This is probably the most “adult” Nancy Drew game — it hints at some very dark things about the Thorntons that would probably go over younger kids’ heads, and it’s very creepy and melancholy. I’ve used the word “palpable” a lot while talking about these later games, but it keeps being true — there’s an excellent sense of atmosphere here. I’ve mentioned that I don’t mind doing chores, but the lack of them in these later games probably contributes a lot to that — they’re very singularly focused on the mystery and the characters, and in this case, uncovering the family’s secrets really sucks you in and makes you feel like you might be going crazy investigating.
The game is apparently based on a Nancy Drew Girl Detective novel called Uncivil Acts, which is about the Civil War and kind of loosely about dealing with the knowledge that your ancestors might have been Confederates (although isn’t River Heights in Illinois? Like…literally the Land of Lincoln?), but overall treats the issue with as much gravitas as the Nancy Drew books treat all serious issues like kidnapping and cranial injury, i.e. little to none. So the game is much darker in that regard.
It is also literally quite dark. The lighting in this game isn’t great.
Nancy is woken up in the dead of night by Savannah Woodham, who we last saw in Shadow at the Water’s Edge. Savannah tells us that there’s been a kidnapping, and someone needs to get there before the police do. Not like, Savannah herself, though. That would be dangerous, and she’d rather something bad happen to Nancy than to her, you know? Thanks, Savannah. Savannah is an ex-ghost hunter, you’ll recall, and she creeps at us that everyone knows “Thornton Hall” is haunted, and she’s calling Nancy because Nancy is a skeptic, so she’ll be less susceptible to the weird shit that happens there.
“Can’t the police help?” Nancy asks blearily. What? Nancy, I know you’re off your game because it’s early, but the police? What are you, new?
We cut to getting dropped off on Blackrock Island, which is not a creepy and ominous name for an island at all. The ferryman warns us that the Thorntons are hella creepy, and Nancy’s like, “I’ve seen Taylor Sinclair’s mustache, so I think I’m good.” The ferryman warns us about two particular Thorntons: Wade, who “skulks”, and Harper, who’s a “loony bin reject.” But also, “It’s Charlotte you best watch for. Blackrock Island belongs to her. Has been ever since the fire took her.” Then he’s like, “You have fun now!” and speeds off. Thanks, dude.
Look at this long-ass driveway. Like, we’re not just dealing with a creepy old family, they’re making me EXERCISE to get to them?
So we rock up to the house, but before we can go in, this dude here stops us. He’s mistaken us for the missing girl, Jessalyn. Well, since we’re out here, let’s get to interrogating. There’s no time to waste! And in the interest of not wasting time, this is the first game where HER introduced the option to skip through the dialogue, if you don’t want to sit through all the fake Southern accents in this game. Wow, where was this option when Takae was holding us captive in SAW?
So this is Colton, Jessalyn’s fiance. I wonder how much fun the writers had coming up with stereotypical Southern names. He gives us Jessalyn’s phone and charger, although neither are working at the moment. We ask if it’s possible that Jessalyn just ran off because she was having second thoughts before her wedding, and Colton’s like, “Probably. Everyone has second thoughts, and doubting whether or not you should be getting married at all is definitely a foundation for future bliss.” Nancy’s like, “So…you also didn’t know if you wanted to get married?” and Colton’s like, “I didn’t say that.” Nancy: “You implied it. You know, when you said that everyone has second thoughts.” Colton: “I know. I remember it like it was moments ago.” Ah, I see the surprisingly self-aware suspects are back. We tell him that Savannah Woodham sent us, as she thinks Jessalyn’s disappearance might be supernatural. Colton doesn’t disagree. Hmm.
Alright, so that was our first suspect! Let’s go inside and see who else is here. If the interior of the mansion looks familiar, it’s probably because it’s laid out almost exactly like the mansion in Legend of the Crystal Skull. All Southern mansions are the same, right? I don’t believe the game ever explicitly says what state this game is set in — given that the games don’t usually repeat their locations, I would guess not Louisiana, although the game uses the same sort of dark swampy aesthetic as CRY.
