Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Frank

“You’re not the Secret Service,” Dr. Frank Belgium said, scrutinizing the proffered badges that quite distinctly spelled out FBI.

“Our friends in the Secret Service told us where to find you,” said the agent on the right. His breath smelled medicinal. “We’re all Feds, so does it really matter?”

“Yes yes yes, in fact it does.”

Belgium inadvertently flashed back to the last time the Secret Service came calling, which is how he wound up at Samhain. Two men in black suits, with the proposition of a lifetime.

“We have a proposition for you,” the same agent said.

“No, thank you. I’m quite done done done with government work. Have a good night.”

Belgium moved to close the door, but the Fed stuck his foot in it.

“We’re well aware of your role in Project Samhain, Doctor. And how it turned out.”

Belgium again thought back to how that particular part of his life came to a close. About the evil loose in the world, which was partly his fault. He braced himself for the bad news.

Instead, he was surprised by bad news of a completely different kind.

“Instead of being a researcher, your government would like you to volunteer to be a test subject,” the agent said. “On a topic you know intimately well.”

“Molecular biology?”

“Fear,” said the other one.

Belgium wasn’t sure, but when the man spoke he flashed teeth that looked…

Well, they looked pointy.

“You’re invited to spend the weekend taking part in a unique experiment. You’ll be closely monitored to see how you react to fear. As you might guess, you have more experience in this area than most.”

That’s the understatement of the century, Belgium thought.

“For one day of your time, you’ll be given one million dollars. Plus your old job back at Biologen.”

Belgium raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

He’d been justifiably fired from Biologen years ago, due to negligence. Since then, they’d merged with the pharmaceutical company DruTech and had become the premiere biotech firm in the world.

“A million, and a job as head of the molecular biology department.”

Head of the department? That meant pure research, the thing in life Frank loved more than anything else.

He allowed himself a few seconds of fantasy. His own lab. Access to the best equipment. The most competent staff in the world. And no more grading ridiculous papers about plants’ reactions to household chemicals.

Then reality kicked in again, reinforced with some well-earned skepticism.

“So this has nothing to do do do with Samhain?”

“No.”

“Have you,” he chose his words carefully, “spoken with anyone else?”

“Several people. But no one you know.”

Which meant his friends from Samhain, Sun and Andy, hadn’t been approached.

But working for the government again? Could he possibly trust that?

The answer came swiftly and with finality.

Absolutely fucking not.

“It’s a tempting offer, gentlemen, but but but I’m going to decline.”

The lead agent stared deep into Belgium, his eyes emotionless. “If you don’t accept this offer, you’ll be executed for treason.”

“Treason?” Belgium squeaked. “I’ve never breathed a word of what happened, to anyone.”

“You know exactly what you did,” the agent said. “You know what you’re responsible for.”

The Fed spoke the truth. And Belgium had waited years for the evil he’d unleashed upon the world to appear again. He spent hours every week monitoring the world news, looking for evidence.

But so far, the evil had remained dormant. Belgium had even begun to hope it had disappeared completely.

“Your choice is to submit to the experiment and get a large cash settlement, along with your dream job. Or be taken to a secret prison and executed without a trial. And that threat extends to your associates.”

“Andrew and Sunshine Dennison,” the other said, giving Belgium another quick glimpse of his sharp teeth.

“I understand they’re expecting a child. Do you want to be responsible for destroying their family?”

Belgium did not want them to die. Nor did he want to die. Death was one of many, many things Frank feared.

“Then apparently I don’t don’t don’t have a choice. Where is this experiment supposed to take place?”

“Have you heard of Butler House?”

Belgium had. And as the blood drained from his face, he seriously wondered if being executed for treason was the better option.

Chicago, Illinois

Tom

“You think my partner was murdered, and it is somehow connected with this game show thing?”

The Feebies looked at each other.

“We’ve been investigating a man named Dr. Emil Forenzi. He may be involved in the disappearance of over a dozen ex-military personnel. From what we’ve been able to find out, he’s doing some sort of scientific research on the physical characteristics of fear.”

