but Mr. Hadden surely can see somehow every step Nigel takes.

It is my opinion that he was in an induced dream-state and visited the town of Saxton. Lucy was then needed to bring him out of this dream-state. I just can't figure why he could hear the telephone, lol.

It didn't occur to me that Nigel was an avatar of some sort himself, but I was thinking along the lines of him walking through a time warp when he broke into the files at Hadden and Saxton being some sort of world manipulated by Hadden. Coincidentally, I've been doing some reading on the soul's ability to exist in parallel universes and during the game I briefly wondered if Jonathan had done some similar research and maybe that was where the game was headed.

...the game was in black and white because Saxton was generated from old b&w photos and that's why those rips were by the two churches and the rusting/negative damage happened in the rain. I was thinking that the rips were an indication of a time shift but the rust-looking spots had me completely baffled.

I just happened to have set up a nifty new monitor this afternoon and I thought it was messing up the colors when the rust colored spots suddenly appeared. Then I thought maybe it was blood but Nigel walked through it, not over it like he would if it was a stain on the ground. I kept making Nigel walk through it, trying to figure it out and finally decided it was a mystery and to just carry on. I like the theory that it was photo negative damage due to the rain. And Jonathan has experience as a photographer, so it would make sense that he would go that route.

Discrepancies to do with Nigels's age, date of employment have already been mentioned.

Lucy has a student card to tell us that she is 'contemporary' between 2007 & 2010 yet her train ticket shows a 2 part return ticket from Sedgefield to Sedgefield? that seems to be stamped 30.10 05? She doesn't believe in ghosts but seems to believe in looking into the past & future. Her aim seems to be looking for the lost cats but later in the game she spoke on the phone (that wasn't connected)to Hadden - who told her to pull Nigel back when the time was ready?

Hadden Industries was obviously based in London - which seemed to be where Nigel caught the train from (or thought he did), also the telephone number on the back of his identity card has an inner London code. The website in one of the printouts he stole has a website address (not likely I would have thought in the year he would have stolen it!)- if you check out the website it is a virtual present day site advertising the exact equipment that was sent to Nigel - therefore he recieved from Hadden future equipment in the past, if that makes sense! Also Hadden Industries, according to the website, is now based in Saxton Harbour!

The train station (old advert) & station master are from a much earlier period in time - I'm sure, as much as we criticise our rail service, that there were no steam trains used except for the tourist industry! Once you step onto the 'decking' over the fens you are in a nature reserve created in 1973. I think it's probably much later in time than that as the picture of the crabs, & the poisonous flower are crossed through indicatiing that they are no longer features of the reserve - but you still see the flowers in colour!!!

The Saxton Snappers competition urges you to ..."grab your SLR or digital device" - 1990's at least?

The newspapers found in the cave between Saxton shore & beach are in good condition, do not mention a date but you can see by the adverts & the reference to 'radio listings' that they probably precede TV days?

I'm totally baffled by most of this but one theory I thought of is that Nigel was sent 'through the chasm' to ghosthunt & exorcise the 'spirits' to prevent them being inadvertantly dragged into the present world via the chasm - as according to Mr Hare's report. The chasm seemed to be opened by the spring tides - but as reported in the newspaper they flooded a graveyard & polluted the water with rotting corpses - were these the 'entities' seen in the photos Nigel stole?

her brother, who worked undercover to solve the mystery of the missing cats. You know him als Alex Spitmoor, the gruntly journalist. Alex thought, Danvers could be the catnapper, but Lucy told him by the tower that his innocent.

look at the date at which Lucys is recruited by hadden Industries (you can see it at the end of the game: she seems to live in our time.

everything might be some kind of alternate reality that may not follow traditional rules of reality.

