We know, already, that the game is told through the eyes of Edith, and that each of the vignettes are told through the eyes of each member of the family in some way. About 3/4 of the way through the game, Edith's determination at finding out the truth about the house is replaced with a fear that perhaps she should not be telling the story. So, what if...what if she has decided to change what we (representing Christopher reading the journal) experience, because she has realized something terrifying? What if...

What if Edie and Dawn are serial killers?

The basic premise

Edie is a serial killer, who kills and then enshrines her victims as trophies. She then involves her granddaughter Dawn to take over the "family business" in doing so.

I'm going to go ahead and build a timeline here for you.

- 1937: Molly is born and shortly after, Sven and Edie settle on the island and build the house.
- 1944: Barbara is born.
- 1947: Edie murders Molly by poisoning her. Edie builds a shrine to her victim in her room.
- 1950: Sam & Calvin born.
- 1952: Walter born.
- 1960: Edie murders Barbara and blames Barbara's death on Rich or an "unidentified home invader". Edie hides Barbara's body (minus one ear) in the basement and gives her room the shrine treatment.
- 1961: Edie murders Calvin by pushing him off a cliff.
- 1964: Edie murders Sven. She even takes a picture of it happening.
- 1968: Dawn is born.
- 1968: Edie murders Walter after he discovers Barbara's remains in the basement.
- 1969: Gus is born.
- 1976: Gregory is born.
- 1977: Dawn, as an emotional 11-year old dealing with a new baby and potentially-divorcing parents, drowns Gregory while Kay is distracted. Likely this is with Edie's coercion.
- 1982: Dawn murders Gus. Maybe she is acting out again because of Sam's new marriage. perhaps she's coerced again.
- 1983: Dawn murders her dad Sam by pushing him off a cliff.
- 1988: Lewis is born.
- 1992: Milton is born.
- 1999: Edith is born.
- 2003: Milton, while exploring the house's secret passages, discovers evidence of all of the murders, shares this info with Lewis, and runs away. In a panic, Dawn seals all the doors. Edie puts up peepholes so she can keep an eye on her trophies.
- 2000's: Lewis develops a drug habit to cope with his knowledge of the murders.
- 2010: Dawn murders Lewis after visiting the cannery ("Even as his mother pleaded with him...") and makes it look like a suicide.
- 2010: Afraid of being found out, Dawn makes plans to leave. But Edie will not leave her trophies behind.
- 2010: Edie commits suicide.
- 2016: Dawn dies. Perhaps the first member of the family to die of natural causes.
- 2017: Edith returns to the house, and during her exploration begins to suspect that her family members were murdered. She finds the most damning evidence in the basement, after which she flees.

Supporting evidence - Edie's sociopathic obsession with shrines

The nearly hundred-year-old lady was obsessed and had the means to keep these rooms alive. "I had a feeling Edie had spent a lot of time in this room," Edith mentions while in Molly's. Of course she did. She was obsessing over them. Take a look at her bookshelf and you'll see binders labeled "Shrine concepts" and such. because she was planning these. Why would she have a binder of information on putting together Mollie's shrine if she wasn't planning on making more shrines?

Of course, over time, she perfected her craft. Each trophy had a personalized lace doilie and a painted slab of tree trunk. Each one perfect and each one arranged for worship by the killer. Even her parakeets each got their own shrine, complete with a doilie. And of course, everyone got a tombstone in the cemetery.

Just look at that unfinished Lewis painting in Edie's room. Are you telling me that a 93 year-old woman was able to complete that in a week? Of course not. She had been working on it longer than that.

But then, as she got older, the murders became more difficult, so she trained a protege: Dawn. Dawn did the killing, Edie made the shrines.

One last note here: If you explore the house you'll find that Edie's door peephole has a year of death for herself. Who engraved it? Who sealed the door? Why, Edie did, herself, before committing suicide. One final shrine.

Edith as an unreliable narrator

All of the journals and diaries are all more fantastical than reality. Edith's journal is no different. And at a certain point...she just starts lying to cover the horror of the atrocities she is discovering.

One particular thing to note related to this is lights. We establish that the power was shut off the night they left. However, after you've gone to the basement you start to see electric lights turning on. These lights continue, up through the top parts of the house (like Edith's "letter lamp" in her room). This is because everything after the point where Edith enters the basement is a lie, made up by Edith after she discovers the horrible truth.

Walter

"But we see Walter was under the house later!" you cry. Alrighty, then answer me the following: Which is more plausible:

- A man lived for 30 years in a secret bunker under the house, or
- When Edith went downstairs and investigated the basement (the one Dawn told her never to go into), she discovered the damning evidence of the murders, and rather than pass that info on to her unborn child via the journal, gave Walter a more fantastical end.

We have already established Edith as an unreliable narrator. The second option makes far more sense. Also, why else would Dawn be "furious" about Edie mentioning a mole person living under the house? The last thing she wants is some investigator to poke around.

This is further supported by the train. There would never be a train running under private property like that, especially on beachfront property (which is terrible to build tracks on). the train never existed. Neither did the tracks. They were all made up in Edith's unreliable retelling of the story. (This is also the point, as I noted above, where Edith goes from determination about discovering the truth to fear about whether she should pass on her discoveries.)

Everything after this point in the game is probably entirely unreliable. perhaps there is more evidence in the upper rooms, but there's just no way to know for sure. Because Edith didn't show it to us.

In conclusion

Edie and Dawn weren't dealing with a family curse. They were the curse.