A free night from Seven Nights Dead

One Night on Sepulchre Hill

Captain Fathom’s spyglass has gone missing from his grave, and the whole Hill blames Dirge. Seven puzzles, one night, and a thief to name before dawn.

The puzzles are new, made for this page in the style of the book, and nothing in them spoils it. Play on screen, or print them and grab a pencil.

Begin the night About the book

Medium ×2
Hard ×3
Fiendish ×2

Ghosts on Sepulchre Hill under the moon, watching a funeral below — Sepulchre Hill, from *Seven Nights Dead*

Captain Ezra Fathom, a bearded ghost in a dripping sou’wester, holding his spyglass — Captain Ezra Fathom, and his spyglass, before tonight

The case of the Captain’s spyglass

The dead are hopeless at mysteries

In Sorrowby the dead are buried at dusk, because the fog prefers it. On Sepulchre Hill, above the town, they sleep by day and argue by night.

Captain Ezra Fathom sailed round the world eleven times and drowned in the canal lock on the way home from his retirement dinner. He has kept his brass spyglass beside his headstone ever since, for watching ships that never come. Tonight it is gone, and the whole Hill says the same thing: Dirge.

Dirge, the one-eyed raven, says nothing, because he is a raven. Somebody has to sort this out before dawn, and the dead are no help: they keep getting distracted by their own mysteries.

Seven puzzlesFrom Medium to Fiendish, in the book’s own kinds of puzzle. Each one gives you a clue, answered with a word or two.
Keys carried overThe Captain’s ladder (6) gives you the key to the last puzzle, the way keys pass between puzzles in the book.
Your casebookEvery clue you find is written into your casebook at the end. With them, name the thief and say where the spyglass is.
Stuck?Every puzzle has hints, and you can show its answer. Your progress is kept on this device.

The suspects

DirgeThe one-eyed raven. Fond of anything shiny, and of keys above all.

Tom Tolliver, a ghostly highwayman in a tricorn and half-mask

Tom TolliverA highwayman who insists he never robbed a coach in his life: he only borrowed them.

Orlando Plume, a ghostly poet with a long scarf and a quill

Orlando PlumeA poet who died of a chill caught composing an ode to rain, in the rain.

Humphrey Dunn, a ghostly bailiff in a bowler hat with a ledger

Humphrey DunnA bailiff so polite that he apologized to the furniture he took.

Spirit Board

The Talking Tomb

MediumAbout 10 minutes

Jonas Pennywhistle, stonemason, carved the lid of his own table-tomb into a spirit board so that the dead could leave one another notes. Mrs. Graves, who never lies and never lets anyone forget it, has left one about the spyglass. Somebody has chalked the planchette’s moves beside it.

How it works. The planchette starts on the given letter. ↻ 3 moves it three letters clockwise round the rim, ↺ 2 two letters counterclockwise, ✕ straight across the dial, and ↻ 0 taps the same letter again. Write the letter it lands on under each move; a dot is the gap between two words.

Start on T. The note, move by move:

The question. By what hour was the spyglass gone? Write one word.

Knock Code

The Knocker of Plot Nine

MediumAbout 10 minutes

Mr. Silas Knell has not come up since the day he was buried: he says it is drafty. He knocks on his lid instead, and the whole Hill listens. Tonight he is knocking about Dirge, the one-eyed raven, who is everybody’s first suspect when anything shiny goes missing.

How it works. Each letter is two groups of knocks: the row first, then the column of Mr. Knell’s square. He fills it with his own name first, then the rest of the alphabet, so it is printed for you. I and J share a square. Each line of knocks is one word.

Mr. Knell’s square

The question. Where did Dirge sleep? Write the last two words of the place.

Ghost Testimony

Five on the Wall

HardAbout 15 minutes

Tom Tolliver, highwayman, insists he never robbed a coach in his life: he only borrowed them. Tonight he has borrowed the evening off, and five ghosts on the cemetery wall are arguing about where he spent it.