As in CRY, immediately to the right of the staircase is the parlor/living room. Dude. Look at this. Clean your house, dudes!
So this lady is Jessalyn’s mother, Clara. She’s fairly gracious about us being there, even though she obviously didn’t sign up for us to come. She tells us that Jessalyn came to stay the night at the mansion with a friend of hers, Addison. Addison hasn’t been much use, as she’s a nervous wreck, but Clara gives us her phone number anyway.
We’re like, “So…what’s everyone doing at this jank-ass mansion?” and Clara says that she closed down the company — the Thorntons are in some kind of business that has made them fabulously wealthy, although what the business currently is is never specified, and why they can’t afford some new wallpaper for this house is also never explained — and all the employees volunteered to look for Jessalyn. “She’s got a lot of people looking out for her. I can be thankful for that,” Clara says.
We ask what she thinks is going on with Jessalyn’s disappearance, and Clara thinks she’s been kidnapped — or at least, that’s what she thought initially, as the Thorntons are, as mentioned, fabulously wealthy. But there hasn’t been a ransom note, and now Clara thinks that possibly someone is trying to “punish” the Thorntons by making them sit in their creepy, run-down mansion, waiting for Jessalyn to come back. Spooky.
Okay, what about Colton’s theory that Jessalyn got cold feet and ran off? Clara shrugs and says they had fights like any couple, but they worked through them. And of course, Colton has issues, which didn’t make things any easier…BUT NEVER MIND THAT! Have fun exploring, Nancy!
Cool, so now we know Colton has a traumatic past that we can insensitively ask him about later. Thanks, Clara!
We can go poking around the house now. At first I thought that the Thorntons lived here, but presumably they live and run their business somewhere closer to civilization, and they just keep this house around so they can be like, “I have a mansion on an island because I’m rich as fuck.” Everything is very dusty and cobwebby. I don’t think I could ever be a super sleuth. My allergies couldn’t handle it 🙁
We find a book about female spies during the Civil War — mostly for the Confederacy. Another book notes that a long(ish?) time ago, there was a big fire in the workers’ quarters on the island, killing most of the people inside. The Thornton running the business at the time, Jeb (not to be confused with Jeb!) was like, “I feel bad and all, but uh…not bad enough to step up our working conditions.” Ah, capitalism. Jeb’s wife, Sarah, was so stressed out by the fire and Jeb’s subsequent refusal to comply with OSHA that she became bedridden. Ever since then, the members of the Thornton either become obsessively devoted to The Company, or they abandon it because they feel guilty about their “ill-gotten” wealth. Hmm.
Let’s look at their portraits on the wall. Jeb definitely looks like a smug motherfucker who would ask for three years’ experience for an entry-level position that pays minimum wage. Also note their dates of birth. Jeb would’ve been about company-running age during the Civil War.
We grab some oranges and a napkin off of the table near the door. I hope we don’t try to eat these. Who knows how long they’ve been here. You can also make some tea for an award at the end of the game, but again, I don’t know how I feel about consuming food or drink in this house.
That’s all we can do in the parlor for now, so let’s explore the rest of the house. We can look at the portraits of various Thorntons on the wall, and laugh at their stereotypical Southern names. What up, Beauregard!
Under the stairs is the entrance to this place, the workshop. The first thing we pick up is an electricity manual. Wait, why does Nancy need this? We just got back from nearly getting fried by a Tesla coil, that makes us electricity experts!
The book tells us how to make a homemade batter using fruit, copper coins, and nails. Conveniently, we have all three!
But first, we can explore a little more. We find a rolled-up piece of canvas, and Nancy’s all, “This looks like a painting!” Does it, Nancy? Well, I guess since she’s actually inside the game, she might know better than I do.
The workshop is very dusty and spooky, like the rest of the house, and it’s full of rusty old machinery labeled “Cotton Gin Co.” Uh, so the Thorntons are in the cotton industry? I’m starting to get a little suspicious about what they got up to during the war. We can go a little farther into the room, where we find a door labeled “Thornton Family Cotton Processing.” The plaque is all, “Many a worker lost their fingers working for the Thorntons, but we hella rich now, so it’s cool.” Let’s go in!
