Lately, we had Wilson Richards send to kingsport to do some rift investigation, and suddenly encountered a question we couldn't really answer.

First, let's take a look at the Kingsport rules:

If an investigator has an encounter at the depicted location, he has investigated that rift progress marker.

Now, if there's a rift progress marker for the Congregational Hospital, may the investigator use the hospitals special ability and still remove the marker?
The ability begins with "Instead of an encounter...", so, does that mean you don't have an encounter that would allow you to remove a progress marker?

Same goes for Wilson Richards ability. Since he's allowed to take $1 instead of having an encounter during the encounter phase, does that make him a rift closing money earner or is his ability rather a stupid choice for kingsport, since he'd need a "real" encounter to discard markers?

Guess strict Rules as Written then no you don't remove a rift progress marker... but we all know trying to play Arkham Horror that way makes you INSANE!

Trading for example I thought you had to be in the same area during the movement to trade, then just the same place and now I'm leaning towards having to be in same area and movement phase.