“He’s the one who sent the invitations?”

“We believe so.”

“And you think he may have killed Roy?”

“We’re not sure.”

“You guys don’t know much, do you?”

“Detective Mankowski, we believe Dr. Forenzi may in fact be funded by the US military. So certain avenues have been closed to us.”

Tom could understand that. The army, much like the government, tended to keep hush-hush about things above your pay grade. “Do you have any actual evidence?”

“Just circumstantial. We’ve been trying to get a man on the inside of Forenzi’s operation, but security is tight. However, we do know he has been inviting people to participate in his experiments. People who have undergone a particularly frightening experiences. We’ve done a background check on you and your partner, and you both certainly qualify.”

No shit, Tom thought.

“We’d really like to know what’s going on, Detective.”

“And you want me to find out.”

“We’ve gotten permission from your boss, Captain Bains, to work with you on this.”

That seemed odd to Tom, as Bains didn’t like working with the Feebies. And justifiably so. They were territorial, smug, and often looked down on city cops. But Bains also had an almost paternal sense of responsibility toward his men. If Roy was missing, the captain would want him found.

“And you can’t do this yourselves because…?” Tom asked.

“We weren’t invited. You were. You could poke around, talk to Forenzi, try to get some evidence. We’ve tried to interview him, but he lawyered up. And we’ve found obtaining a warrant to be challenging. He apparently has friends in high places.”

“Where is Forenzi?”

They exchanged another glance. “He’s set up his laboratory in the Butler House.”

“The Butler House?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

Next to the house made famous in the Amityville Horror, Butler House was probably the most famous paranormal site in America. Tom even remembered streaming a low budget Netflix movie about it. Located in South Carolina, an insane doctor—the brother of a plantation owner—built a laboratory-slash-dungeon underneath the estate, where he performed horrible experiments on the slaves they owned. Tom watched ten minutes before turning it off. Even though it was poorly acted, and the special effects were shoddy, the ghosts in the movie were hideously deformed and reminded Tom of a real night he spent in the real basement of a real mansion, and he didn’t need to be reminded of that.

“Supposed to be haunted,” Tom said.

“Forenzi is apparently convinced it actually is haunted. And he believes the fear of the supernatural induces the purest terror response in his volunteers.”

“Have you talked to any of these volunteers?”

“No. We’ve tried to track down those we know of, but they’ve… disappeared.”

Tom almost laughed at that. Almost. It was ridiculous enough to be the punchline for a campfire ghost story. But neither Feebie looked amused.

“How many people are we talking about here?” he asked.

“Two or three dozen.”

“Including the missing military men?”

“In addition to them.”

“So you’re saying there have been… how many?… maybe fifty people who have disappeared in Butler House since Forenzi moved in?”

“That number might be low.”

“And no one has done anything?”

“We’re trying to do something, Detective. Which is why we’re at your apartment at three in the morning.”

Tom rubbed his eyes. “I need to think about this. Do you have a number I can reach you at?”

One of the agents produced a card and held it out.

“We really would like to see that invitation,” he said, pinching the card so Tom couldn’t take it.

“When I find it, I’ll show it to you.”

The Fed released the card. Special Agent John Smith. Go figure.

“We’ve heard that Forenzi is conducting another experiment this weekend. Our informant says guests are being picked right now.”

“Who is this informant?”

Neither agent answered. Obviously the Bureau had their need-to-know info just like the military did.

“Goodnight, gentlemen,” Tom said. “You can find your way out.”

They left without so much as a nod. As soon as the door closed, Tom went to his cell phone and called Roy.

It went straight to voice mail.

“Roy, it’s Tom. Call me back as soon as you get this.”

It was too early in the morning to call Gladys, Roy’s ex-wife, so instead Tom went into the bedroom and found the FedExed invitation. He snapped on a pair of vinyl gloves he kept in his drawer, and pulled the invite out of the blue and orange cardboard mailer. It was a standard 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper, off white and a heavy stock. The writing on it appeared to be calligraphy.

