Thinkery & Verse and Butch Mermaid present the world premiere of
GHOST HUNT: The Hall-Mills Double Homicide

Part podcast, part interactive gaming murder-mystery, part theatrical production, this unique, entirely COVID-19 safe adventure uses the free gaming app GeoCaching to let audiences track, hunt, and discover hidden caches at locations tied to Hall-Mills murders. Based on their more traditional Hall-Mills stage-play, THOU SHALT NOT, which was set to premiere this spring in New York City, GHOST HUNT is a geo-cached audio adventure that invites participants to experience the story of a tragic double homicide at the sites where the murders occurred and justice was lost.

In 1922, a young woman found her life destroyed when her mother, a choir singer at a small New Brunswick, New Jersey church, was discovered murdered alongside the church’s rector in a ruthless double homicide: Reverend Edward Hall had been shot in the skull, while the woman next to him, Eleanor Mills, suffered three gunshots to the face and a slit throat. Someone eerily posed the bodies and scattered their love letters at their feet. The case has never been solved. Now Thinkery & Verse and Butch Mermaid collaborate with the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, the home parish of the minister and the choir singer, to present GHOST HUNT: the Hall-Mills Double Homicide, an asynchronous, multi-platform theatrical resurrection of an infamous unsolved crime. GHOST HUNT, with the support of the Saint John’s congregation, investigates a terrifying injustice, which enveloped a small-town society in a ruthless big-city circus.

Once logged into the GeoCaching application, each “cache” or “location” contains relics related to the failed investigation of the crime and a QR code that invokes a digital audio journey into the heart of the case: the haunted back-alley home of the murdered Eleanor Mills, the mansion of the doomed Edward Hall, the site of the murders on DeRussey’s Lane, the Venice enclave where Frances Hall recovered from ‘the shock’ of the murders, the courthouse brought to its knees by a media circus, the San Antonio train station visited by the replacement priest, a forgotten Virginia battlefield, the New York streets where the victim’s daughter tried to move on, the Brooklyn burial site of the wealthy Hall family, and more. 

While much of the experience does take place in New Brunswick, New Jersey there are opportunities to explore caches in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Venice, Italy, Virginia, and Texas. Although the tangible experience is only available in said locations, one can still explore and listen from the comfort of their own homes as the audio material is available on the website for those unable to visit Venice and unwilling to visit New Jersey.

GHOST HUNT is free to participate in and launches September 14th on the
GeoCache App and Thinkery & Verse’s website

Thinkery & Verse believes in paying artists for their artistry and donations help pay the huge team (working remotely and in quarantine) that has made Ghost Hunt a reality. To support Thinkery & Verse’s mission to create free, accessible and COVID-safe programming exploring potent human stories,
click here to make a donation and show your support today.