Prepping Call of Cthulhu

I am going to be the Keeper of Arcane Lore again this Saturday, and now it's prepping time. As usual it's complex. In a scenario where investigation is common, you need to have lot of information available. Not only give the characters enough rope to hang themselves by, but also enough information for the players to to feel it is a real work they are interacting with. I find this is slightly different than a game like D&D or T&T.

The idea of making the game world seem real involves sound. When our Keeper ran us through the Beyond the Mountain of Madness campaign, he made good use of sound. Ambient sound like engine sound, arctic winds or the lapping of waves can go a long way to make the players feel involved, which is something I try to do when running CoC. The coming scenario, Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? (from Chaosium's Great Old Ones) will be set in New Orleans. Guess what kind of sounds I'll need? I don't even like jazz music...

You know what? Right now I'm contemplating how to introduce more yellow objects into our living room, just as "background noise". I wonder why CoC always makes people go that extra mile?

It would be fun to hear if any of my readers have done something like that, or if you have run TMHYStYS?

Anyone have a good source of sound effects?

In the prep work for my stint as a Keeper of Arcane Lore for Call of Cthulhu, I browsed around for some sound effects to use as ambient background noise during the session. When we played Beyond the Mountains of Madness, our Keeper had managed to find some very good noises both for the boat trip to Antarctica and for when we was on the ice. It managed to give that extra subtle but constant reminder that we "were" in another place.

What I did find now when I searched, was only short snippets that either faded out or faded in. If you wanted to have them as ambient sounds in the background, you'd get some very annoying clicks and points when the sounds would go away before suddenly re-emerge. Needless to say, looping them just didn't work.

So, where do you go to find good, loop able, sounds for sounds of weather and general noises in rural or urban areas? Anyone have a good stack? Do you know a site where they reside? My google-fu wasn't up to it before the session, and I thought I should try other methods before the next one.

The value of immersion - CoC At the Mountains of Madness

I have mentioned before that I am playing At the Mountains of Madness right now. This is the first time I have actually played CoC in one of Chaosiums big campaigns at home. Almost all my other experiences have been con games and one-shots. As everyone probably know, CoC is a game where mood is important. Our Keeper have managed to get us fairly involved by using a few steps which have been very effective, in their simpleness. First of all we start by moving to a different place in the room. We move the whole table, so we have a tangible clue that it's time to move our minds into a new place. Secondly we have had ambient sounds for the ship engines at sea, the storms at sea and the windswept plains of Antarctica. When we hit upon a storm at sea, with the noise of the engine and the wind loud in our ears it was impossible not to be there. I've read about this effect before, but now I have felt it. Effective and very simple.