Halloween D&D, ready when the candles are lit.

Bohemia, 1543. Two summers of famine follow the plague, and unpaid soldiers crowd the border. Above Vranohrad, a fort abandoned for sixty years now sends winged shapes over the valley at night. Burgrave Otakar Vlk hires you to investigate and guard his commission: the priest Jelen, his wife Marta, a gaoler, and Dalibor, a prisoner offered a pardon for his help. You ride at dawn. Whatever is in the fort has begun coming down to the farms.

The Adriatic coast, 1576. An exceptional low tide has exposed the causeway to Veyr Castle for the first time in forty years. Three salvage workers went inside yesterday; this morning someone waves their red scarf from an upper window. The harbor guild hires you to bring them back before tonight's tide covers the roof. Inside, salt-stiff curtains hang over laid tables, and a voice patiently counts the silver. It has noticed three extra people in the house. It will notice you, too.

The northern border, 1619. Peace has come, and Rookscar Keep is being emptied for sale. Then the masons open a bricked passage. That evening twelve soldiers in rotten coats take the walls, and the watch bell rings from a tower with no stairs. Lady Aveline Marr hires you to get her household out before the buyer arrives in three days. At the first midnight muster, the dead sergeant reads the servants' names. There are empty places in his ranks, and he is waiting for an answer.

You are a day's ride from anywhere when Lammas Ford offers you a bed for the night. The inn is warm, the keeper is generous, and there is a harvest gathering that half the village presses you to attend. The bread is very good and there is a great deal of it. Later, when the music stops and an old woman carries a bound sheaf into the barn, you will learn what accepting it meant: every adult in the room draws a straw, one straw is short, and whoever draws it is walked into forty acres of corn before dawn.

Jack Hagans, host and executive producer of the paranormal programme Ghost Aggressions, is hiring security. He is going to Oweynagat — the Cave of the Cats, the hole in the ground the locals call the gate to hell — and he intends to be inside it at midnight on Samhain, when the things that live down there come up for the year. The money is very good. His crew of three have stopped making eye contact with one another. He has forty pounds of equipment, a signature leather coat, and a plan. There are offerings heaped at the cave mouth going back generations. He has not brought one.

Edinburgh, 1828. Greyfriars Kirkyard has lost three night watchmen in three months — not to the resurrection men selling corpses to the anatomy schools, but to whatever draws those men here. You are the new watch: patrol after dark with a lamp, keep the Covenanters' graves whole, and find what is calling the robbers in. Something in the Black Mausoleum has noticed you, it grows bolder every night you fail to answer it, and it means to see this watch off before the season ends.

Martinmas, 1583 — the day new servants are taken on across the county. Seven daughters of minor noble houses were sent to Nádashely Castle for service and schooling. None came home, and the countess's letters of condolence are word for word identical. Hired on with the season's staff, you are in truth the eyes of Lord Ferenc Bethlen, who wants proof a magistrate cannot ignore. The old servants flinch at certain doors and count each other at supper. The guard answers to the countess; so do the magistrates. Write to Bethlen before the snow closes the passes, and do not be caught writing.

First frost, 1887. In six weeks Crowmoor has taken eleven sheep, two moor ponies, and the shepherd who went out after them. His dog came home alone and will not go back up. Thornhowe has stopped pretending it is a wolf — the village has raised a subscription, wired down for guns, and put out word for anyone willing to go onto the moor and finish it. You came in on the evening train. There is no mystery here and nobody is hiding anything: the thing is real, it is out there, and now that the frost has emptied the high ground it is working down toward the houses a night at a time.

Hollowmere's bell rings thirteen times on the harvest moon, and each toll causes the town to forget another living resident.

A masquerade's mirrors show how every guest will die, and the manor's doors have vanished.

Scarecrows are stealing villagers' names while something beneath the fields prepares for its coronation.

A carnival appears for one night, offering impossible prizes in exchange for memories, and several missing children now work its attractions.

The party escapes a haunted house only to discover it waiting for them in the next town.