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Yobiah Whateley

Yobiah Whateley is the shell-shocked, churchgoing father of the twins Abelforth and Wilbur Whateley, whose wife Irene walked into the woods in front of him.
Type NPC
Aliases Mr. Whateley; Yobi; Josiah
Affiliation Whateley family
Status Alive (as of Radford Horror 06)
First appearance Radford Horror 01 (as an unnamed husband); named in Radford Horror 02
Played by Andre

Description

Yobiah is about sixty, a big man with boots of roughly size twelve. He is old-fashioned and pious, the family in church every Sunday, and tells the team the family could not afford the Usenet access Abe wanted, which he considers "probably perverts" anyway. He regards the clerk at the Pay n' Stay who talked with Abe as a pervert. (Radford Horror 02)

History

In Radford Horror 01 the team hears only that Mrs. Whateley, a neighbor less than a mile from the Luckys, saw something out the kitchen window while making dinner, put down her pan and walked into the night while her husband watched (Radford Horror 01).

In Radford Horror 02 the team finds him in a cookie-cutter house, shell-shocked on the couch and ignoring a glass of water while neighbors fuss. The sheriff comforts him: "I'm sure we'll find her, Yobiah." He tells Kurt Larson that Irene looked "surprised" rather than angry or scared, ignored him and stormed out; he thought she was chasing a coyote, kept eating for about ten minutes, then "it got weird." He regrets not following her. His boots are far too big to match the footprints leading into the woods. (Radford Horror 02)

He tells Huell Kendrick that Abe built a replica Mercury spacesuit for a school presentation and ran out that morning; that Abe's interest in space began at twelve and that losing the family dog broke him; that Wilbur has not spoken since the accident; and that the twins' friends included the Nichols girl, the Augustine girl and her brother, and the McCreadys. He declined Dr. Lori's suggestion of family therapy. (Radford Horror 02)

In Radford Horror 03 the players, reviewing their leads, remember him only as "Yobi and his missing wife," part of a "weird religious family" (Radford Horror 03). In Radford Horror 06 the team finds him unconscious in the master bedroom with a bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand, his pulse and breathing fine. The next morning he is the one who reports his comatose son missing, and he looks to the team as though he has broken psychologically (Radford Horror 06). The police later find Irene's body, crucified, burned and disemboweled, in the back of the old church (Radford Horror 08); Yobiah is not shown reacting.

Trivia

  • A neighbor, Meg Gunderson, first calls him Josiah. Andre closes Radford Horror 02 by correcting the name to Yobiah, admitting he had not had a name ready and made one up. The table also says "Yobi" and, once, "Yoga" (Radford Horror 06).

Appearances