Making of: Elodie's Curse

Do you believe in ghosts? We usually don’t in our real world. But how about a dream world that is not rational in itself?

In this adventure, Miray and Dian get to the bottom of this question. I put them in an old French country house that is haunted and let them investigate the cause.

Origin

The idea for this story started with a single scene: An old French maison, it’s night, a thunderstorm is raging outside, and just in time for witching hour a hellish noise suddenly starts.

My problem was to construct a complete story around this scene.

The first concept revolved around counterfeiters who put a hidden printing press into operation in the basement of the house, and tried to cover the noise of the machine with the haunting. I still like the idea, but I couldn’t manage to construct an exciting and coherent story with a good twist.

I also wanted at least one dead, so I added a mysterious dead woman by the lake. I constructed a story about a pair of lovers and a covered-up murder. This was now too close to another idea that I want to save for later.

In this story, I also wanted to reveal that Miray is an excellent fighter. This was already apparent in the Orient Express, where she struck down the Velvet Fox in an unexplained manner, and also overpowered the Conducteur. In this story, an antagonist had to be found whom she could defeat – this time for everyone to see.

My first idea was to make Laurent the culprit and have the showdown take place in the attic. But that was too obvious. So I introduced Monsieur Farges. He served as the ideal plot twist.

Research Work

The story itself could take place almost everytime and everywhere. This made research relatively easy.

An interesting part was to create a menu for the dîner where animal blood would be used. I also needed information about the cars about that time. For both, Wikipedia was very helpful.

Choice of Names

The three maids are called Agnès, Denise, and Paule. If you’re interested in home computers of the late 1980s, it should ring a bell: These are the French names of the three custom chips of the Commodore Amiga.