The Steam Tunnel Incident

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HAWK & MOOR

The Golden Age of Fantasy Role-Playing

Special edition:

The steam tunnel incident

By KENT DAVID KELLY (DARKSERAPHIM)

Dedicated to the Memory Of James Dallas Egbert iii

WONDERLAND IMPRINTS 2014 – 2015

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THE STEAM TUNNEL INCIDENT KENT DAVID KELLY

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HAWK & MOOR KENT DAVID KELLY

Copyright © 2013-2015 Kent David Kelly. ~ All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the copyright holder, Kent David Kelly. ~ All products and names mentioned in this book are trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. The mention of trademarks in this work is for educational purposes only, and is not intended as a challenge. HAWK & MOOR is an historical research project developed with the primary intent of broadening the popular awareness of, and appreciation for, Fantasy Role-Playing Games. ~ Quotes attributed to various individuals are derived from a wide array of filmed interviews, online forum posts, magazines, books, newsletters, and various game-oriented materials. Please refer to the Footnotes and Annotations section for detailed citations. Individuals who wish to have their own quoted words alluded to, rather than quoted directly, are welcome to contact the author with requests for modification, emendation or deletion of specific comments. ~ The cover of this volume features a detail from The Simoniac Pope, by William Blake, created c. 1824-1827. ~ (Document Version 1.4) ~ For corrective and revision purposes, please note that this is document version 1.4 of this manuscript, completed in January of 2015. Versions prior to this are slightly outdated, and have been corrected as more interviews, documents, corrections and feedback have come to light. ~ In the age of the Internet, a printed book can never contain the final word. Therefore, the eBook version of this volume is intended as a living document, so that interested readers can receive notification of updates and enjoy a resource book which is constantly revised, one whichSample does not merely sit upon the shelf going slowly and forever outfile of date. The print version of this volume may be slightly out of date, as in-depth research into the ever-shifting

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field of Role-Playing Game history continues to grow, diversify and change. ~ Please feel welcome to contact the author at [email protected] with comments, questions, requests, recommendations and greetings. And thank you for reading!

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HAWK & MOOR KENT DAVID KELLY

DESCRIPTION

THE MORE SINISTER urban legends concerning the Steam Tunnel Incident run as follows:

A young genius, seduced and deluded by a mind-controlling fantasy game, abandoned his Satanic gaming cult because he feared for his life. He then delved into the netherworld, a labyrinthine “dungeon” of steam tunnels running for miles beneath a sprawling university. There, under the influence of drugs, occult talismans, evil magic or mere insanity, he mistook fantasy for reality and tried to slay his invoked dragons, demons and devils in real life. Finally, he became hopelessly lost in the tunnels.

Facing a slow and horrible demise in the endless dark, he committed suicide. Or, he was murdered by a conspiracy of Lucifer-worshipping gamer-cultists who silenced him to keep their secret safe. The most disturbing rumors of all insisted rather that he survived, but he lost his mind and could never sleep again, until he committed suicide a year and a day later.

Intriguing and lurid stories, with all of the trappings of classic urban legendry. But what really happened? Who was the victim? Was it a living nightmare or a hoax? What caused the national sensation and media hysteria in 1979? Why were fantasy-role playing games (FRPGs) the subject of a religious witch hunt, demonized well into the 1980s, and derided by some as a dangerous cultic indulgence even today?

The truth is even more fascinating than the legends themselves. James Dallas Egbert III did exist, and he did play FRPGs. Police and private investigators did explore the steam tunnels for many miles and hours, finding the clues he left behind. And he did tragically end his own life in 1980. But the real secrets involving his torment, disappearance, rescue and demise are far more remarkable than the legends surrounding the Steam Tunnel Incident to this day.

HAWK & MOOR: The Steam Tunnel Incident is an exploration of this persistent mystery which is still poorly understood; a journey into fantasy, intrigue, secrecy, urban exploration and the dark reality of the steam tunnels themselves. Author and researcher Kent David Kelly is also the author of Necronomicon: The Cthulhu Revelations, From the Fire, Arachne, and the Castle Oldskull series of gaming supplements. This is a special editionSample in the larger series of HAWK & MOOR, exploring the early historyfile of role-playing games.

THE STEAM TUNNEL INCIDENT KENT DAVID KELLY

A unique offering, THE STEAM TUNNEL INCIDENT comprises 50,100 words, 12 chapters and over 150 pages. An unforgettable updated and revised release from Wonderland Imprints.

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HAWK & MOOR KENT DAVID KELLY

DEDICATION

This book is intended to honor the memory

of James Dallas Egbert III,

Who was never truly understood.

From a fellow gamer, dreamer, programmer,

Explorer and outsider ...

I never knew you,

But I consider you a friend.

Rest in peace.

