It is stated (and shown) that Dawn had sealed the doors to the bedrooms of each deceased family member (with the exception of Walter's childhood bedroom), whilst Edie retaliated by drilling peepholes into them. This includes the door to Edie's own bedroom, oddly enough. Which begs the question: did Dawn seal up her grandmother's bedroom after the latter's death, or before it, and did Edie drill a hole into her own bedroom door preemptively, or did Dawn do so after Edie's passing? And if neither of them did in either of those cases, then who did?
To add to the confusion, Edie's door is marked with a date, yet Edith says that no-one else went back to the house after leaving it. So who noted the date?
It’s implied that Edie may have killed herself because Dawn and Edith left her; it’s possible she locked her own door and wrote the date on it before dying.
This could also explain the mildly amusing fact that one of the boarded-up rooms is Gregory's "room", aka the second-floor bathroom.
Actually, the bathroom being boarded off makes perfect sense. If an infant in your family died in your home's bathtub, you'd likely never want to set foot in that bathroom again. Edie marking the door still makes sense, as she is leaving a reminder of why that bathroom is no longer used and who was lost inside of it.
How did Edith's son manage to survive, having been born without any medical assistance in an empty, remote countryside house? It is heavily implied his mother died in childbirth and was not even able to call a doctor.
It's never explicitly stated that she died in the house, only that she died giving birth to him.
Edith explicitly says she was 22ish weeks pregnant when she came to the house, so Edith's son definitely wasn't born there.
Just because she inherited the house doesn't mean she was necessarily living in it. Even then, like the above troper said, she was 22 weeks along in her pregnancy at the time, so we know she lived for four more months until Christopher's birth; plenty of time to get herself to a hospital to deliver him safely. I don't understand why you would assume she died in the house.
Walter dies because he was hit by a train. Okay, fair enough... Until you notice something weird about the circumstances. When you explore the tracks as Edith, you notice the tracks themselves have long collapsed into the sea. By the time Edith sees the remains, it was possibly out of use before Walter died (keep it mind it's just little over a decade between Walter's death and the present), especially since it's implied that he stepped outside in the first place was because the rumbling from the trains stopped outright for at least a week, and if he was experiencing the tremors daily previously without fail and right at noon, then the train line itself was potentially retired or put under extended maintenance/further construction, the latter of which normally occurs for much longer than just a week when it comes to train lines. Did the train actually exist, or was it another manifestation of the curse? Or am I just overthinking the connection between Walter's demise and the broken train tracks which are probably just to stop the player from being able to go somewhere they shouldn't?
Near the end of the game, one of Edie's journals mentions an earthquake on the day Edith was born. Though said earthquake happened out in the ocean, aftershocks could have reached the cliffside where the train tracks were and caused them to collapse into the sea.
But Walter died after Edith's birth, because Edith remembers Edie regularly going down to the basement, presumably to sneak food to him.
Once again, we might just chalk it up to the Unreliable Narrator: we the players aren't exactly seeing what Edith saw, but what her son imagines from Edith's narration in the diary. The train tracks might have been really decommissioned, but not to the extent we see in-game.
What puzzles me is how he didn't hear the train coming from a mile away. Trains aren't exactly known for being silent...
^That detail of Walter not hearing the train could be an implication that getting hit by a train isn't exactly how he died.
In Molly's sequence where is the gerbil that lives in the cage we see?
Dead and buried in the pet cemetery, most likely.
Nope, that wouldn't explain the carrot. Instead, there's a detail that you both probably missed- there's a hamster-tunnel connecting the gerbil's cage to the chest of drawers beneath it- where the gerbil had, quote, "its own room with an even smaller gerbil cage". The gerbil was almost certainly there.
If Edith died giving birth to Christopher, then who named him that and how did he get the book? Did she get to name him before she died and arrange for him to receive the book? Even if she had the name picked out and had known she was having a boy, the opportunity to write him a birth certificate would not have arisen until after he was born, which leaves a very narrow window of her being alive at the same time as him being born.
The other possibility is that she told a doctor or some other third party to name her baby Christopher and give him the book, which is frankly heartbreaking.
Even beyond that, there are so many things about Christopher's existence that raise questions. Who is his dad? Who raised him? How did this happen? We'll never know, because apparently Giant Sparrow didn't care to tell us.
