Realistic or Modern Mysteries of Birch Hollow - Extra Details

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WIP
Locations in Town​

• The Clock Tower: Centered close to Town Hall, it resides closer to the older district of Birch Hollow, and is also known as the Spire due to a scary story about it, involving the creator of the mechanisms and strangely life-like statues that decorate and move along the tracks of the clock face killing his cheating wife and her lover, and hiding their corpses somewhere in the tower. It's a strange mixture between brick, stone, and wood, and is decorated with a beautiful Edwardian style to it's interior. It still works, remarkably, and every few weeks the groundskeeper cleans it, though he doesn't exactly know how it ticks.
• Bleakfoot Park: One of the biggest parts of Birch Hollow, a large natural park with many areas still undiscovered to the public. Some areas have water ditches, ponds, or streams, some are denser in forest, and the old Stone Church lurks near the heart of the park. There are a few more groundskeepers than for the Clock Tower, but they usually return to town with all their limbs.
• Education Lane: This is simply a nickname for this street, because it has Mavros Primary School, Mavors Middle School, and Mavros High all along it's length. The schools look and feel like castles almost, they're outside similar to European designs, with some spires and towers included.
• Museum of the Extranatural: A museum that closed due to unforeseen circumstances. No one really knows what's inside, as the windows are surpassingly dense and no groundskeeper knows where the keys for it are. It's said that one of the original designers for the town built it, but there are almost no records about it at all.
• The Old Theatre: Another closed business, with it's signs drenched with bird poop and stains, the black letters of the shows once playing now decayed on the ground. Thick metal chains lock the front door handles, and there being no other way in, the whole of the building. No one wants to go in anyways. There aren't many rumors about the place, but it just seems unsettling, like a rotting corpse that no one cared to move.
• Cedar Senai Hospital: Despite the rest of the gloomy architecture in town, this is one of the rare buildings with up-to-date equipment, built around five years ago. It has the works, a nice lobby, cared-for rooms, a children's wing, the whole shebang. It even granted many families who didn't have many job opportunities in town a place to work and make a living.
• Birch Hollow Public Library: One of the few old buildings that's not a shop or school that doesn't look the least bit intimidating because of the care the librarians and Reading Rocks! volunteers give to the place. It has many books to read, including a section in the back (nicknamed the Restricted Section) that has may old town records, novels, and diaries explaining the ails of the first township that settled on the mountain.
• Cimmerian Grocers: A mediocre sized grocery store with all the ins and outs. Not much happens here, but it's one of the few places that most teenagers work before finding employment at other businesses or outside town, leaving their families and the gloomy streets behind them.
• Turbid's Tools: The local hardware and general store, which originally only sold some wood and crafting tools, but grew to hold other common things, now acting like a pharmacy, a Staples, and a tool shop all in one.
• Birch Hollow Police Department: Not too small, but not huge. It has a moderate sized staff, and some petty theft happens here and there, but most of the really weird stuff seems to disappear before they can really do anything...
• Drear Gasoline: The stereotypical sleazy edge-of-town gas station that only like three people ever work at. They make surprisingly good business because nobody ever really comes through town, but they always buy stuff passing through it.
• Sunriseless Hotels: One of the tallest buildings in town, it was built around the same time as the hospital. It gets moderate traffic, with the Park and Clock Tower being cool "attractions" for any elderly road trippers or lost mountaineers trying to get to a different location. Their sign is almost always vandalized to say Sunless instead of Sunrise, but they can never catch who does it. All camera equipment shows static around the time of night when it supposedly happens.
• Saturn-Nine Cafe: A very 80's diner, with a shoddily-made space theme covering the walls and menus of this diner. Still, it has pretty good food, and a popular hangout for homework crews or teenagers skipping school. And most teenagers actually try and get employed here, because most of their friends either frequent the joint or work there themselves.
• Harris Research Laboratories: A laboratory that studies rock formations or something. Not many know what they're actually researching, but it seems pretty boring to most, and the company (who in fact built most of the newer buildings) pays well. The head researcher is actually a distant cousins nephew of the current CEO of Harris Laboratories, though he isn't really seen as a 'man of power' around town.
• The Strips: Odd and Lonely strip malls that litter the outskirts of town. They have old stores that somehow still run, like Goodwills and used Jewelry stores. Mannequins litter the storefronts and the back alleys behind them.
• The Old Stone Bridge: A rocky, stony bridge that is crosses over a small stream to get from Main Street to Wendall Lane. In the winter, the stream freezes, and many children enjoy skating beneath the old structure.
• Grovewood & Company: A larger building, located on Main Street. It's a surprisingly nice looking antique store, and it's not even part of a chain. It doesn't get many customers though, most being people from out of town.
• Main Street: Where most businesses (the ones that are more active/popular that is) operate. It's also the street with one of the only entrances/exits to town.
• Tuckers Arcade: A generally well kept arcade that has many mainstream arcade cabinets. It also has a Go-Kart track, though its currently closed due to the season. Located on Main Street.
• Tune Town: An old-fashioned music shop that sells records, record players, CDs, the works. It even has some movies that you can rent. Located Across the road from Tuckers Arcade. Their mascot is a cute anthropomorphic dog with a red bandana.
• Sunnyvale Daycare: A daycare center for kids toddler to kindergarten. It’s located on Main Street next to Tune Town.
• Wendall Lane: A normal suburban street with very normal homes and incredibly normal people living in them. Near the heart of the residential district, where many of the houses built in the 50s/60s reside, with many of them being Ranch Style.
• The Thicket: On the opposite end of town from the Strips, are the more rural areas of Birch Hollow. There are even some farms out there with the strange fertile soil that the town seems to cultivate unnaturally. There are large fields of thick brush called the Thicket, where children have gone missing before in the early years of the town.
• The Wet Bedroom: An abandoned home in the woods to the south of Mavros High. The Master Bedroom is always wet, with large gelatinous blobs full of foul-smelling water always apparent in the home. It’s a good urban legend among the kids in town, though it’s chalked up to rain and nature.
• Wayne Boulevard: A Street with a few apartments and renting homes on it. The Wayne Apartments are its namesake, it being the largest unit-built building in town.
• The Old Sawmill: One of the original mills used by Garver Mills. It’s now a popular partying location, located by the Strips. It’s a mix of an actual factory, and one of those traditional windmills.
• Birch Hollow Bakery: Located on Main Street. The owner, Mr. Terrence, seems to always know what his customers are ordering.
• Sezzoni's Pizza: An almost-normal pizza establishment. Children sometimes say that the trash cans thank them for feeding them when they throw away their leftovers.
• Rair Road: Leads away from the suburban areas and into the more rural areas and the Strips, as well as some extra buildings on the edge of town.
• Point Pine Oak Apartments: Located on Rair Road. Apparently, people who live there don’t let anyone but residents within.
• Pine Ridge Hiking Trail: One of the last remaining walkable hiking trails through Bleakfoot Park.
• Westbrook Drive-In: Closed forever, its famous for the Ghost Screening, where every July 15th a Red Crosley Station Wagon appears in space 21B, and at 9:15 PM the Movie ‘It Came from Mars’ starts playing without the cameras turning on. The B-Movies maker, Bill Booth, is apparently the specter behind this legend.
• The Screaming House: The phantom shrieks of an undiscovered woman haunt the house, with the screams always being in a place where the listener is not.
• Nebbs Bowling Alley: A popular family place located on Main Street. They have some of the best Mozzarella Sticks, and the owners are very nice old couples helping out their community.

