The Legal Void

CASE FILE: THE VACATED TOWN

Subject: The 4-Year Gap (1829-1833)

SECTION 1: THE ANOMALY

Brumfall is a fictional place, but the "Fold" is based on a real glitch in Indiana history. The town of Owensville shouldn't exist. We aren't talking about magic. We are talking about the law.

SECTION 2: THE ERASURE (1829)

In 1829, the Indiana General Assembly passed an official Act to "Vacate the Town of Owensville."

With the stroke of a pen, the town was legally erased. The plat maps were voided. The incorporation was dissolved. For four years, the people stayed, the crops grew, and the buildings stood—but legally, the space was blank. It was a town that wasn't there.

SECTION 3: THE RETURN (1833)

In 1833, the state changed its mind. A new Act was passed to "Reinstate" the town, pulling it back into legal existence. But the question remains: Where was the town for those four years? It existed in a liminal space—unmapped, unregulated, and invisible to the state. It was a ghost town inhabited by the living.

SECTION 4: THE INSPIRATION

This legal loophole is the origin of The Fold. In Dead Weather Almanac, the town is protected by a supernatural blister that keeps it hidden from the modern world. In reality, it was hidden by bureaucracy. The Nomis Corporation represents the modern world trying to re-index, catalog, and "fix" that anomaly. They want to fill in the blank space on the map. But as history shows, some places don't like being on the map.

SECTION 5: THE REMNANT Owensville was eventually put back on the books, but the scar remains. You can feel it in the fading storefronts and the empty lots where buildings used to be. The town survived the erasure, but it is slowly losing the war against time. This book is an attempt to document the version of the town that existed in that gap—the version that never truly came back.

When I write, I listen to music— a lot! Below is a way to listen to some of my favorite tracks while I wrote. Think of it as almost a soundtrack.