With the basement puzzle involving books:
Remember that there are two rooms with this author (Ivan R.)
So check out what you found in that room
Remember the jar of keys?
You can distract the ghost by
Letting the bat out with the sinister iron key.
Once you’ve distracted him, you can read all you want.
It seems like you have a lot of information in that room you’ve collected so far.
One book mentions the name, another book mentions what to do with the name.
Specifically,
You have to make sure the ghost has come back, and say the name three times.
After this, the game is a little buggy. You can just fool around to see what happens, but if you want to know for sure,
When the tentacles come, go upstairs and to one other room (any will do) before going back.
In the boiler room, there is a critical, critical piece of info easy to miss:
there is a journal in the drawer
Not only that, you can
Look up or topics in it or consult it about topics.
This will give you a hint to solve the boiler room.
A completely, absolutely spoilering solution to the boiler room:
Are you really sure you want to hear it? It will give away everything? The hint in the journal is about the Cache. Look that up at least before reading this spoiler:
[rant]Make a card saying DEADBEEF.[/rant]
With Christabelle and co, just
keep typing the black topics that appear. You can TELL as well as ASK. This is half of another puzzle. You’ll recognize the other half when you see it.