And a big ol’ scythe swings down from the ceiling and beheads Nancy. Dang, Thorntons! Who puts a scythe in the CEILING? Maybe one of them went to Waverly and got inspired.
Okay, one second chance button later, we’ll have to avoid that door until we’ve progressed farther in the game. We also have to grab some turpentine, a picker, and a spade from this room, so let’s do that before we start working on Jessalyn’s phone. Is this game the worst in regards to Nancy carrying around an insane amount of objects in her pockets? Like, she’s just hauling a ton of farm equipment around this mansion.
So we want to make a makeshift battery out of oranges, so that we can charge Jessalyn’s phone and figure out what she was up to. There are wires in the jar on the worktable, so we can use those to connect the phone to the oranges. It’ll take a while for the phone to recharge, so we’ll come back to it later.
In the meantime, we can explore some more. Let’s go upstairs, because the second floor of a haunted house is never the creepiest part! We come across an empty picture frame, and Nancy will muse that our mystery canvas probably belongs in it. We put the painting in the frame, and we can see that it’s just another old-ass Thornton. This one is named Franklin.
There’s also a bag of cotton just hanging out in the hallway. As you do.
The hallway opens up into this big room, and we can see that there’s a lantern and a sleeping bag on the floor. This must be where Jessalyn and Addison were having their sleepover. There’s a book in the room, called The Thorntons of Blackrock Island. How many books have been written about the Thornton family history? The Penvellyns wish this many people cared about them. Anyway, the book opens to a page about Roger and Marianna Thornton, who had a nice courtship story and then died in a plane crash on their way to a business meeting. Cheery!
In the hallway, we pass this painting of what looks like Clara. Nancy notes that the area to the left of Clara looks like it was painted over.
At the end of the hallway is a locked door, which we can’t get into yet.
Let’s go back out and talk to Colton now that we have a bit of a better idea what was going on here. On our way out, we pick up this hammer.
We ask Colton what he thinks of Clara, and he tells us that she’s a little severe, but after you get to know her…eh. Nancy says, “You’re holding something back,” and Colton’s like, “So what if I am?” So I’m going to bust open all your secrets, Colton, and confront you really aggressively, and you’re going to regret not just telling me your life story within five minutes of meeting us.
We ask about him and Jessalyn’s history, and he tells us that they’ve been friends since they were little — he actually threw a rock at her face when they were kids, and she still has the scar. I feel you, Jessalyn. The boy I had a crush on through most of my childhood pushed me down a slide in preschool and gave me a scar on my face. Anyway, apparently they were just friends for like ten years, and then Clara was all like, “Everyone in this house ships you, so just date already,” and they got together last year. So really, they’ve only been actually dating for about a year. Interesting.
We leave Colton to go explore the grounds. To the right of the front gate is a marker with a “T” on it, and a piece of paper lying on the ground. We pick it up, and we can see that Jessalyn and Addison were doing some kind of scavenger hunt/bucket list at their sleepover. Note the ominous final task, to survive until morning. Also note that they somehow didn’t find a book about the family, even though we’ve tripped over like three of them in the five minutes since we arrived. Did Addison and Jessalyn even TRY?
We then move forward towards exploring the graveyard, but the second we walk in, this dude confronts us. He’s super pissed that we’re not Savannah. Given the skulking, we’re gonna assume that this is Wade.
Wade initially thinks we’re Savannah’s assistant — “What’s his name get canned?” Heh. Savannah would never fire Logan, not when he’s so good at hanging up on people! I must say, I have some grudging respect for someone who so gleefully refused to help Nancy. Anyway, we give him Savannah’s excuse — that Thornton Hall is just too ~*~spooky~*~ to visit — and he snarls that the real reason Savannah didn’t want to come is because of HIM. Say what?
We’ll get to that in a bit. First, he tells us that Savannah’s sent a package for us, which is up at the house. We’ll have to check on that when we’re done. Then we ask him who else is here, besides Clara and Colton. He creeps that it depends on what we mean by “anyone else,” and Nancy’s like, “Any other characters who I can rock up to and interrogate?” and he’s like, “Oh. In that case, no.”
