The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

“Um … okay.” It seemed like as good a place as any. There was relative privacy and decent light.

 

“Here,” she said, spreading the edges of the blanket for me. I sat down next to her. “Can I help open the envelope?”

 

“How long have you had this letter?” I asked, handing it over.

 

“I don’t know … How long ago did she die?”

 

“Four years ago,” I said.

 

“Four years, then,” she answered, opening the seal and handing the sheets of folded paper to me.

 

“You’re a good girl, Maria,” I said.

 

I began to read.

 

 

 

 

 

My dear Namesake,

 

There is no easy way to say what I must now say, so I will simply begin, with the hope that you will give an old woman (who cares very much for you) credit for not being completely out of her mind.

 

My home is haunted. I will now do my best to explain.

 

 

 

What You Must Know:

 

 

 

Actual haunted houses (or institutes) are quite rare. Most hauntings are explained away by scientific means. Unfortunately, the Piven Institute is, as they say, “the real deal.”

 

I chose to share this with you, Delia, because I believe you are both young enough to believe me and strong enough to continue my mission, which I adopted as my life’s work: to destroy the evil that lives beneath my feet.

 

I pray you will never have to read this letter, that you will simply inherit an old piece of land that once held a house whose distressing history will never be known to you. But if you are reading it, then the house has found a way to get to me.

 

What Knowledge I Have Gathered of the Evil Spirit:

 

There is more than one kind of spirit. This building is home to quite a few paranormal residents, women who died during their stays here. Most of them are harmless (with one or two notable exceptions).

 

But why are there so many ghosts here to begin with? I believe that the underlying “cause” is a spirit or energy that is most definitely not harmless. Rather, it is a malicious force that has trapped the others here.

 

You have heard, I suppose, of cursed objects. I believe that, due to great tragedy or trauma that occurred here, the very land and structure were transformed and came to possess some spiritual power. I do not think that what drives that power is any single ghost but rather a sort of accumulation of malicious energy. The house hungers for loneliness and pain. I don’t know how else to explain it.

 

This force seems intent on controlling not only my ghostly cohabitants but myself as well. This is why I do not receive visitors, and why I live alone. I have groceries delivered from town once a week, but I never so much as invite the delivery boy inside.

 

In my research, I have come to believe that problem likely originated with the disappearance of the founder, our ancestor Maxwell Piven. He signed out in the logbook one day, but then was never seen again. My conviction is that he died on the property and was likely not given a proper burial. This would create within the house and property an immense sense of having been wronged. Perhaps on some level, Maxwell’s spirit seeks revenge. I don’t know. What I do know is that, after he died, women who had formerly been helped and healed within these walls began to die here. Up until that time, this had been a very progressive home with an excellent record. Something changed, drastically, in the mid-1880s. The staff did their best to cover up and explain away the deaths, but over time it became obvious that something was very wrong. Only in the 1940s, after a terrible tragedy involving the death of a county surveyor on the property, did the state do a proper investigation, which led the medical board to finally close it down for good.

 

My father passed away soon after, when I was quite young, and he left the property to me. For most of my life, I lived here by myself. I was never happy. When I began receiving your letters, it was as though a veil lifted, and I looked back on those wasted years and began to wonder what had compelled me to stay here. Upon reflection, I reached the conclusion that it was not simply out of my own personal lack of ambition—which is what all the town gossips would say about me, that I was too lazy and selfish to have a family!—but due to the intervention of something very powerful in the house.

 

How did I know this? I don’t know. But have you ever had someone believe something about you that you know to be untrue? And your sense of inner justice won’t let you simply surrender to the opinions of others? It was that way for me. I knew that I had not been lazy or selfish. In spite of my many unhappy years, I have always managed a decent amount of self-respect. So I gave myself credit that others did not extend. In the end, we must always be the judges of our own consciences.