Newport Tower Mysteries

The town of Newport on Rhode Island in America is the source of an ongoing mystery... in the town is a large stone tower that still stands today. General belief is that it's a 17th century windmill, but there are others that insist there is evidence (since debunked) that places the tower's creation centuries before that date; making it older than Christopher Columbus' voyage to the Americas.

The one discovery that has yet to be disproved are the architectural anomalies that point to it not being a windmill, but some form of observatory instead.

Four of the eight supporting pillars of the tower face the main points of the compass. In the 1990s, William Penhallow, an astronomer at the University of Rhode Island, studied the windows in the tower and said that he found a number of astronomical alignments. At the summer solstice the setting sun should shine through the "west" window (actually just south of true west) onto a niche in the inner wall, next to the "south" window. (This no longer happens due to urban development and park trees.) Similarly, the angle from the "east" window through the "west" window is about 18 degrees south of west, which is the southern extreme of moonsets during what is known as the "lunar minor standstill". The smaller windows also form alignments, on significant stars. These alignments could be accidental, but if they were deliberate it would explain why the pattern of windows seems, according to Penhallow, "so odd". - Wikipedia

Granted, these discoveries are too recent for our time period, but that doesn't mean that others hadn't known of them earlier. The ideal situation for this is a government backed cult using the tower as a focal point for it's mythos investigations into Homeland Security. Just imagine the havoc that that would cause if something broke out?

In fact, 1938 saw a massive hurricane start in the Atlantic that devastated the eastern coast of America, causing over 600 deaths in New England. A large percentage of these deaths were in Rhode Island...

One possible situation is:

A government backed group of sorcerers try to harness the power of the sea to create storms to defend shipping lines to Europe. Unfortunately either the Germans, or something else, attack during the ceremonies causing the sorcerer's control over the storm to waver, sending it spinning across the American coastline causing mayhem wherever it hit. The investigators may be part of the ceremony, or just sent to guard it from outside forces; having to defend the sorcerers from otherworldly powers until they can get the storm under control.

The Sonman Mine Explosion

Literature isn't the only source of weird and wonderful events that could act as plot points.

In 1940, the Sonman Mine near Portage, Pennsylvania was the site of a large explosion that killed an estimated 63 miners. Rescue was severely hampered by a methane gas buildup that filled the tunnels, especially around the area called Right No. 16 heading where the explosion is said to have been centered.

While this can easily be explained as a gas explosion, it could also be a coverup for something far more sinister.

Mines can be a good source of mythos related investigations as you never quite know what could have been in those tunnels. In this case there are a few likely variants on this tale

1) The investigators are called in after the explosion to investigate some odd findings in the mining company's rescue attempts; possibly some body parts that couldn't possibly belong to any of the workers, or part of a strange carving.

2) The more fun one is to have the investigators called in to look at something uncovered in the tunnels during the mining. This could be something as simple as an odd mineral or some cave markings in a sealed cave; all the way up to carved tunnels uncovered during the excavation. To explain the disaster, you're likely going to want to have something really nasty hiding in there that needs lots of explosives to stop it escaping.