Hill rules. At moonrise each ghost decides whether to tell the truth or to lie, and keeps to it until dawn. The Misses Lorn always disagree, so on any night exactly one of the twins tells the truth. A truthful ghost says only true things; a lying ghost only false things. Tap a ghost’s button to mark it truthful or lying as you work.

The question. Where was Tom Tolliver from dusk until midnight?

Mourners and Graves

Mourners at Moonrise

HardAbout 20 minutes

At moonrise the dead sit down beside their graves and trade the evening’s gossip. Each grave has exactly one mourner tonight, and each mourner sits on a letter carved in the turf. Tonight the gossip is about Mr. Humphrey Dunn, the bailiff so polite that he apologized to the furniture he took.

How it works. Put one mourner beside each grave (above, below, left or right of it), one mourner per grave. Mourners never touch one another, not even at a corner. The numbers count the mourners in each row and column. Then read the letters under the mourners, row by row from the top, left to right. Tap a square once for a mourner, twice to mark it empty.

Letters under your mourners: —

The question. What did Mr. Dunn do all night? Write the letters under the mourners.

Crypt Maze

The Way Through the Crypt

HardAbout 15 minutes

Mrs. Graves shows you the crypt under the Hill. The dead scratch notes on its walls for one another; only the notes along the true way through are meant for you. The rest is old gossip, most of it about Dirge.

How it works. There is exactly one way from IN to OUT that never goes back on itself. Read the letters along it, in order. Letters in dead ends are old notes: ignore them. Tap squares to shade your path.

The question. Write the letters on the true path, in order from IN to OUT.

Epitaph Puzzle

The Captain’s Ladder

FiendishAbout 20 minutes

To pass the centuries, Captain Fathom chalked a word ladder on his own headstone: from GLASS to SPOOK, one letter at a time, every rung a word. He chalked a clue for each rung as well, but he wrote them down as they came to him, which was not in order.

How it works. Change one letter at a time; every rung is an English word. GLASS is the first rung and SPOOK the eighth.

The Captain’s clues, in no order (tap one to cross it off)

The question. Write the third rung (GLASS is the first).

Keep this word: the last puzzle needs it.

Ledger Cipher

Verses Under the Planchette

FiendishAbout 25 minutes

At midnight the ghosts lifted the Talking Tomb’s planchette and found a page of verse underneath: unsigned, and written in the Vigenère cipher, which every poet on the Hill uses so that the others cannot steal their rhymes.

How it works. Write the key over the cipher letters, again and again (letters only). Shift each letter back by its key letter’s place in the alphabet (A = 0, B = 1 … Z = 25).

The Vigenère table (find the key letter’s row, then the cipher letter; the column above it is the plain letter)

The question. Where is the spyglass now? Write the last two words of the hiding place.

The final question

What the Dead Know

Dawn is coming up the Hill, and the dead want an answer before they go to bed. Here is everything you found tonight.

The Talking Tomb Not solved yet.
The Knocker of Plot Nine Not solved yet.
Five on the Wall Not solved yet.
Mourners at Moonrise Not solved yet.
The Way Through the Crypt Not solved yet.
The Captain’s Ladder Not solved yet.
Verses Under the Planchette Not solved yet.

The question. Who took Captain Fathom’s spyglass, and where is it now?

The thief The spyglass is now in

Owlbrook Grim Tales · Book Four

Seven Nights Dead

You have been murdered. You have seven nights to find out who did it.

Tonight was one night on Sepulchre Hill. The book has seven, and a murder at the end of them: your own. Spirit boards, knock codes, lying ghosts, memory nonograms, mourners and graves, crypt mazes, epitaph puzzles, ledger ciphers, alibi timelines and floor plans: 49 puzzles, a “What the Dead Know” question every night, and a final accusation. Every puzzle has exactly one answer, checked by computer, with hints and full solutions in the back.

See the book

Reading it on Kindle? The Solver’s Pack has every worksheet ready to print. More gothic mysteries in Owlbrook Grim Tales.