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THE STEAM TUNNEL INCIDENT KENT DAVID KELLY

disclaimer

Dungeons & Dragons, D & D and Dungeon Master are registered trademarks belonging to Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, representing their printed instructional materials for fantasy role-playing games, and other goods produced by Wizards of the Coast or its licensees. This book, including reference to Wizards of the Coast’s trademarks, was prepared without Wizards of the Coast’s review and is neither sponsored nor authorized by Wizards of the Coast or by their parent company.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Front Matter [F-1] Title [F-2] Description [F-3] Dedication [F-4] Disclaimer [F-5] Table of Contents [F-6] Introduction

Chapter 1 – A Tangled Web [1-1] The Childhood of a Prodigy [1-2] The Dawn of Fantasy Role-Playing [1-3] University Steam Tunnels and Tunnel Hacking [1-4] Computers & Catacombs [1-5] Zork and the Steam Tunnels of MIT [1-6] Did Dallas Computerize Dungeons & Dragons?

Chapter 2 – A Kingdom of Solitude [2-1] The Advent at MSU [2-2] Reaching Out to Nothing Sample[2-3] Inward and Downward file [2-4] And Fading Away

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Chapter 3 – Into the Steam Tunnels [3-1] Day One: The Case Begins [3-2] Days Two through Five: Gone and Forgotten [3-3] The Dragons of Kenosha [3-4] Day Six: Belated Awareness [3-5] Day Seven and Beyond: The Enigma of the Tunnel Secret

Chapter 4 – Move and Counter-Move [4-1] Days Eight and Nine: The Hunt Begins [4-2] Days Nine through Fifteen: A Thousand Questions [4-3] The Truth of Dallas’ Whereabouts

Chapter 5 – Dangerous Misconceptions [5-1] Days Fifteen and Sixteen: The Imagined Dungeon [5-2] Day Seventeen: Trestling [5-3] Lost in Louisville [5-4] Collateral Damage

SampleChapter 6 – A Game of Darkness file [6-1] Day Eighteen: Interested Parties

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[6-2] Day Eighteen, Continued: Lure of the Underworld [6-3] Dallas in Hiding [6-4] Day Nineteen: The Call of the Labyrinth [6-5] Day Twenty: An Unwise Expedition

Chapter 7 – Tunnels of Chaos [7-1] Days Twenty-One and Twenty-Two: The Outsider in Exile [7-2] Day Twenty-Two: Clashes with Law Enforcement [7-3] Days Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four: The Steam Tunnels

Chapter 8 – Abandoned Hope [8-1] Lost in the World of the Living [8-2] Day Twenty-Four: A Helping Hand, and Empty-Handed [8-3] Day Twenty-Five: Mysterious Voices [8-4] Day Twenty-Six: Worlds Apart [8-5] Day Twenty-Seven: Scenting for Blood

Chapter 9 – The Light at the End [9-1] Day Twenty-Eight: Delicate Arrangements [9-2] Days Twenty-Nine and Thirty: Lingering Darkness [9-3] Day Thirty-One: Homecoming Sample file ~

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Chapter 10 – Aftermath [10-1] The Hunger for More [10-2] Mazes and Monsters [10-3] The Boy Not Yet Forgotten [10-4] The Return of Darkness [10-5] Good Publicity

Chapter 11 – The Birth of a Legend [11-1] The Last Decision [11-2] The Slow Descent [11-3] Without Peace [11-4] Secret and Strange Arrangements [11-5] The Death and the Rise of LARPing [11-6] Monsters Unleashed

Chapter 12 – Seeds of Discord [12-1] Differing Views [12-2] The Legend Conquers Truth [12-3] Urban Legendry

SampleConclusion file [C-1] Resources & Bibliography

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[C-2] Recommended Reading & Gaming [C-3] Newspaper Articles Referenced [C-4] Websites & Online Supplements Researched [C-5] About the Author [C-6] Other Books by Kent David Kelly

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INTRODUCTION

IN AUGUST of 1979, a young man named James Dallas Egbert III — a gifted student, computer science major and Dungeons & Dragons player — went missing from his dormitory at Michigan State University (MSU). Police were finally notified five days after he disappeared. MSU administration feared a potential backlash, because this missing person was only sixteen years old and legally a child under MSU protection in lieu of parental supervision. Police, despite a few anonymous tips concerning the steam tunnels, student death, abduction and a possible conspiracy, had few actual leads.

Frustrated with the university and the stalled investigation, this young man’s parents contacted the famous private detective William C. Dear, who agreed to travel to Michigan with his investigative team to find the missing boy ... or to recover his body. After many false leads, wild theories, fruitless searches, tunnel explorations, altercations, misleading news reports and rampant bouts of speculation, the boy was finally discovered and rescued from a tenement in southern Louisiana. A year and a day after his initial disappearance, James Dallas Egbert III put a gun to his head and committed suicide.

