The Hollow Run Files

Something strange is happening at Hollow Run Tool & Die.

Hollow Run is a family-owned manufacturer in a small Pennsylvania town. It has about sixty people, a busy shop floor, a front office that runs on coffee, and a vendor who has brought donuts every month for as long as anyone can remember. The owner has been in business for more than thirty years, and he'll tell you nothing has ever gone wrong.

Then a new IT team starts onboarding. On the very first night, a device that shouldn't exist answers at 3:07 AM.

Beginning October 13, follow #TheHollowRunFiles, a 13-part fictional Halloween mystery told across the LinkedIn profiles of Dawn Sizer, Dave Sizer, and Anthony Purich of 3rd Element Consulting. You'll meet the suspects, examine the evidence, and follow the investigation as the team uncovers abandoned accounts, exposed passwords, suspicious AI activity, a fake website, a voice-cloning attempt, and a trail that has been building for more than a decade.

The story is fiction. The technology risks are very real.

Who's telling the story

Dave Sizer does the digging. He follows the devices, the logins, and the settings, and explains what he finds in plain language.

Anthony Purich works with Hollow Run's people: the CFO, the bookkeeper, the estimator, and the shop floor. He finds out which shortcuts everyone depends on.

Dawn Sizer works with the owner, keeps the suspect board, and is the one who has to tell him what's really going on.

Each of them has a different piece of the story. To see all of it, you'll want to follow all three.

How to play

Every episode on LinkedIn shares one part of the story and one piece of evidence. The same episodes unlock here on the same schedule, with the full, expanded version of each episode.

This is a fair mystery. Everything you need to name the culprit appears in the episodes and the evidence before the reveal. Nothing depends on information you can't see.

Think you know who did it? Submit your guess before 9:00 AM Eastern on Friday, October 30. We want to treat you this Halloween with some free goodies. We'll pick the first few correct guesses and post the winners!