Extra Details
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The Mavros school uniform (for high schoolers anyway) consists of a black blazer, a gray long-sleeved button with a tie (can be customized), and any kind of pants that aren't exercise oriented. Girls are allowed to change this as well, in fact, the whole outfit is very customizable towards a students personal taste).

There are many locations around the Mountain that are affected by the events of MoBH, but most won't be discovered until later on in the story.

Orange County is the closest city to Birch Hollow, and is where the Mavros High kids go for field trips. The city is presumably much more normal than Birch Hollow, being both good friends and competitive rivals over many sports (It being the Mavros Gaskets with their gas mask-based mascot, versus the Orangeketeers, with a much more French swordsman style to them).

Known Characters​

• Michael Harris: A professor of Archaeology and History that works part time at the high school. He has college students come to town to help him do some excavating in the park from time to time. He is also one of the head researchers at the Harris Laboratory in town, and a descendent of the head of the company as well.
• Alan Palmer: A revered professor of Economics who is now a teacher at Mavros because of a friend who works at Harris Labs lending him a home to rent while he goes through some things from his family.
• Dr. Ed Green: Teaches Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.
• Detective Miles Philip: A consultant, specializing in the Missing Children department.
• Doris Wilson: Teaches Algebra and Physics at Mavros High.
• Mr. A. T. Whitecotton: Principal of Mavros High.
• Geraldine Carpenter: Teaches French, German, and Spanish at Mavros High.
• Edna Francis: Teaches Biology and Chemistry at Mavros High.
• Gladys Swon: Teaches English and all offshoots of the class at Mavros High.
• Naomi Kerisa: Teaches Japanese at Mavros High, as well as some lessons about Foreign History and Mythology.
• Hank: Owner of Saturn-Nine Café. He's really laid-back, and one of the best employers in town.
• Eric Pines: Landlord of Point Pine Oaks Apartments.
• Doris Mayve: Landlord of Wayne Apartments.
• Greasy Benny: A suspicious character who lives in Wayne Apartments and pays kids to bring him runaway pets. Nothing anomalous, just weird.