map came from a book titled “Easy Star Lessons” by Richard Anthony, published 1894. The map can be found on page 204 of the book (page 213 in the pdf file). I also found reference to the Cygnus (swan) constellation on page 87, figure 16 “Part of Cygnus” and on page 214, figure 34 “Cygnus, Lyra, Vulpecula.”

I also found that the swan picture came from a book titled “Infant’s Cabinet of Birds and Beasts” published in London 1820. The pdf version of the book does not appear to have page numbers, but the swan is part of the second group of pictures in the book. And shares a page with “The Vulture.”

So now I know where he got these two images from. I’m not sure how much it matters, but it is comforting to have that knowledge and ability to reference these books for future inquiry. So then I wanted to dig a little deeper into this whole swan connection. Cygnus is also known as the swan, and I kept hearing a rumor about a serial killer swan play in Baltimore, and today I finally found a review about it. Actually two reviews, “Blood, Smoke and Ballet: A Night With a Killer Swan” by Andrew Sargus Klein, and “Serial Killer Ballet” by Rowan Fulton. Both published December 2015. The creator of this ballet, Alexander D’Agostino even had a kickstarter for the play complete with a creepy video trailer and another video of a performance art piece. He does appear to be an actual artist with a flare for the grotesque. Or is he an elaborate part of this story? Well I sent him a friend request and a quick message on facebook (eep), so we shall see how he responds.

Going back to the constellations, I also stumbled across another Scott Dance article “Where is Kepler-452b?” And another article by The Baltimore Sun that was linked in the article. And tried the other link in the article only to have it fail so I searched within the site for the “Summer Triangle” for more clues. Albireo, of Beta Cygni (Cygnus) is a double star of blue and gold, which I thought was worth noting considering “Le Cygne” or “the swan” is the 13th and penultimate movement of “The Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saens. The song is meant to be played with a cello and a piano accompaniment. But is very much tied to the ballet and apparently men dancing to it.

Going back to the Summer Triangle, it appears these three stars (Deneb, Vega, and Altair) can be used to locate the Milky Way through out the year. Albireo is a star located in the middle of these three stars during the time frame the item 1:4 constellation map depicts. I’m still trying to figure out if there is significance in this fact or not. And what is the answer to the question Scott Dance posits in his article “Where is Kepler-452b?” My best answer so far is that it is 1400 light years away located in the Cygnus constellation.

Ah… Lyra (the location of the Vega star) is also known as… VULTURE! Well isn’t that something. So Deneb is the brightest star in the Cygnus (swan) constellation, Vega is the brightest star of the three and is in the Lyra (vulture) constellation, so that leaves Altair, aka Alpha Aquilae of the constellation Aquila (aka “eagle”). And then there’s Albireo, right in the center of these three stars that roughly translates to “hen’s beak.”

I don’t know where all that leaves me other than knowing there’s a pattern here. For now that’ll just have to be a mystery left to solve another day.

 

Murders Under Investigation

I am starting to suspect the murders we’re supposed to investigate are much older than I realized. So far the murders I’ve come across that may need further investigation:

• Paul Redfern: pilot that went down during a solo flight to Brazil. Lloyd mentions “the ferns are red” and something about a statue, a pilot, and the forest in a secret recording found through the newsletter and a cryptogram. But is Paul Redfern a link to further clues regarding an actual murder, or is the Redfern case something that requires further investigation?
• Robert McLane: former mayor of Baltimore, killed himself mysteriously after breaking ground on the new sewer system in 1904 after the great fire burned down large portions of the city enabling the sewer project to begin. Also, why did McLane burn down 5 buildings in an “attempt to battle the fire”? And why does the article where I found this information misspell his name “McClane”?
• Thomas Lemmon: Probably nothing, but was mentioned in the Woods sinkhole article.
• Tyree Woodson: I haven’t investigated this yet because the article I found on it is loosely related to any other investigation, but is written by the same author who wrote the second sinkhole article, Baynard Woods. I have a feeling this is a case that is not directly tied to the HaK program, but perhaps one that we can learn from. After all, “internal investigations often raise as many questions as they answer.”
• There’s also the mysterious female patient of Dr. Richter that was killed by Lloyd McGowan 30 years ago at the O’Brien Asylum where Lloyd was committed in 1967. In 1997, Lloyd was transferred to Darlington where he was better treated and became an active member of the community on the grounds. The post made about Lloyd on the LFoA facebook page mentions that Lloyd was celebrating his 15 year anniversary back in 2012. So the recording discovered using 1902-1618 was from around the time of the transfer in 1997. Meaning the murder occurred in 1967 when Lloyd first got to the O’Brien Asylum. And somewhere along the way I ran into this blog, where there’s a podcast called “Actual Innocence.” I haven’t had a chance to give it a listen, but it makes me wonder if this is part of the game or not. I place this information here because I suspect that Lloyd is innocent of murdering the female patient he was accused of murdering. Which would mean that Lloyd isn’t “John William James” because we’re supposed to be receiving letters from a serial killer… right?

May 31, 2017 – B1:D1

Hello All! I just started an investigation into “Hunt-a-Killer” and decided to keep a blog of my discoveries. Been wanting to get back into the blog-o-sphere ever since the death of myspace and livejournal… so here it goes!

So I started investigating about a week ago. Dug real deep into some rabbit holes around the sinkhole in Baltimore. I was lead there by the article in box 1 (Item 1:6). I suppose I should start with how I choose to organize my inventory. I figured one of the first things I should do when starting an investigation is to get organized!

Using the little bookmark “this month, your package contains…” and filling in the 10 items with the same list password protected, I keep track of which item I’m referring to by using the given list of items and placing them in the same order. The 6th item in the first box is “News Article copy” so it is referred to as “Item 1:6”. The assumption will also be made that if you are reading this, it is because you are also investigating this case, so I will not bore you with the details already found in the package, and just stick to observations and random ramblings I come across along the way.

I started with the article because it seemed the easiest to google, and indeed it was. I found the article in the Baltimore Sun by Scott Dance rather quickly and was soon able to fill in the blanks to find aside from all the proper nouns being redacted, “John” had also left the message “the leaky pipe, carries more water, breaks and leaks, are, more likely to show a depression, to last decades, and perhaps a century.” Instead of diving into the meaning of that statement though, I decided to investigate the sinkhole and the people surrounding it.

One of the curious things I found was when I went to google maps to find the exact location of the sinkhole and to investigate the events leading up to the sinkhole. I found a video attached to the article (item 1:6) and am still not sure if this video or article is completely faked or not. From what I can gather, the sinkhole did occur, and someone fell into it and was injured, but not seriously. There was another article I found about sinkholes published in the City Paper, “Sinkhole: What is happening beneath the ground downtown?” by Baynard Woods.

In this article there is a ton of information on the history of sinkholes in the area, and several curious details surrounding the sewage system of Baltimore. In particular, I found it curious when Woods spoke of Robert McClane, mayor of Baltimore in 1904 during the great fire that resulted in McClane purposefully burning down 5 buildings in an attempt to stop the fire, only to make matters worse. And while this fire was devastating, it allowed the long over due sewage system to begin construction. But in the middle of the night, the day after breaking ground on the new sewage system, McClane supposedly shot himself. But the whole thing reeks of murder.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the Mr. Puzzle clue in the LFoA Winter Newsletter. Who is Paul Redfern? He was a pilot that didn’t make it to Brazil and was born in 1902. But how is that connected to “Lloyd,” a psychiatric patient that doesn’t remember killing a girl, Rachel? Beatrice? What was her name…