And finally from me! Such a pleasure to meet you all on Sunday. If you weren't there, the Hunt is finally over and stories can be found in many places including here. If you're a Hunter, whether you were there or not, please do send me your postal address if you haven't already so that Mr Grandison can post you a small (non-golden) memento of our Hunt together. I don't know yet what the future holds for me but I do hope I run into you again at some point. Very best to you all, Phil
ps
the video message from Mr Grandison is here and photos of the letter from Clarisse are here
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Details for Sunday have been sent in response to your emails!
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Regarding Voltaire and next Sunday's 'Goldbug Day', please read here.
THURSDAY:
A message from Sonia is posted to us all here.
WEDNESDAY:
A message from myself, Phil, is posted to you all here.
A message from Mr Grandison is posted to you all here.
TUESDAY MORNING:
Everyone should read this post regarding Sonia.
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After the event s of Saturday, it appears that the Hunt may be at an end, without success.
Mr Grandison has asked me in advance of a more detailed announcement to convey that he wishes to "reassure every Hunter that they are not held accountable for the actions of Sonia, and that no anger is held on his part towards any of them".
Please continue to watch this space.
Phil
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the guide to the rest of this site follows:
to get round this site
- For news and announcements, click here
- To solve this week's puzzles and gain the chance of entering Masque Of The Red Death, click here and look to the puzzle forum here for discussions.
- If you have adventured inside the Masque and want to post your account, click here and either start a new thread or add yours onto whichever seems most suitable.
- For documents that have emerged, click here
- For some threads attempting to summarise what we know about the Hunt to date and about the people of our story, click Hunt or People
To find out more, read on!
I'm Phil Harper. I recently started working for an old gentleman called Mr Grandison, taking over from a friend of mine called Sonia Delfont. I'll come back to her near the end. Mr Grandison is the descendant of another Rupert Grandison who dug up a buried treasure of pirate gold in America in the 1840's by cracking a code. Only for his then friend William Moray to steal it and disappear in Europe. Part of this history was fictionalised by Edgar Allan Poe into his tale 'The Gold-Bug'.
It appears that before he died Moray left a trail of puzzles and codes for his heir to find the treasure. Moray was last heard of in Paris but we think the treasure was hidden in London, very possibly in Battersea in fact.
The most curious thing is that somehow clues to the trail and the story of Moray have been appearing in Punchdrunk's Masque Of The Red Death. More summary information on the trail can be found here and on what we know about Moray and others in the story can be found here.
Mr Grandison discovered this history and called this treasure hunt originally to rally hunters to search the Masque to find these clues. And, if we help significantly in Mr Grandison's opinion, we join the Hunters' Club and all get one part of the treasure found, as Mr Grandison only desires for himself for the signet ring stolen with the treasure. I am employed to run the website and set regular puzzles for people to solve to win the chance of tickets to re-enter the theatre via a friend on the inside. We encourage people to post their stories of their experience because there may be clues to the mystery.
If you solve a puzzle correctly and get picked (by my magic dice) then we have a brown envelope route to get you into the Masque to do more hunting...
Now Sonia, who was doing my job, led a small group of us on a break-in into the deserted theatre where something peculiar happened. But not half as strange as the fact that on her birthday drink, she was handed an inheritance letter by an American lawyer which shows that she is in actual fact the heir of William Moray (which Mr Grandison had known all along but was at great pains to let her find out as was intended). The stress was too much for her and she resigned, but she graciously handed over the sheet of code that is her inheritance before she left. We are really close it seems to finding the key that will decipher that code and lead us to the treasure!
Okay, that's the long and the short of it. There is plenty more to be found by digging into the forum. Or I can answer questions as best I can. There are puzzles online to be solved by Friday and I'll post new ones over the weekend for the week following.
Allons-y!
Phil