Paranormal Files: Fellow Traveler

**Paranormal Files: Fellow Traveler** is the first installment in the *Paranormal Files* series by Elephant Games.

## Plot

Rick Rogers starts the game by having the worst day of his life. He's been living with his girlfriend and getting ready to propose to her, but unexpectedly gets fired from his job. Coming home early, he catches his girl in bed with his best friend. Distraught and disgusted, he packs up everything he owns in his car and sets off for the house which he inherited after his father died. Along the way, he comes across a hitchhiking girl named Emily, and offers her a ride. She has him take her to the Bennet estate, explaining that she's engaged to Nicholas Bennet. Before he gets there, however, Emily vanishes, and a strange message is suddenly scrawled on his windshield in what looks like blood. *3 days.*

Rick finds his way to the elegant Bennet estate. Inside the house he meets Rose Bennet, an elderly woman who shakes her head over the story he tells her. This isn't the first time she's heard the tale and she doubts it will be the last. She explains that her son Nicholas was indeed engaged to Emily, but both bride and groom are dead. Rick has given a ride to a hitchhiking ghost. He is now on a tight deadline, pun intended, because if he can't solve the mystery of Emily's death within three days, he himself will die. Exploring the estate in search of clues, he finds another victim who is mere hours away from his own deadline. Rick promises to work with him to resolve the matter, but it's not enough time and Rick is with the other man when he dies, feeling remorseful that he couldn't arrive in time to save his new friend. He soon discovers that his new friend is just the latest in dozens of victims over the years, many of whom are buried out back by the estate's sadistic gardener.

Rick continues investigating and soon learns that, although Rose attempted to welcome Emily into her home and life when Nicholas brought her home, she was soon presented with evidence by the gardener that Emily was stealing from her. She directed the gardener to kill the young woman, and Rick eventually comes across the car she was driving when she was forced off the road into a ditch; her body is still wearing the shreds of her wedding dress, as she had been on her way to meet Nicholas at the altar. Some of the evidence Rick finds suggests that the gardener may have framed Emily for the theft, but for no clear reason. He also finds Rose's body at the bottom of a well, and realizes that the woman in the house was also a ghost.

Continuing his search, Rick learns that Nicholas had to be committed to a hospital after Emily's death, and he goes to the now-abandoned institution to try to find out what happened to him. Nicholas ultimately died there, succumbing to poison his mother had fed him; she had been trying to sedate him but accidentally overdosed him. He finally makes his way to Nicholas's grave, where he's able to defeat the demonic spirit of Rose Bennet. Nicholas and Emily are reunited and once again dressed in wedding finery, beaming at Rick. Before they depart into the afterlife, Emily presents Rick with a special gift - she grants him what she calls "protection from death," and says that he has the ability to help both the living and the dead.

The game ends with Rick embracing this new destiny, and opening the Paranormal Files detective agency.

### Bonus Chapter

Not long after the purging of spirits from the Bennett estate, Rick takes a call from a distressed father whose young daughter has been acting strangely. He thinks she might be possessed, because he's sure that their house is haunted by something unfriendly. Exploring their house, he learns that the previous residents had been a mother and her little girl. They, too, had picked up the hitchhiking Emily and delivered her to the Bennett estate, but the mother had not stayed to learn about the mystery or their doom. The little girl's ghost is not malevolent; rather, she's deeply confused about what's happened to her and why she's trapped in the house. Rick is able to piece together what's needed to reunite the spirit of the girl with that of her mother, and they pass gratefully into the afterlife. The still-living child and her father are able to resume a normal, un-haunted life.

## Characters

* Rick Rogers: The player character, an ordinary young man who stumbles into something beyond horrifying.
* Emily: The ghost of a murdered young woman who is trying to reunite with her fiancé.
* Nicholas Bennett: Emily's fiancé, also a ghost, who died in an insane asylum.
* Rose Bennett: The ghost of Nicholas's mother, who arranged Emily's murder and has cursed every driver who picks up the hitchhiking ghost.
* The gardener: An unnamed (and apparently still living) caretaker on the Bennett estate, who killed Emily and quite possibly Rose, and takes glee in tormenting Rick and burying the bodies of those who die on the property.

## Connections

* The case is referenced in Rick's casebook in a number of subsequent games, including *The Trap of Truth*.

## Trivia

* The details about Rick's cheating girlfriend and best friend are only discovered if the player takes the time to read his diary, which is in his car at the beginning of the game.
* Rose Bennett is voiced by Gale Van Cott, a recurring voice actress with Elephant Games. She appears as a number of characters in the shared universe, including Josephine in *Haunted Hotel: Lost Time* and the title character of *Mystery Trackers: Queen of Hearts*.

## External Links

* *Paranormal Files: Fellow Traveler* at Big Fish Games
* *Paranormal Files* at TV Tropes
* Elephant Games on Facebook