Edith getting pregnant at a young age is actually pretty unsurprising, as it serves as another example of her tendency towards the same reckless behavior that her family is so well known for. She could very well have had a one-night stand with some guy, either same age or possibly older, who may not have ever even known that she became pregnant. However, if she did keep in any kind of contact with the father, it would make the most sense for him to take over as Christopher's parent and guardian when she died, provided he was willing to do so. Otherwise, Christopher would have most likely been put up for adoption or into the foster system since he has no other surviving family members that can be found to care for him. Infants tend to have the highest adoption rates so at least his chances of being adopted into a new family would have been fairly high.
It's also possible the doctor told her long beforehand she wasn't going to survive giving birth to her baby for one reason or another, thus giving her plenty of time to prepare naming him and writing the journal to pass on her legacy.
She might not have died in childbirth per se but actually died shortly after, so possibly living just long enough to state her son's name. If not, she probably pre-registered her son's name before giving birth (apparently, you can do this, though I'm not sure). Another explanation to answer both points is that she gave her son up for adoption before he was born (considering that she dies of obstetric complications) and so stated his name as such on the paperwork, after all, he's not named in the game's story itself. On the subject of Christopher's bio-father, Edith said she and Dawn moved around a lot, so it's possible that she moved before she found out she was pregnant.
There is also the question of where Edith lived after Dawn's death and everyday concerns of how did she pay for groceries and was she in school. Probably would have detracted from the plot if answers to those questions were included, but it would have been nice.
Since Edith was a minor when Dawn died and had no other surviving family members (not counting the possibility of Milton being alive, but then he's disappeared anyway) she would have become a ward of the state, so she was most likely placed into the foster system. If she did have a foster family she may have just not felt the need to bring them up in her diary since she was writing specifically about her blood family and the crazy things that went on around them.
Actually, it's possible to live on one's own at 17 without any legal issues, especially if one's 18th birthday is soon. Maybe, due to the circumstances, Edith was granted emancipation and or she had an inheritance. Alternatively, if Kay's still alive, she probably went to stay with her or her (Kay's) relatives.
Washington State is on the opposite side of the United States from Norway. How and why would someone move their whole house there by ocean from Norway, especially in the early 1900s? The Panama Canal was open at that time, but still, that's weird.
The Pacific Northwest has had a great deal of immigration from Norway over the years, with the early 1900s being near the peak. Sailing the house all the way there would have required plenty of effort and determination, but Odin had both.
Lewis Finch is shown to have a high school diploma from Orcas Island Regional High School, but the books in the house and one of the rooms imply that Dawn homeschooled her children. There are a lot of ways these two things could be reconciled, but it's weird that designers included both.
The schoolroom implies a space that was meant to educate young children. With all the colorful posters and the flashcards. In all likelihood he was educated at an elementary to possibly middle school level and then went to a public high school.
Did Kay blame Sam (insanely) for Gregory's death? If not, why was she the one who divorced him over it?
She could possibly have blamed herself over and over again for Gregory's death, hence Sam's insisting in the divorce papers that it wasn't her fault. Despite this, their marriage could have broken apart due to her declining mental health and deciding to divorce Sam to free him from being tied to the one who caused the death of his son as a final act of kindness. Sam was unwilling to divorce, but knowing he couldn't change her mind he opted to at least give his account of the tragic events. Alternatively, as a troper suggested on the Fridge Brilliance page, their marriage could have already been rocky at the time of Gregory's birth, and his death was the straw that broke the camel's back in their relationship, making their decision to divorce mutual.
Why do Edith, Milton, and Lewis have their mother's surname and not their father's? Especially if Dawn is so opposed to Finch family insanity, why would she go against convention and pass on the cursed surname to her children?
Maybe Edie pressured her and Sanjay to give their children the Finch family name, to continue the legacy. And/or maybe Dawn turned against the Finch family legacy only after Milton's disappearance (when she boarded up the rooms, in fact).
Sven married into the family as well, yet his and Edie's children were all Finches, so it may be family tradition after all. (Though an alternative explanation that works for Sven - but not for Sanjay - is that Finch is Sven's unmarried surname as well, either by chance or by him being a distant relative of Edie.)
Dawn might have returned to her maiden name after Sanjay's death. Hell, for all we know, they might not have ever been formally married in the first place.
over the years, with the early 1900s being near the peak. Sailing the house all the way there would have required plenty of effort and determination, but Odin had both.