Lucy Hawthorne

**Lucy Hawthorne** (1990 - 31 May 2018) was a journalist specialising in the review of computer games, a member of the Tillinghast family, and a vessel for Ipqu-Aya. On the 31st May 2018, she was murdered by Dr. Jonathan Willett in her home in Highgate, London. Willett was charged and convicted of her murder and imprisoned in Broadmoor Hospital.

## Early Life

Lucy was born Lucy Tillinghast in 1990. Lucy's father is unknown but her mother, Emma Tillinghast, was a daughter of Caroline Hughes and cult leader Joseph Curwen. This meant that, through her mother, Lucy was a part of the Ipqu-Aya bloodline and a potential vessel for the deity. However, this was not made public and legally both Emma and Lucy were recognised as belonging to the Tillinghast family through Sir Godfrey Tillinghast. For the first two years, Emma raised Lucy as a single parent but employed the services of a live-in nanny, Barbara Sayers. It's unclear whether Emma was aware of Sayers's history with her biological father's cult in Pawtuxet, Rhode Island.

In 1992, Emma Tillinghast married Robert Hawthorne and Lucy's surname was changed to Hawthorne. At the same time, Sayers was dismissed from her duties as Lucy's nanny and she returned to the United States. Robert and Emma divorced at some point in the 2000s when Lucy was in her teens and Emma moved overseas. In 2017, Lucy's adopted father, Robert, died of a heart attack having suffered from heart problems for a number of years.

## Death

Hawthorne had a cousin in Providence, Rhode Island who was also a grandchild of Joseph Curwen. Charles Dexter Ward had been found by former members of Curwen's cult, the Soldiers of Ipqu-Aya, and for a number of years was groomed as a vessel for Ipqu-Aya, like his grandfather before him. One of these cult members was Barbara Sayers. However, Ward's eccentric behaviour and the protective nature of his parents meant that he came to the attention of Dr. Jonathan Willett, a local psychiatrist who supported Ward sporadically through his teenage years. By the mid 2010s, Ward had been committed by Willett to a secure psychiatric hospital but the year the doctor spent working with the young man opened his eyes to the occult danger posed by Ipqu-Aya. In 2017, Willett killed Ward feeling convinced that the person incarcerated had long since ceased to actually be Charles Dexter Ward. Ward's body immediately crumbled to dust and, with no evidence, Ward's disappearance was registered as a missing persons case and not a murder. This left Willett was free to continue on his new crusade of finding and eliminating other vessels of Ipqu-Aya.

It had taken Willett a year to establish the familial relationship between Hawthorne and Ward when he visited Lucy in May of 2018. By this point, Hawthorne had established herself as a games review journalist and she was living in a ground floor flat in a house off the Archway Road. Before forcing his way into Hawthorne’s home he set a Dictaphone to record their conversation. At first, Hawthorne claimed no knowledge of her distant American cousin or of Ipqu-Aya. However, when Willett pinned her to the ground and started to recite an invocation from the *Necronomicon*, Hawthorne demeanour changed immediately from panicking to very calm and composed - she corrected his pronunciation of the invocation and then started to reason with the doctor. She showed Willett a glimpse of the Dreamlands she saw in her sleep in an effort to convert him as follower of Ipqu-Aya. However, what Willett saw so terrified him that, in reaction, he stabbed Hawthorne multiple times with a kitchen knife. Unlike her cousin, Hawthorne appears not to have turned to dust upon being killed but the incarcerated Dr. Willett has challenged this version of events suggesting the body recovered might have been planted to aid in his prosecution and imprisonment.

## Aftermath

Hawthorne's death had a number of important consequences. With both Ward and Hawthorne now dead, the Soldiers of Ipqu-Aya were tasked with finding yet another member of the Ipqu-Aya bloodline to replace the Tillinghast branch that Dr. Willett had put an end to. At the same time, Hawthorne's murder drew the attention of the investigative podcast, the Mystery Machine, who were already interested in her cousin's disappearance from a year earlier. Therefore, Hawthorne's murder became the catalyst for the abduction of her cousin, Melody Cartwright, as well as starting Matthew Heawood and Kennedy Fisher on an investigation that would expose them to the hidden world of witchcraft and the occult embedded within the establishment.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 TCoCDW: "Episode 1"
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 TCoCDW: "Episode 7"
3. ↑ TCoCDW: "Episode 3"
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 TCoCDW: "Episode 5"
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 TCoCDW: "Episode 9"
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 TCoCDW: "Episode 10"
7. ↑ Dr. Allen and Barbara Sayers would try a similar approach when trying to recruit Kennedy Fisher to their cause. (TCoCDW: "Episode 9")