He’s lying. But we’ll get to that in a bit, too.
So let’s ask him what he thinks of our suspects. He doesn’t like Colton — he thinks something is “crooked” in Colton and Jessalyn’s relationship, although he can’t put his finger on it. Hmm, is he just being one of those weird Southern dudes who post pictures of them threatening their daughter’s boyfriends with a shotgun like it’s cute, or is there something deeper going on?
Wade tells us that Clara currently runs the family company, which he seems salty about, but won’t elaborate on. He insists that he doesn’t want to do it himself, he just thinks Clara shouldn’t do it, for…reasons. We’re like, “Well, the company’s doing very well,” and he bitters that the Thorntons have lots of money, which has caused them no small amount of problems.
So Wade’s hanging around in the graveyard, as you do, because apparently it’s less creepy than being in the house. Ooookay. He says he’s only on the island at all because of Jessalyn. So if you haven’t figured it out by now, Wade’s not exactly on great terms with the rest of the family. We ask about how exactly everyone here is related to each other, and Wade explains that Clara is Wade, Harper, and Charlotte’s cousin. Apparently Clara’s mother died when she was young, and Clara came to live with the cousins, like a Victorian orphan. Charlotte, you’ll recall, died in a fire, and Harper is a “loony bin reject” who is…somewhere. Jessalyn is the only Thornton who doesn’t have beef with anyone in the family.
Alright! So that’s all the mystery-related stuff we can talk to him about right now. Let’s get to something much less relevant but way more interesting: does Wade liiiiike Savannah? He tells us that they met at a bookstore, and Nancy “No Fucking Tact At All” Drew is like, “You can read?” Oh my God, Nancy. Wade says that he and Savannah were both researching the Thornton family history, although Savannah was being hella weird about it — Wade asked her what she was reading, and she just handed him the book and walked off and he had to spend like a month tracking her down. That’s just bizarre, but okay. Savannah was trying to bust Charlotte’s ghost, and developed an obsessed with Thornton Hall. Wade was all like, “You’re trying to hunt down my dead sister, that’s super hot.” Sadly, their relationship didn’t work out, and he implies that it ended badly.
Wade babbles on about how the Thornton history is super twisted, and the family’s always been divided by the good side and the bad side. He doesn’t know which side he’s on. When we ask for elaboration, he says that the Thorntons’ massive fortune was bought “by blood, and not always our own.”
So…yeah, the game pretty heavily implies that the Thorntons had slaves. I believe this was actually confirmed by the writers, but it’s not explicitly said in-game, so they could keep the games’ E rating. It leads to some occasional weirdness — like when they’re all, “Oh yeah, all those workers were sleeping in the factory and died in the fire because we hadn’t built workers’ quarters yet! Ha ha!”, even though the timeline makes it pretty clear that they were making their (unpaid, bondaged) workers sleep in the factory because they were slaves. And then there are a couple of other eerie things that are implied, but not confirmed in-universe or out, which we’ll get to.
Anyway, so that’s finally the end of our conversation with Wade. “Adios,” he tells us, except he says it like “Aey-dee-yohs.” Okay, maybe this is why Nancy has a low opinion of his intelligence.
We can wander through the graveyard, and Wade will tell us the history behind the family as we stop at the gravestones. He tells us about Rosalie Thornton, who was Clara’s mother. He mentions that Rosalie had lots of ~secrets~, and wouldn’t say who Clara’s father was. There’s also a headstone for Harper, although she’s not dead, she just ran away after Charlotte died. The family thought she was dead for a while, and left the headstone just to be dicks about it. There’s also a blank headstone, which Wade says is for some mystery ancestor who was a spy for the North in the Civil War. Her service got the Thorntons the island to build their slave labor factory on, which makes a pretty decent metaphor for the fucked up race relations in this country.
Then we roll up to this headstone here, and the head turns to face us. AAAH! What the fuck!