Survive the night in a haunted house and receive $1,000,000. Call 843-555-2918 to confirm.

Invitation 3345

Tom turned the paper over, finding nothing, then looked for a nonexistent water mark. Next, he sniffed it, and it smelled like paper. Finally he took out a magnifying glass and studied the script. It was inkjet, not handwritten.

It said nothing about this being a gameshow or a reality show, but those were the possibilities he and Roy had brought up during the fifteen seconds they’d discussed it. But this seemed more likely to be a joke, hoax, or scam.

And yet the Feebies were extremely interested in this invitation, and they didn’t think this was a put on.

Tom switched on his computer monitor, saw he was still on the Skype program he used to talk to Joan. She was offline. He frowned, then Googled Dr. Emil Forenzi, spelling it like it sounded.

He found him on the Linkedin social network. Born in Brazil fifty-six years ago, his father Italian and mother a native. Moved to the US when he was a child. Full scholarship to Brown. Doctorate at MIT. Then he went to work for the DoD, and apparently still did. Specialties included a bunch of technical and science skills that Tom had to scroll down to read completely.

So why does a genius scientist believe in something as ridiculous as the supernatural?

Tom squelched the thought. If he described some of the very real things that had happened to him, the majority of the world would think they were ridiculous as well. Trying to keep his mind open, he searched for Butler House on Google and found a website dedicated to it.

Tom settled back in his desk chair and began to read.

Building History

Butler House was built in 1837 by wealthy landowner Jebediah James Butler on a cotton plantation in Solidarity, South Carolina, fifty miles outside of Charleston. Boasting more than one hundred and fifty rooms in the neoclassical antebellum style, it was home to Jebediah, his wife Annabelle, and his younger brother, Colton, until their deaths in 1851.

Construction began in 1835 and faced many setbacks, including a severe storm, a fire, and the deaths of three workers. One died when a pallet of bricks crushed him. Another was scalded to death by hot tar. A third fell into the concrete foundation when it was being poured, and drown there. A generally accepted rumor is his body wasn’t discovered until the concrete had cured, and it was unable to be removed, so Butler indicated more concrete be poured on top of him.

Many point to this lack of a proper burial as the beginning of the rumors that the property was haunted. Others contend that the source of the problems was the land itself. In the late 1700s it was a thriving village of Cusabo Native Americans numbering over two hundred. The village was burned, its people massacred, by white settlers desiring the fertile land.

During the lengthy and troublesome construction, Annabelle had been heard to say, “Maybe the Lord doesn’t want us building this house.”

The slow completion time is also attributed to the architectural demands Butler made. He hired three different architects, each to design a different part of the building, so no one but Butler knew the exact layout. This was especially important because the manor was outfitted with many secret rooms and passageways, false walls, staircases that lead nowhere, a labyrinthine basement with several kilometers worth of tunnels, and a torture chamber.

Slavery

At its peak in 1841, the plantation boasted dozens of slaves, the majority working several hundred acres of cotton and tobacco. Butler was known to openly boast that he was breeding his own workforce, and many of the slaves born on the property were fathered by Butler or his brother. On several recorded occasions, if a child born on the property was too light skinned, Butler would feed it alive to the passel of hogs he kept on the property.

Butler soon became one of the largest slave buyers in the South, which caused one of his contemporaries to remark, “[Butler] has purchased so damned many he could farm the entire state.” But at any given time, Butler never seemed to have more than fifty slaves working for him, even though records have shown he had bought more than four hundred.

Known to be unusually cruel masters, the Butler brothers seemed to have delighted in inflicting punishment on their slaves, for slights real or imagined. They made full use of the house’s torture chamber, where slaves were skinned, boiled, crucified, scourged, whipped, mutilated, and burned.

