Margaret "Maggie" Dorothy Adler was, until recently, the longest living resident of Edwards Island. She began on the island as a comms officer during the Second World War. She went on to investigate the transmissions coming from the crew of the sunken USS Kanaloa alongside her childhood friend and possible lover, Anna Shea. Throughout the game, you are able to find notes left by Maggie buried in the ground in various locations on the island that chronicle the truth that she and Anna had discovered together about the Kanaloa and the island itself.
Background[]
Maggie grew up in Maine with her childhood friend Anna. Maggie was recruited into the army as a comms officers straight out of college and accepted despite her family's protests. Her aptitude in math and mechanical engineering led to her job as a code maker, though the task of covering government secrets was a task she grew increasingly uncomfortable with.[1]
On October 25, 1943, Maggie was on duty at Harden Tower when she received a garbled transmission, which was then cut off. She mistook the message as an attempt to jam radar. She sent out the guide book recommendation and signaled for surrounding ships to scout and bomb, if necessary.[2] The USS Walter Roy responded and fired upon the USS Kanaloa, sinking it and seemingly killing its 85 crew members and 12 passengers. The event caused Maggie a lifetime of guilt which she tried repeatedly to make up for.[3]
Investigation of the USS Kanaloa[]
Some time after the Kanaloa's sinking, Maggie began investigating mysterious transmissions that later turned out to be sent from the sunken Kanaloa crew. Anna Shea later accompanied Maggie in her investigations. Together, Maggie and Anna found that the crew and passengers had not died, as was thought, but instead had been separated from their dimensional existence by the implosion of the submarine's nuclear reactor. Anna and Maggie continued their tests through the winter of 1951.[4][5]
On April 4, 1952, Maggie and Anna attempted to reverse the manifest breakdown in the hopes that they could free the soldiers from their parallel dimension. They were able to tune into the temporal tear inside the cave at Beacon Beach and speak with Henry Griffin briefly. (It can be assumed, due to one of the morse code mesaages, that Anna went on ahead and this caused her own downfall and entrapment. It is unknown whether Maggie blamed herself, although it's highly likely she did.) However, the Sunken overpowered Anna during their attempt to free themselves, resulting in Anna being absorbed into the rift and trapped alongside them. Maggie fled the scene in terror which later added to her immense feeling of guilt.[6]
Later Life[]
Maggie took up residence on Edwards Island and continued to live there her whole life, trying to protect others from interfering with the Kanaloa crew by making the land federally protected from tourism. Her attempts were however in vain as a small tourist industry later took residence on the island.[7] In 1975 she anonymously started a petition to have a statue made in memory of the USS Kanaloa's crew after being asked by the daughter of Francis Salter, one of the crew members.[8]
Maggie is reported by Clarissa to have died just three days before the events of Oxenfree.