Today is All-Hallows, also known as All Saints, a Christian replacement of an ancient tradition. That is, it's November 1st - October 31st being the day before the festival day.
Originally this would have been celebrated in March, which means technically Halloween is a March tradition. Pope Boniface moved it to November in the way back when, and in the Catholic calendar All Saints is followed by All Souls on November 2nd. The idea being that one day is dedicated to the saints and martyrs, another to everyone else, and the everyone else in this instance are those still suffering in Purgatory rather than the blessed in Heaven.
There's a very old tradition that says should you give clothes or shoes to a poor man you shall receive the same when you die, to ease your passage. It's part of a general injunction to do right by the poor, and you will be rewarded in the afterlife - but if you don't, expect torment and fire when you pass over.
There's a further tradition which says you shouldn't wear new shoes to a funeral, in case the dead see them and get jealous. They may try to steal them, and your luck will surely turn bad.
All Hallows is also a very popular name for a church. A quick Google will show you how popular. One in particular, All-Hallows-The-Great of London, was ancient when it was destroyed in the Great Fire. Christopher Wren rebuilt it, and it lasted until the later 1800s when the neighborhood became far too commercial. The space was needed for development, so the Church sold the land and used the money to build a new church elsewhere. It was the London Brewery for a while before Hitler put a stop to that, and eventually became Mondial House, the great telephone exchange. It was a massive white elephant even when it was being built; construction started in 1978 and although the building itself was finished it still needed equipment. By the time BT finished installing all its kit, in the 1980s, the equipment it had installed back in 1978 was already woefully obsolete. Mondial was demolished in the 2000s; an office block stands there now.
In the Edom Field Manual there's a contact, Maggie Canter, of Canter Antiques & Salvage, "a large junk shop in East London. Over the years, the business has come to specialize in architecture and furniture salvaged from churches and other religious institutions. If you want to outfit your hipster bar with a few pews from a demolished church, or are looking to buy a load of old-fashioned bedsheets and tablecloths from a nunnery that ran out of nuns, Canter’s is the place to go. She jokes that she’s just finishing up what Henry the Eighth started with the destruction of the monasteries ..."
With all that in mind:
Maggie's Back Room
Even Maggie Canter comes across items she can't sell. She got a job lot of office furniture and other bits and bobs when they broke up Mondial House, the sort of thing she'd be able to turn over in a heartbeat under normal circumstances. There's always some dodgy little startup looking for cheap office furniture, and while it's not strictly in Canter Antiques' usual line a quick clearance like this is bread-and-butter.
If only she could sell it.
She knew there was something off when she took possession. It was just a feeling, and she ignored it. More fool her. As it happened the day after she brought back the goods was All Hallows, and that very day she heard someone walking around in the warehouse after hours. Couldn't catch him, mind. Funny thing; her warehouse foreman, Larry, lost a pair of shoes that day. Christ knew where those got to.
When they didn't sell straight off she shoved the kit in the back of the warehouse, making a mental note to take it to the dump tomorrow. Except tomorrow never comes, does it? So it was all still in the back next All Hallows, and once again she heard someone stomping around in there. Once again, someone's shoes went missing. Hers, in fact.
It's been years, and every year on All Hallows someone marches about in the warehouse like some kind of night watchman. Every year someone's shoes go missing. She's started buying cheap trainers and boots to leave behind for whoever it is; better than letting the good stuff go.
If Edom's finest want to get on Maggie's good side, they could tell her what's going on and how to put a stop to it.
- The Corpse Watchman. Back when the Church had to worry about bodysnatchers, All-Hallows-The-Great built a watch house and put a permanent watchman on staff. Except the Church put its faith in the wrong man, and several corpses ended up on the dissection table before the ring was put out of business. The Watchman barely escaped with his life; the mob wanted to tear him to shreds. Legend has it for years afterward you could hear the Watchman on patrol, forced to look after the dead he betrayed while he was alive.
- Weird Science. Edom had its fingers in Mondial House. Specifically the Boffin, (Dracula Dossier), who was forever experimenting to see if he could come up with a more efficient, scientific way to deal with the vampire problem. Mondial House already had a bit of a reputation among the frivolous; after all, it had been built on All-Hallows' churchyard, even if all the bodies had been moved before they built Mondial. The Boffin thought he'd create a vampire trap, but all he ended up doing was losing a perfectly good assistant. Nobody knows where Norman ended up. Rumor had it he never left Mondial ...
- Footsteps of the Damned. It's got nothing to do with the office furniture. Once upon a time Dracula's Node in London (the Satanic Cult, for instance, though it's up to the Director as to exactly what form the Node takes), found out about Maggie's links to Edom and decided to assign one of its more disposable assets to watch her. Trouble is, nobody rescinded the order, and when the Node got bored and forgot about Canter's, the asset kept coming back. Again. And Again. Almost as if it was compelled ...
Enjoy!
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