Colton Butler, a self-professed physician who demanded to be addressed as “Doctor” even though he held no known medical degree, conducted many surgical experiments on slaves, without anesthesia, with the apparent goal of joining them together.

“I believe I have the ability and necessary determination,” Butler wrote, “to fuse the parts of two Negroes together into a single being. Consider a slave with four strong arms, which would double his work output, or with six breasts to suckle young…”

Rebellion

The Butlers hired ten armed men to guard them and their property, and they were known to be as cruel as their employers. Daily beatings, corporal punishments, and public executions (even though the killing of slaves was against the slave code) were commonplace. A one-eyed man named Jonathan “Blackjack” Reedy, worked as taskmaster in the fields, and once said, “Spilled blood is good for the soil, makes the cotton stronger.”

On October 31, 1847, near the end of the annual cotton harvest, Blackjack was whipping a young boy whose only infraction was said to have been stopping for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. This appeared to have been the final straw for the mistreated slaves, and they revolted, beating Blackjack so severely the only way the authorities could identify his corpse was by his black leather eyepatch.

The rebellion spread throughout the fields, the guards either being surprised or running out of ammunition, and after the last was killed the angry slaves converged on Butler House.

Jebediah Butler, and his wife Annabelle, were hung naked by their ankles from the rafters in Butler House’s great room and beaten to death with whips and scourges. Colton was chased into the bowels of the basement, and dragged to the torture chamber where he was placed upon the rack and stretched until his arms and legs were broken in several places each. Then he was set ablaze.

The majority of the slaves escaped to nearby states, some making their way to the North and freedom.

Aftermath

The deaths of the Butlers was headline news for weeks after the incident, and bounties were put on the runaway slaves’ heads. But there weren’t many takers. There were rumors of a “slave curse” which claimed any who tried to capture the Butler slaves would meet the same fate as the Butler family.

The house, and plantation, went unoccupied for five years, until a man claiming to be a distant cousin of the Butlers, Sturgis Butler, petitioned the court for ownership and moved in during the summer of 1852.

Sturgis tried, unsuccessfully, to hire workers to fix up the house, which had fallen into disrepair and still bore the damage incurred during the rebellion. But laborers always quit in terror after a few days, claiming to have witnessed strange ghostly figures, or disembodied screams.

Sturgis resorted to repairing the house on his own, but he didn’t try to recapture the farm, and the land soon became a dense marsh.

Though Sturgis never married, he entertained a wide variety of women at Butler House, many of them prostitutes. At least a dozen were never heard of again.

Civil War Years

When the War Between the States broke out in 1861, Butler House was commandeered by the Confederate Army as a garrison. Between 1861 and 1865, at least six soldiers committed suicide on the grounds, and sixteen more were remanded to a local insane asylum, ranting about supernatural phenomenon. While under psychiatric care, four killed themselves, eight died of unexplained causes, and one man plucked out his own eyes with a fork.

Sturgis, exempt from the draft because he worked as a druggist, remained at the house during its occupation by troops, though he kept to himself in a closed off wing of the basement. Rumors abounded of him being “in league with the devil” and a proponent of “black magick.” Milledge Luke Bonham, governor of South Carolina and Brigadier General in the army, said of Sturgis, “There is something dark and twisted about that man. He is certainly no Christian.”

Reconstruction Years

During the four decades after the war ended, little was heard from Sturgis Butler. Prostitutes from the county continued to disappear, and the locals paid little mind to it. But in in 1902, Mia Lockwood, the only child of Southern poultry magnate Earl Lockwood, vanished the night before her debutante ball in Charleston.

Gossip and rumor led to the formation of a posse/lynch mob who raided the Butler House on May 1, the pagan holiday known as Walpurgis Night. Upon breaking into the house, the group discovered Sturgis presiding over a Black Mass replete with occult paraphernalia including black candles, severed animal heads, sacrilegious objects, and a seventeenth century binding of the Compendium Maleficarum, a notorious text on witches. Sturgis had hung a naked and violated Mia upside-down on a cross, and was lapping at the blood streaming from her slashed throat when the mob arrived.