I've got my own weird evidence I've not seen mentioned:
On the wall of photos in the room of death, two pics show Nigel and Lucy together at a carnival, with real mechanical rides all bedecked in colored lights, OBVIOUSLY not part of the Fayre. All I can say is: WTHeck?
The other bit of weird evidence is that the payphone has strange modem-like sounds instead of the normal dial-tone, same as the background music for the computer printouts. Evidence suggesting that the phone is either hacked into by Hadden, or is some kind of link from the 'dream-world' into the outside world via the Hadden company servers, which would explain why Hadden was able to simply connect to the disconnected phone in the Harbour Cottage.
Despite all the evidence though, I still stand back and concur that some of the main plot lines don't make sense, regardless of the scenarios painted out. First the people seem to be helping Nigel find the crown. In particular the ghosts deliberately hand Nigel clues. Then he is warned that all is not what it seems, but it IS what it turns out to be what it seems.
Morgan Mankle in particular is ill-fitted. She seems somewhat older than Lucy, who described her as a bully in school.
Hardacre is killed, supposedly because he possesses the crown. (how is one killed by a sickle and not shed any blood?) Then the crown is not where he died, but hidden away. Nigel, the thief himself, got all the way into town and hid the crown without harm. Maybe it took time for the guardians to manifest and by then the crown was in different hands. Personally I think ghosts are insubstantial, even in this game, and somebody alive killed him.
If Hadden is controlling everything though, all bets are off and anything illogical can be explained by his duex-ex-machina interference, which is why I do not prefer that angle.

Your remark about the photos is very interesting. I too noticed the modem-like sounds. This seems to hint in the direction of an alternative reality; meanwhile Nigel’s body never left the laboratory of Hadden Industries.
I was surprised about the people of Saxton who helped Nigel and later were angry. Perhaps they thought he would act different. The dreamlike sequence, in which Nigel is part of the painting of the Ager brothers seems to point in this direction.

I hadn't thought of the whole thing taking place in an alternate reality or computer simulation. I'll have to mull that over to see if it makes any sense to me.

the ghosts and the townspeople seem to help Nigel find the Crown, and in fact, are eager to help him do it. Nanny Noah says repeatedly, "He could be the one who could change everything," as if that would be a good thing. But then when Nigel does find the Crown, no one (with the exception of Bob Tawny and the Reubenses) will admit to knowing him or wants to have anything to do with him. What's up with that?

I also am not convinced it was really Gruel. Yeah, okay, he was a loon, but he didn't seem like a dangerous loon.

the vicar of Northfield?? he says the portrait on the wall behind him--which is clearly one of the Agers--was an ancestor of his from way back. I really expected that to have some significance but it never did. In fact, I expected to find out the vicar was the catnapper. Also, when we take the funeral announcement to Nanny Noah she says,"there's a new vicar already?" or something like that. Yet the Vicar says he's been there 30 years.

the whole thing was somewhat rushed from the time we took the crown (Wow, I would have liked a way NOT to do that!!). I really didn't like the Dea Ex Machina ending, myself. But the rapidity with which the ending occurred as well as the fact that all it took was Nigel's saying he wanted to put it back for that to transport him to the caverns does kind of point to the whole thing's being a simulation or experiment of some kind. I think.

when we were in the cavern putting the crown back, surrounded by ghostly figures, one of the ghostly figures was Lucy?

Maybe they wanted him to do something else -- like free the spirits that were trapped or defeat the Agers? Remember how at certain points in the game, after Nigel had accomplished something along those lines, that there was more color in the game. I noticed it mainly at two points -- in Nanny Noah's house, the second time Nigel was invited in, and when the blue sky appeared.

I suppose the theory of having different time periods existing simultaneously could explain the Agers as well (4 men of the same name always referred to as "brothers" yet clearly not of the same times). Yet for me it doesn't jibe with the story of Grindle and Granwulf, which gave the impression that you would have a bunch of incredibly long-lived people watching out for the Crown. That's what I thought the folk of Saxton were, not all ghosts.

DH has a problem with the Agers ultimately in that he thinks that having such evil men going about a task my such evil means watching over the Crown infers that their purpose is innately evil, which would mean the Crown was meant to be found. But I don;t know that I agree with that.