Journal · Filed dispatches
Notes from the build of a documentary escape room: what the public record establishes, how a puzzle earns its citation, and why the haunted house playbook gets refused here.
Dallas, Texas·6 dispatches filed·Updated as the build advances
Sources · Dispatch 01
The Sixth Floor, in the Public RecordWhat the public record actually establishes about the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963 — and what our room is allowed to build from it.
Filed 2026-09-24
Method · Dispatch 02
How a Puzzle Earns a CitationThe rule that governs every puzzle in Oswald: no mechanic ships until it resolves to a dated, named document — and survives three full playtest cycles without teaching the wrong thing.
Filed 2026-09-24
Design · Dispatch 03
Why a Documentary Escape Room Is RareEscape rooms sell fantasy. One of the only historically accurate rooms in the country explains why it refuses the haunted house playbook — no gore, no scare actors, no theory presented as fact.
Filed 2026-09-24
Place · Dispatch 04
Dealey Plaza: A Field Guide to the Plaza ItselfThe plaza has a story of its own — built as the Front Door of Dallas, completed in 1941, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. What the ground under the history actually is, and what you can still stand on today.
Filed 2026-09-24
Timeline · Dispatch 05
Eighty Minutes: The Oak Cliff Afternoon, in the RecordThe documented movements of Lee Harvey Oswald after the assassination — the rooming house on North Beckley, the shooting of Officer Tippit, the arrest in a movie theatre — as the Warren Commission gives them, with the gaps labeled as gaps.
Filed 2026-09-24
Dallas · Dispatch 06
A Day in Dallas on the Record: A Documentary ItineraryOne day, all public record: Dealey Plaza at first light, the museum at 411 Elm, the Oak Cliff sites in the afternoon — a self-guided route through what November 22, 1963 left standing in Dallas, and how to end it.
Filed 2026-09-24