We pass by a few more headstones, and then we see a crypt that we can’t unlock just yet. Okay, let’s talk to Wade again. He has an electronic thingy for hearing ghosts — which I really should remember the name of, given that it’s come up in two other games now. He asks if we want to hear ghosts, and we can listen to some staticky wind for a bit. Wade, you really gotta step your ghost game up to impress Nancy Drew.
Nancy asks if Wade’s always been into ghostbusting, and he muses that death is the last big question and all that. “Pretty philosophical for a guy wearing boots,” Nancy says. “You northerners don’t have a lock on thinking,” Wade snarks. We do apparently have a lock on pronouncing “adios” correctly, though, WADE. He says that the lyrics of Roscoe J. Redbrook rival any Greek philosopher. Roscoe J. Redbrook was just made up for this game, but I guess Wade’s meant to be referencing a country singer. “And we got that old guy with the white suit and the chickens,” Wade adds. My favorite philosopher of all!
Wade doesn’t know how to get into the crypts, so he’s not of any more use to us right now. Let’s go back to the house. We have a new conversation option for Colton, so let’s do that: “What do you think happened to Jessalyn?” we ask. Colton emos that he’s trying not to think about it, as his mind can go to some dark places when things get bad. When Colton made a Myspace at the age of 13, he wrote “WELCOME TO MY TWISTED MIND” across the top. Anyway, he refuses to elaborate, but we know from Clara that Colton has issues of some kind. Intriguing.
We can also ask what he knows about Clara and her past, and he notes that it’s odd that we bring it up, since Jessalyn kept hedging around the subject of her mom recently. He never figured out what Jessalyn wanted to tell him, though. Hmm.
Well, hey, why don’t we just straight up ask Clara about her traumatic past? I bet that would go over well! But first, let’s see if there’s any other stuff she wants to tell us. Clara brings up that Wade’s been in jail, and ominouses that he can be nice, but only when he wants to be.
We ask her about the locked room upstairs, and Clara says that that was Charlotte’s room, and it’s been locked ever since she died. Nobody goes in there, and there’s no way to open it. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
And WHY were you trying to get in there, Clara? I’M WATCHING YOU.
But! If you’ll recall, on the scavenger hunt list, “Find the key to Charlotte’s bedroom” was crossed out. So clearly Jessalyn found it. Dun dun dun!
In the big room upstairs is where we’ll find the package that Savannah sent. She’s sent us a ghost detector, and a book that she wrote about The Ghost of Thornton Hall (not to be confused with the game we’re playing right now). Savannah notes that we’ll be looking for Jessalyn during the day, which is a lie, unless Nancy is doing some investigating when I’m not controlling her. Bad form, Nancy! I want to be there for all of the awkward interrogations and stealing shit from the house!
The book is full of interviews with people who have claimed to see Charlotte’s ghost and how they nearly died during the encounters (or at least had the shit scared out of them). The very last interview is from someone who knew Charlotte in school, who says that the idea of Charlotte being a vengeful ghost doesn’t gel at all with the Charlotte they knew. “What if the fire changed her?” Savannah asks. “It was an accident,” says the interviewee. Savannah: “What if it wasn’t?” Oh snap!
Let’s call Jessalyn’s friend Addison now. She sounds hella scared, but agrees to talk. We ask about Jessalyn’s relationship with Clara, and Addison snark that Jessalyn used to call her “Chairman Mom.” Heh. Nevertheless, Addison doesn’t think Clara had anything to do with Jessalyn’s disappearance.
We ask about the key to Charlotte’s room, but Addison doesn’t know anything about it. She says Jessalyn must have found it. Addison walks us through what happened the night Jessalyn disappeared: Jessalyn always liked scares and horror and stuff, so they were going to explore the haunted mansion for her bachelorette party. Is it really a party if there are only two people? Whatever. She says that at first everything was normal and they were just joking around, but then Jessalyn started acting weird. At one point, she screamed and disappeared, which freaked Addison out. Jessalyn came back a while later, but wouldn’t talk about where she was or what happened. Then spooky ghost shit started happening — Addison talks about hearing voices and feeling like she was being ~watched~ — and then, during the night, she started feeling fuzzy and wasn’t able to move. Jessalyn disappeared again and never came back. Spooky!