* * * * *

These are the facts. But in the public mind, this actual case — confused and sensationalized by both the media and a movie entitled Mazes and Monsters — involved mental illness, a cultic game, a dangerous labyrinth and a death wish which no sane person could ever comprehend. None of these “understood” elements, however, were actually the truth.

How did the truth become so distorted? Why is the urban legend now immortal, supplanting the memory of James Dallas Egbert III himself?

This book explores the reasons for his disappearance, the truth, the unverified reports, the mystery, the exaggerations, the media hysteria, the moral panic and the deeper reasonsSample behind all of the secrets and misconceptions. file

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Most accounts refer to James Dallas Egbert III solely as “Egbert,” a formal appellation which no one but reporters ever preferred. In this book, I will rather call him what his friends and family called him, a name he himself preferred: Dallas.

The circumstances that truly caused Dallas to disappear did not only involve a fantasy role-playing game. Rather, Dallas suffered from a complex interweaving of many psychological challenges and emotional problems: a brilliant mind trapped in a child’s body, the familial pressure to excel, confusion over his sexual orientation, drug addiction, a mostly untreated medical condition, emotional immaturity, asocial behavior, peer alienation, a culture which could not comprehend the needs of gifted youth with special needs, and a near-criminal lack of adult supervision.

Like any young man, Dallas overestimated his own independence and made some very unfortunate choices. In Dallas’ unique case however, alone at a university while he was only sixteen, his gifts and his behavior exacerbated his poor choices to the point that their culmination would ultimately become deadly.

To this day, much of our information concerning Dallas and his disappearance is derived primarily from The Dungeon Master, a 1984 book written by private investigator William C. Dear. This current work, HAWK & MOOR: The Steam Tunnel Incident also includes new research derived from over 130 additional sources: books, games, magazines, newspaper articles, interviews, white papers and dissertations, as well as witnesses’ and observers’ personal testimony and recollections. Nevertheless, much of the truth is still obscured, and any reader with additional information, refutations, questions or corrections is encouraged to contact the author at [email protected], where I will be happy to converse with you about Dallas and his activities. This book is intended to improve upon all existing accounts, and to clarify what really happened; but unfortunately we will never now uncover the entirety of the truth.

My interest in writing this book is not to unfairly crucify anyone or to further sensationalize the mystery, but rather simply to bring some closure and understanding to the tragic events which caused Dallas to become alienated, lost, and to finally end his life. Further, it is hoped that my decades of experience as a fantasy role-playing gamer, court data analyst, game researcher, author and game designer will provide a more nuanced, insightful and balanced approach to Dallas’ travails, exonerating the game Dungeons & Dragons while also encouraging compassion toward the gifted youth community, gays, and other misunderstood minorities existing in the present day. GoingSample forward, however, I must stress that this is by no means a neutralfile account, and I am not a neutral observer. I as a veteran gamer, “gifted youth” education recipient and

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“freak” (an appellation I earned in fights and on the playgrounds, and now wear in adult life as a badge of honor) believe that Dallas has been unfairly treated in former accounts, newspaper articles, and the ongoing hearsay which form the foundation for countless urban legends about the “Steam Tunnel Incident,” as well as the perceived “evils” inherent in Dungeons & Dragons. My purpose in researching and writing this book is not to be objective, but rather to argue that Dallas and other role-players and gifted youth have been misunderstood for decades, chiefly because of the widely-shared untruths which began to emerge following his disappearance in 1979. I do strive to be fair and measured in my approach to the facts and with my own speculation; yet my own opinions regarding what I perceive as unfair treatment toward Dallas himself and his memory are by no means dispassionate.

* * * * *

To begin to understand the facts about Dallas, his disappearance, the many ignorant judgments and the lingering mystery, we must first delve into five disparate subjects which Dallas would cause to become irrevocably intertwined: [1] the childhood of a genius; [2] fantasy role-playing games; [3] steam tunnels and their illegal exploration; [4] interactive fiction in computer games; and, [5] the undergraduate subculture of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT.

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CHAPTER 1 A tangled web (1962 - 1977)

1 ~ 1 The childhood of a prodigy

JAMES DALLAS EGBERT III was born on October 29th, 1962, one day after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

To set the time and spirit of the age, Kennedy was president, and America was looking to the future of space flight while also careening through the deadly heights of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Computers were not household tools, nor even hobbyist indulgences. They were scientific machines whose use implied strategic intelligence to many. In Michigan, at Dallas’ future school of Michigan State University, a brand new Control Data Corporation 3600 computer was soon to be installed in a state-of-the-art research lab. Soon, the World Wide Web’s grandfather, known as the ARPAnet, would revolutionize remote communication, ushering in the golden age of information.

