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outlaw@outlaw-effects.com| Christian Chelman's Hauntique of Homicide U.K. |
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Creating a 'time capsule' is one of the core fundamentals you need to master when developing a 'hauntique'. A lot of factors are involved, the main one being the central items and how you acquire parallel objects.  For Homicide, I already had the ID card and driving licence for an English police officer named Peter Cairns who worked in the town of Dunstable (Bedfordshire, England) from the 1940s to the 1970s. This simple document prompted me to choose the UK version of Homicide instead of the US version. The notebooks in the UK version of Homicide pertain to London, and fortunately the town of Dunstable is very close to the UK capital. This explains why, even though the police officer in question lived near London, he didn't go there every day. Consequently, he needed to take the bus or train to go there, which explains why a couple of old tickets are stuffed in amongst the pages of the notebooks. Sometimes he stayed in the city for a few days, at various hotels, which means he would have made notes on different paper found in those hotels. This also holds true for hotels elsewhere in England. But he needed a map of the city and a map of the London Underground (the subway system) to get around. The Underground map dates from 1932. It was the last one produced before the more stylised model came into use. Peter Cairns, a man of habit, kept it safe. Same thing for the city map.  The box in which he stashed his little secrets is a Huntley & Palmer box (a box that looks like a stack of books, known as a Waverly box; dating from 1903) that had been kept in the family. As I implied above, Mr Cairns was very conservative in his habits and back then people did not throw packaging away as readily as we do today. Moreover, Officer Cairns had a little secret: he would drink on duty. He mainly did it to help him keep warm while walking the beat in winter. He smoked too. So it will come as no surprise to find in the box a hip flask of whiskey, a collapsible cup, a box of cigarettes and a box of matches. Opening the matchbox, we see that he used it to store 'evidence' from a crime that had been bothering him and an extra button for his police uniform. Peter Cairns' father and grandfather were polices officer too, and it just so happened that the younger Cairns still had the old man's police whistle. It's right there in the box. They say that his grandfather took part in the hunt for Jack the Ripper. The box also contains a deck of cards bearing the logo of Capsan cigarettes, a very popular brand at the time. Mr Cairns sometimes played cards with his friends. He was not married. Like any self-respecting police officer, he kept a pencil attached to his notebooks. Peter Cairns was a Protestant, conservative and - with his modest policeman's salary - not exactly rolling in cash. Peter Cairns has a dog, probably a big one, some notes have been taken on the back of a dog food publicity. According to his ID card, he had a large mole removed from his face; the scar still bothered him a bit. And he had a nervous tic. That completes the foundation for the time capsule. Now we can add the story and trick.  |