The discovery of the Cursed City, Kingstown Falls.

My father's last case was the one that the authorities wanted kept quiet the most.  The last one before he disappeared in 1959.

Kingstown Falls.

I received a letter in '82 to travel to Beaver County and interview the retired Post Master from Beaver Falls. The letter stated he would have an interesting story to tell.  The letter was held by Western Union. (Yeah, like Back To The Future II!) It was delivered by instruction. Why after 22 years? Why 1982?

I have no idea who the letter was from. It was stamped from Boston, Mass. 1960. I was intrigued to say the least. I would be a fool to let it slip me by. After all, I am Charles Edsel's son.


Was the letter from my pops and would it have any clues to his whereabouts?

And so the mystery begins...

I travelled to Beaver Falls. I met up with the retired Post Master. He told me he worked and went on to manage the Post Office in Beaver Falls from 1961 to 1990. The Post Office was the largest in Beaver County. It looked after and sorted mail for 30 boroughs and 22 townships.

 "I was an "Off-comer". I got transferred from Pinebox, Texas in the winter of '61.
 My reception was as frosty as the Pennsylvania winter. It was a real struggle to get accepted by the locals. But the gossip and hostilities was more bearable than the Texas heat. I started on the counters. I enjoyed my work. I liked Beaver Falls. And I wanted to manage to the place. And eventually I would."

 He would take a draw on his pipe and continue..

 "The Post Office and Sorting Office was kept separate. The post from the counters would be collected by the Sorting Manager or the sorters during the course of the working day. Two or three times a day as it was before the time before e-mails and text messages.
 The smallest letters would slip into the tubes we had fitted in '65 and zip off downstairs. The largest post bags were as heavy as coal and placed on carts, the carts would travel the corridor to the chutes and down to the sorting office below. We called it "The Basement" or to new starters, "The Dungeon".
 The mail would then be sorted by the postmen and sorters into "area pigeon-holes" and be delivered by Postal Van or on foot.

 When I became manager in 1970 I had greater communication with the sorting office. My duties increased and amongst other things, I was to sort the "dead mail". The mail that cannot be delivered for various reasons. No stamps or payment on letters. Incorrect addresses. Recipient Gone Away. (RGA)."

The retired manager took a long look at me and started his tale again.

 "A lot of  mail would arrive for Kingstown Falls, Beaver County.
 And it would never get delivered.
 People had heard of it. Or didn't want to talk about it. Or they didn't know where it was. Or they did know where it was but it was "Not in this County!" they would say.
 The place didn't exist so the "dead mail" would be collected by the Postmaster General's Office and it would go to the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta, Georgia or Saint Paul, Minnesota."

 "And every six month a guy, dressed in a suit and shades, (he was more like a Fed than a postal worker) would arrive in a black sedan with government plates. He would take the dead mail for Kingstown Falls and leave without a please nor fuck you."

"Over the years I started to lose patience with the "Fed". If he had been nice and polite I wouldn't have cared a jot. But this guy's attitude needled me over the years. I mean who did he think he was. This big city hotshot coming over to my Post Office, with his fancy suit and shades.
 So I started to "collect" or keep back the mail addressed to Kingstown Falls. Oh, I used to give him the bags labelled "Dead Mail". But it wasn't all of the dead mail.
 That first six months I collected a lot of mail for the city of Kingstown Falls. I put it all in a box that  I kept in my office. And when I filled the box, I decided to  take to "The Dungeon" and keep it safe with all the antique equipment in the sorting office.

 The sorting office had seen a lot of changes over the years. As the county grew bigger with the population increasing in the townships. The sorting office changed with it. Some parts of the basement became redundant as old equipment was replaced by smaller more efficient equipment. The stuff we didn't use was kept in storage. Eventually storerooms and offices were closed. It was amazing some of the old gear you could find if you looked hard enough.    
 And I was looking hard for a hiding place for my box of dead mail for Kingstown Falls. I had all the keys for the place. Some keys I had never been used. But one particular key had a use and it had never been used for a long time.
 I discovered that the Post Office, back in 1856 was the United States Customs House, Post Office and Fireproof Storage Company Warehouse. An abundance of vaults and rooms were forgotten about and closed.
 This is a side track we won't involve ourselves with at present.

 What we will concern ourselves with, is the locked and abandoned sorting room for the city of Kingstown Falls.        


    

My father's life was haunted by his past adventures. Haunted by the things he had saved us from.
 As a child I used to ask why he could never sleep peacefully. What would he dream about? What caused him to scream out in his sleep? What type of detective work haunts a man so badly?
 He would just reply. "Edward, there is no need to worry.  I have the nightmares so you don't have to.. I will always protect you from the bad guys. Son, I promise."
And that would ease my worries because my pops always kept his promises.
  He always told me a lot of stories. Wonderful locations. Beautiful women. Evil villains. Monstrous creatures. He'd been shot at and stabbed. He'd lost great and valued friends. He told me he had been killed a few times. I asked how he was still with us and he'd say "the secret is in the pyramids".
 And the true fight gave him the belief to continue.
 But of all the adventures, what gave him the worst nightmares?
 "Egypt. 1925. The Goddamned Brits."
 And he would quickly finish his slug of bourbon. I didn't know whether it was the alcohol or the memories that would cause him to shudder.
  We all moved from city to city to keep ahead of  the authorities, journalists and fruit-cakes. They all wanted a story or information from a case my father had worked on.
After my mom took ill and died, my father signed himself into Arkham Asylum. I think everyone left him alone then, convinced his cases were stuff of madness. The ravings of a mad man. Nobody wanted to be connected to him or his cases after he declared himself insane. Everyone left him alone.

Charles Edsel and Kingstown Falls; The Case of the Cursed City.

My name is Edward Edsel.
My father is the famous Private Detective, Charles Edsel.
If you have not heard of him, this might prompt your memory. He's the guy that signed himself into an asylum in Boston then disappeared. That's right, disappeared. One night the wardens checked his room to find nothing. My pops had vanished into thin air. Gone. Never to be seen again. My father disappeared in 1959.  He was 67.
  It was big news at the time. But big news becomes old news. People forget and the world moves on.
But all along I reckon, this is what he had planned. He finally found his peace. Wherever he was.