This week: An Unsolved Mystery Edited by: Whispering Ghost of C.St.Ann  
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Hello. My name is Carol St.Ann. I joined WDC in September of 2006, and and I write for this newsletter once a month. This year, 2025, I plan to focus on craft. Feel free to hit me up with any issues you’d like to see addressed, and I’ll do my best to research it/them for you. |
I just finished reading and reviewing the last entries for a contest. It was time consuming, but great fun, because the entries were wonderful! As a folllow-up, I decided to watch a movie I hadn’t seen since its 1980s release. (I despise watching something more than once (er, except Downton Abby  )), but something in one of the stories awakened the memory of this film. I searched it out and found it on Tubi.
The film: The Big Chill. A movie that I had seen long ago with the hub and another couple we’d recently met when we’d moved into our new neighborhood. It was the kind of film where you’d come out of the theater feeling as though you had been part of it. The characters were developed with a comfortable, casual air so familiar, I felt as if I knew them, indeed like I had known them for a long time. As though they were my dear old friends. The kind of friendship that lasts a lifetime.
I decided to write about this today because I had just been reviewing these contest entries, focused on this very thing. How well developed the plot and characters are — or are not. So I guess it strikes me with a heightened level of importance than it might have otherwise.
Anyway, it occurs to me the story itself is a mystery, built upon a series of equal mysteries. Though not a murder mystery. Not a Whodunit. Or a who stole the diamond tiara. But a life mystery that might never be completely solved or fully unearthed.
A character we never meet has taken his life, and the group of friends, likely college friends, have come together for the funeral and the weekend that followed. And in that 2 1/2 day period, (less than 2 hours), the rest of us get to know them all, and their stories reveal a lot about the one no longer present.
The one story we never fully learn is the one we want the most. The story of the character who brought them all back together, through his heartbreaking deed.
We are left never knowing what caused him to make such a decision and take such action. Of course, every character had their thoughts about it - about what happened, but no definitive answer as to exactly why it happened is confirmed. There was no note. No final phone-call or conversation that defined the exact answer.
This led the others - individually and collectively - to First blame themselves And Then blame each other. Which, by osmosis, deepened the bond between the characters and me, as my emotions ran the gamut. I felt pity and then anger for each one, completely invested in the plot, the characters, and the mystery.
And here’s the kicker. When the story concluded, I was satisfied. No; really! I was! How is this even possible? I should have been let down or frustrated - or at the very least, annoyed.
Oh boy. I bet you’re thinking I have the answer to THAT mystery.
I don’t.
My only quick answer is that I felt a kinship with the characters and their heart wrenching dilemma, I felt I had a group of close friends with whom to mull it over. The characters in the film - And the other couple who’d joined us for that evening at the theater. See, the subject was so well and deeply developed (yet with a masterful degree of subtlety), the conversation we four had afterward was naturally fathoms deeper than it otherwise could have been. We were opened by the story. By the way it drew us in.
I think I might like to try my hand at writing this type of mystery. I don’t know if I want to wind it around something as dreadful as suicide, though. Perhaps some other drastic action or behavior that no one really understands or can fathom. I don’t know. But I feel it’s worth considering and trying.
Even if I don’t make it the backbone of the story, perhaps it could be something I wrangle into a story.
And now that I think of it, the story that I’m planning to be working on in these next weeks is a mystery. But it’s not a traditional murder mystery or whodunnit either. Hmmm…
**And this has now magically morphed from a blogpost into this month’s mystery newsletter, which, by the way, is due tomorrow.
Why did I wait until the last minute to write it?
It’s a mystery.
.
See you next month.
Carol St.Ann 
Remember to nominate great Mysteries
**The Big Chill is available to stream for free on Tubi and in DVD Blueray at Amazon |
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Mystery: October 01, 2025 Issue [#13376]
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