The life insurance angle goes way back to the very beginnings of Tension. It was first described in email sent by Bob Jones to the first of us involved with the OOA:
“This is going to sound crazy but a google alert led me to your facebook profile and it would appear you might be able to help me… it’s hard to know where to begin but I’ll try and be as concise as possible but it’s been a long road…
First off I am an investigator, nothing sexy like tv or anything, just mainly tailing low level insurance claims but about 15 years ago I was put on a path I still can’t shake and this is where I’d like some help from you possibly…
I’ll start from he beginning. One of my insurance companies put me on the tail of a handful workman’s fraud cases coming out of a local pipe fitting plant… Normally I’d follow this trail and find a couple of guys pretending to have hurt backs and then drinking at the VFW but this one got real weird real quick.
First off, there were five old timers, you’d think that five claims at the same time at the same factory would trigger something and it did, but that wasn’t the most unusual part. Their families all said they had been distant and acting a bit off and after tailing one I was led to the other four… They’d all been commuting during the day to a strange strip mall “church” two towns away…… a full three damn hours away from their jobs. Well I am pretty decent at my job and it’s usually not hard so they were all busted and lost the claims.
Now normally that would be the end of the story EXCEPT ten years ago I got a call for a questionable life insurance claim…. Four guys, all died in a house fire… the beneficiary and the policies where both a church… this “Church of Anoch”…. I knew that sounded familiar then I realized. It’s the same church from the strip mall the pipe fitters where going to and … sure as shit, the dead guys where four of the five old timers. Well I naturally flip out as this clearly smells criminal and start asking my local PD buddies to look into it but there is one problem… by the time we do the “Church” is gone. No sign of anything, no leads, no trails anywhere… My friends at the company said they never pursued the claim again.
It has literally been on my back since that day just EATING at me… how the hell does an entire church disappear? I couldn’t let that go. Every once in a while I would get a trickle or two from people in town who had a story about the weird people that would go in and out of the place but the whole thing started to feel like a weird dream that never actually happened but still, I couldn’t shake that these guys deaths weren’t an accident and so… I search about twice a month or so and that’s when I got a hit on “Anoch” being mentioned in this …Tension Experience Alternate Gaming Reality thing ( I had to do some research to figure out what the hell that was and it still sounds like a funny concept to a guy like me) but I have to follow this lead. Now, honestly, my guess is whoever is behind this probably heard tales of our town’s weird little church and decided to fold it into the narrative of their crazy game but if they haven’t I’m afraid they might be the same people and they maybe recruiting a certain “type”. Sorry, I don’t want to offend you with that BUT there was talk that the Church of Anoch was using puzzles and tricks in the local paper’s classified and help wanted section so this G.A.R. as crazy as it sounds, would be right up their alley for recruitment. One of my PD psych buddies thinks it might make sense they’d prey on vulnerable people looking for mysteries in the everyday world or something like that.
I know it’s crazy to fly out just to hunt down 15 year old not-quite-a-case, but I got a brother out here and I’d love fifteen minutes of your time if you have it.
Desperate to put his behind me,
Robert “Bob” Jones”