But that remained in the years to come.

Our story begins with the child Dallas, and a brilliant child he was. When the precocious boy was two years old, he could already recite the alphabet. At three, he could read. At four, he finished kindergarten. Grade school completely failed to challenge him, and he was fast-tracked toward high school. All the while, other children avoided him and his teachers marveled at his brilliance.

These early childhood achievements in and of themselves are impressive, yet unspectacular. It was clear, however, that Dallas was going to be far more inquisitive and precocious than the vast majority of his peers. He was too intelligent and imaginative, too differentSample for others to easily understand him. From the beginning, it seems,file he was born to be an outsider.

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We know little else of Dallas’ childhood, as his family (as might well be imagined) deeply values privacy. However, it is worth noting that following Dallas’ suicide in 1980, many parents of troubled and gifted children contacted Jim and Anna Egbert to offer their condolences on the loss of their gifted and eldest son.

In those months after Dallas’ suicide, one of the mothers of another gifted child told Dallas’ parents that her own son had described himself as being trapped “in an iron cage,” because his mind was so much more developed than his body.

Feelings of alienation, ostracism and even suicide are common among gifted children. In the 1960s, long before gifted and talented educational programs were in place, American society was even more judgmental. It is therefore certainly possible that Dallas, in his youth, already felt very much alone.

Concerted federal interest in the specialized education of gifted children would not become prevalent until 1972, with the issuance of the Marland report encouraging broad definitions of giftedness; and furthered in 1974, with the formal institution of the Office of the Gifted and Talented within the U. S. Office of Education.

In early 1972, Dallas was yet to benefit from such initiatives, and in many ways he never would. But he was enjoying himself, playing with stuffed animals, reading science fiction and playing games of the imagination. Still intellectually unchallenged, he began playing with computers and programmable calculators at the age of ten.

This may seem unremarkable from our 21st-century perspective, but it must be remembered that computers were still then regarded as scientific research machines. Many people had still not heard of the capabilities and limitations of real computers at all, outside of the speculative annals of science fiction. Steve Wozniak would not build the first Apple computer for Steve Jobs until 1976, and the first mass-market personal computers would not come to market until 1977. While Dallas was ten in 1972, Bill Gates was seventeen, and not yet enrolled in Harvard. Microsoft was still three years in the future.

Within two more years, Dallas would be helping to repair his high school’s computer system. Computer repair was still a very rare and eccentric skill set, especially among the young. He repaired the computers because he was asked if he could help, and because experts had tried and failed to do so.

By age twelve, incredibly, Dallas also helped to repair computers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. When he was thirteen (some sources say fourteen), he graduated from highSample school. He placed highly in many mathematics competitions. file At thirteen he had a scholarship offer from MIT, arguably the finest technical research university in the

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country. He turned this offer down, however, because he did not want to be so far away from home.

Instead, at fourteen or fifteen (circa 1976), he attended classes at the esteemed and highly selective Northwestern University in Chicago.

His experience at Northwestern, however, was alienating and unpromising. He was still young and had difficulty in forming friendships. Many of his teachers did not know how to relate to him. Seeking a different school for computer science studies, one closer to his Ohio home than Northwestern or MIT, he finally settled on Michigan State University. There, his formal studies of computer science would truly begin in earnest.

Technically and emotionally, Dallas was still a child. Yet he was already widely regarded as a genius, a prodigy, a young person with special gifts which superseded his own special needs. Yet Dallas had already been swallowed and borne away by the world of adulthood, where he was expected to do what he always did: to thrive, to excel, and to do so alone.

1 ~ 2 The dawn of fantasy role-playing

DALLAS WAS a devotee of Dungeons & Dragons, the world’s first and premier role-playing game. The history of fantasy role-playing games (FRPGs) is circuitous, meandering and exceedingly complex. Readers who are especially interested in learning this history are encouraged to read Books I and II of the HAWK & MOOR series. For the purposes of this book, only the merest selection of highlights is provided for a general understanding.

Basically, FRPGs involve a codified series of rulings and guidelines which turn the childhood game of the collective imagination, “Let’s Pretend,” into an involving adult pastime. Each player assumes the role of an imaginary character, much as an actor or a storyteller would do. The character explores the world of fantasy and goes on dangerous adventures. The gaming sessions are played with dice and pen and paper, at a table. No game board is required, and physical events attributed to the characters (jumping, exploring the underworld, swinging a sword, etc.) do not ever need to be acted out in real life. The players, assuming the roles of these imaginary characters and led in play by a referee (in D&D, the referee is called the “Dungeon Master”), involve themselves in exploringSample the gold-filled and deadly labyrinths beneath a fantastic wilderness.file The party

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