Oh, and she has nothing to contribute, re: Colton. Thanks, Addison! Hope you’re not too traumatized by all this!
We can call Bess, too, so let’s do that. I’ve spent way too many games with only the Hardy Boys for company. Instead of Bess, though, Ned picks up. Oh, dude. Are Ned and Bess having a torrid affair? I work SO HARD to keep Nancy from cheating on Ned in these games. I absolutely never pick any conversation option with Frank Hardy that could possibly be construed as flirtatious, and this is how Ned repays me?
Oh, no, wait, Bess has just made Ned be her friend because George is sick or something and no one will listen to Bess ramble about otters now. “He’s very quick to Stockholm,” Bess adds. “Nickerson family trait. We like being liked,” Ned says. Hee. Anyway, Nancy catches them up on the case, and says that she’s taking this whole ghost thing seriously. Bess: “Permission to do a spit take on Ned’s floor?” Ned: “Please don’t.” Nancy says that she doesn’t really believe in ghosts, but the legend is such a big deal around here, she might miss something if she doesn’t take it seriously. Fair enough.
Bess is all, “Remember in Kyoto, you told me that ghosts are what people invent when an injustice can’t be fixed?” “Sounds me-ish,” Nancy says. Uh, Nancy, you didn’t say that, Rentaro said that. Stop plagiarizing my evil deer-impersonating boyfriend. Anyway, Bess suggests that figuring out what the deal with the ghost is will help us find Jessalyn. Bess, that’s what we just — you know what, nevermind.
There’s some more wacky banter with Bess and Ned, but we’re done with most of the relevant stuff, so let’s call Savannah. She doesn’t have much to say, she just goes on that she didn’t just refuse to come to Blackrock Island because of Wade and their bad breakup — “The living Thorntons are just as scary as the dead ones,” she says. She creeps at us that there are an insane amount of graves on the island: “I can’t help but wonder if they’re misfortunate fools, or just addicted to Sunday clothes and the sound of a spade takin’ a bit out of cold clay.” Yeesh.
Then we back up from the table where we’ve been talking on the phone, and we turn around, and HOLY SHIT WHO IS THAT!
Actually, on closer inspection, that outfit is a #look. My preteen mall goth self definitely would’ve wanted to replicate that for Halloween.
The ghost disappears, and Nancy’s like, “Whatever.” I’M like, “What the fuck, dude,” but I guess that’s why I’m not a super sleuth, just someone who pretends to be one while keeping a walkthrough open in the other window.
So we want to use the turpentine we got from the workshop, and put it on the handkerchief we stole from the parlor. Then we can uncover the painted-over part of Clara’s portrait. Nancy notes that it looks like there’s a part of the graveyard that we haven’t seen yet.
I popped in to check on Jessalyn’s phone, but it’s not charged yet. So let’s go talk to Clara about all those graves in her portrait! Because that’s not weird or anything! “We had that covered up for a reason,” she says. Clara’s interesting, because she’s never really rude or snappish the way a lot of Nancy Drew characters are — she’s always calling Nancy “hon” and generally being very motherly, but she also has some pretty clear boundaries, re: Nancy’s nosing. We try to bring up seeing Charlotte’s ghost, but Clara shuts that down too.
But hey, Wade believes in ghosts, so maybe we can get more out of him. He tells us that kids used to come around the house, trying to summon Charlotte’s ghost with a rhyme: “Fire so red, night so black, dear sweet Charlotte, please come back.” Spooky! We’re like, “We’re pretty sure we saw Charlotte’s ghost,” and Wade’s like, “Yeah, you’re definitely gonna die in there.” Dang, Wade, you could try to be more comforting!
Also: Clara told us that Wade’s been in jail. “Yes. I advise against it,” he says. “Why?” Nancy asks. “It’s not a nice place, and they don’t let you leave.” I feel like Wade is just being smart with us to get back at Nancy for the boots comment. He won’t tell us what he went to jail for, and when we suggest that it might be something that would make him a danger to Jessalyn, he gets pissed and won’t talk to us anymore.
