Under the Crab Apple Tree
Hall-Mills · New Jersey · 1922
“The whole county has an opinion. Nobody has a statement.”
The lane runs out past the last of the streetlights, and by September the grass stands high enough to hide a whole Sunday. Two people are found beneath a crab apple tree at the edge of it, and letters have been left about them where anyone at all might read them. Within the week the field has been walked flat by sightseers and half the county is quoted in the papers. Everyone talks. Very few of them will say a word of it on oath.
That is as much as the file will give you. The rest reaches your guests in stages, and the letters are only the beginning of what the night will hand around.
What you get
Fully scripted evening
Every act cued, every scene set, your lines where you need them. No prep, no printing, no experience required.
Clues arrive in stages
Evidence and private dossiers drop to your guests' phones as the night unfolds, one act at a time.
You play the victim
Set the table, welcome your guests, then haunt the evening while they work out who wanted you gone.
6 to 12 players
A core cast carries the case, with flexible roles as your table grows. Latecomers can join as observers.
App-hosted
The case runs from any screen in the room. Your TV is the stage, the phones are the wings.
The Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found dead on a lane outside New Brunswick, New Jersey, in September 1922. The case became one of the most heavily reported in American history. A trial four years later ended in acquittal, and the deaths have never been satisfactorily explained.
The game reopens the case and reaches a solution of its own. Knowing the history will not spoil your night, and history does not decide the verdict at your table. Your guests do.
These were real people and real deaths. The file is written with that in mind: we reopen the questions, not the graves.
Reopen Under the Crab Apple Tree.
Host it for your own table, or take the free case for a spin first and see how the evidence treats you.