Ransom Riggs is sharing some photos from his personal collection in conjunction with the release of Tales of the Peculiar, a companion novel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, soon to be a major motion picture, directed by Tim Burton.
Tales of the Peculiar releases on September 3 which is Loop Day, a date well known to fans of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children!
As the date approaches, Millard Nullings, an invisible boy and the most scholarly of the peculiars, is on a hunt to uncover the location of the new North American loop by following clues from Miss Crake, an old friend of Miss Peregrine’s. Millard, who narrates Tales of the Peculiar, has written this note to go along with the next photo in the trail.
Hello, readers and friends — an update. Since you last heard from me, I examined the cabinet card photograph left by Miss Crake. Clearly, from the writing on the bottom of the card, she fled to somewhere in the vicinity of Upper Sandusky, Ohio, so that’s where I focused my search.
The symbolism of the skull in the lap of the young man at center was obvious enough: Miss Crake was leading me to a graveyard. But which one? There are seven in the vicinity of Upper Sandusky — but only one, the Infirmary Cemetery, that’s just down the road from a quarry, the importance of which I deduced from the pick-axe in the hand of the young man on the right side of the photo.
A bit of research told me that this graveyard had been attached to what had long been the county poorhouse and sanatorium; very likely home to some peculiars over the years. Searching their burial records, I found a Mr. Emmanuel Stutz, whose entry in the county ledger reads: “Died aged 55, brain cracked, partially sane. Third eye on top of head. Buried behind the railroad tracks, November 7, 1894.”
With great effort I located Mr. Stutz’s grave, for the area behind said tracks was grown over with weeds and had been flooded periodically. There, tucked into a plastic envelope beneath a tuft of grass, was a second photograph.
Article Continues BelowAlongside it was a short note in a hurried scrawl, which reads: “I waited some days here but could not stay longer, for fear I might be caught. I hope you will keep looking — for all our sakes. Yours desperately, Miss Crake.” As you can see, there is some writing on the back of the photo itself, though whether or not it is meaningful isn’t readily obvious.
I hope you can offer me some help, friends.
In celebration of his new book, Ransom Riggs has a pair of events. First he has Loop Day celebrations set up in the Bay Area for release day and he is going out on tour with Tahereh Mafi.
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