But! We now know that there are secret graves in the graveyard, so let’s go find them. They’re hidden behind a bunch of ivy next to the fountain. One of the tombstones is blank, and the other says “Fifty Four Souls.”
Wade is willing to talk to us again, as long as the topic is creepy old stories and not his criminal record. He tells us at that the “Fifty Four Souls” are the slaves unpaid Southern workers of the 19th century who died in the factory fire. Not that the game ever says this explicitly, but Wade tells us that the fire was more than a hundred years ago.
We go back to where Wade’s standing, and five minutes after he gets mad at us, he’s willing to tell us all his dark secrets. He says he’ll tell us why he was in jail if we keep it to ourselves. Oh, Wade, you know the entire damn town of River Heights is gonna know after this. He tells us that a while back, he heard through the grapevine that The Company was up to its usual capitalist, worker-mistreating ways. I bet half the Thorntons’ employees are unpaid interns. Wade confronted Clara, she naturally denied it, so he broke into the factory one night to see for himself. He ended up breaking some of the machinery, too, and went to jail for it. Dang, Clara, that’s cold. So Wade’s not very happy with her.
We go back to the house, and we hear some ~*~EERIE SINGING~*~. Nancy notes that it sounds like it’s coming from upstairs, but when we go up to check, there’s nothing there. DUN DUN DUN!
So let’s talk to Clara about how she sent her cousinbrother to jail for trying to unionize and shit. First, we can ask her about Charlotte, and Clara waxes on for a bit about how people thought that they were sisters, and how Charlotte’s joined the legions of other creepy ghosts around the house. Comforting! She denies that she’s the reason Wade went to jail, except in the literal sense. She says that she pressed charges, because he did break the law, and he was hanging out with a bunch of suspicious friends, so she thought it was for his own good. She thought he’d only get community service or something, though; she didn’t send him to jail on purpose. She doesn’t think he would have kidnapped Jessalyn to get back at her, but who knows, right?
Over in the workshop, Jessalyn’s phone has finally finished charging. But we don’t know the password. AAAGH! Jessalyn, why you gotta make it so hard for us to find you?
Let’s call Addison to see if she knows how to get into Jessalyn’s phone. Addison says that sometime when they were hanging out around the tombstones, Jessalyn said something about putting her phone password there in case something happened to her. Addison thought she was joking, but maybe she wasn’t.
Now let’s call Savannah. We ask what happened when she met Charlotte’s ghost, and Savannah intones that Charlotte took Savannah back to the night she died. Nancy’s like, “Cool, did you see anything that would help me solve the mystery?” and Savannah’s like, “No, I didn’t see anything, like, useful. Just like, fire, man.”
Sorry, I know Savannah’s meant to be Southern, but I’m from the Bay Area, and it just comes out 🙁
Anyway, Savannah goes on to say that all families have one thing in common. “Unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way,” she doesn’t say. No, she says that each generation tends to be just like the last — and she thinks Jessalyn is like Charlotte. If someone had it out for Charlotte — which Savannah thinks is true, based on her very scientific ghost visit — then Jessalyn’s always been in trouble. Interesting.
So, Jessalyn’s password. On the scavenger hunt list, there are a bunch of clues for something called the “Gravestone epitaph hunt!” Looking at gravestones! Such fun!
The point of the hunt is to find the word and letter indicated in the clues, which will spell out Jessalyn’s password. The first hint is “Nana 8, 1.” The diary in the parlor about what’s-his-face and Sarah Emma indicated that Sarah was known as Nana to the family. So we go to her gravestone and find the 8th word in her epitaph, which is “voice.” The first letter of “voice” is V, so the first letter in Jessalyn’s password is V. We do that for the rest of the gravestones until we’ve put together Jessalyn’s password: VWRMYFITS.
And now we can see what secrets are on Jessalyn’s phone! God, I hope there aren’t any nudes of Colton.
Up next: There’s creepy shit hiding in the basement. We find out more Thornton family secrets, and Colton reveals that he’s kind of a fuckboy. #menaretrash
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