Sturgis was immediately dragged outside, lashed to a black oak tree, and set ablaze. He allegedly laughed as he burned.

Inspection of the property over the succeeding weeks discovered three mass graves, some going back over seventy years (determined to be the bones of slaves) and some more recent (the corpses of missing prostitutes) making Sturgis one of America’s first, and most prolific, serial killers.

1910-1945

Butler House remained unoccupied for a few years after Sturgis Butler’s death, until the county acquired it, making the mansion a home for the blind, and for invalid veterans of the First World War . At the height of its use, it housed over a hundred. During its thirty-five years of operation, there were many fatal illnesses that infected patients.

1911 – Tuberculosis killed 35.

1918 – The Spanish Flu killed 63.

1920 – Diphtheria killed 9.

1924 – Botulism killed 40.

1931 – Cholera killed 5.

1940 – Measles killed 5.

In 1945, a fire broke out in the great room, and all of the 86 residents died of smoke inhalation or third degree burns. It is unknown why they were unable to escape, as the doors were all in working order.

After WWII

Butler House remained abandoned until 1956, when it was acquired by a land development company intent on tearing it down and building a housing development. The day before demolition occurred, the owner of the company, J.J. Hossenport, was struck by lightning and killed while getting into his car.

During his funeral, lightning struck and killed his widow, Myrtle Hossenport.

Their heirs, believing the property to be cursed, put it up for sale. It remained on the market and vacant for twenty-nine years, though six different realtors showed the house dozens of times.

It was finally acquired by eccentric millionaire Augustus Torble, the lone heir of a restaurant mogul, who spent over a million dollars restoring the house to its former shape. In 1985, he moved into Butler House with his young bride, Maria.

In 1992, Maria was discovered by hunters, wandering naked in the woods six miles from Butler House. She was malnourished and incoherent, scars covering eighty percent of her body.

In the hospital, she told the police a tale of captivity and severe abuse by her husband, who kept her locked in Butler House’s torture chamber and committed unspeakable acts upon her for several years. She also told of being forced to participate in the torture and murder of eleven women, whose remains were found in one of the underground tunnels.

Torble was arrested, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. Shortly after the trial, Maria committed suicide. To this day, the women Torble killed remain unidentified. Torble refused to cooperate with authorities, and it is unknown where he found them or how he lured them to the house. He remains incarcerated at the Fetzer Correctional Institution in Charleston, SC.

Current Owner

The house remained vacant until 2002, when it was purchased by Unified Systems Association, which built an electrified perimeter fence around Butler House. Since then it has been off limits to ghost hunters, thrill seekers, and the curious. Those caught trespassing on private property are promptly arrested.

Hauntings

During its 176 year history, dozens of strange happenings and unexplainable phenomenon have been linked to Butler House. Some highlights include:

1848 – A string of arsons in Charleston, including six churches that burned to the ground, were attributed to a shadowy figure with an eye patch. Several witnesses swore it was the ghost of slave driver Blackjack Reedy.

1863 – Eight Confederate soldiers staying at Butler House reported a floating ball of light that roamed the lower tunnels at night. It had the ability to go through walls and locked doors, and if it touched a person, that person died of fright.

1908 – There were seven verified attacks and sexual assaults on women in the Charleston area, by an assailant whom they claimed to be Sturgis Butler… six years after his death.

1915 – Returning WWI veterans, many of whom were victims of chlorine, phosgene, and mustard chemical weapons, claim to have been tormented by a giggling spirit in a gas mask.

1918 – During the Spanish Flu epidemic, over a dozen patients reported being assaulted, molested, and in some cases raped, by an unknown entity. The spirit supposedly smelled like burned flesh, and paralyzed its victims so they couldn’t move or cry out while the attacks were taking place.

1958 – Since the deaths of J.J. and Myrtle Hossenport, descendants have suffered a streak of bad luck many attribute to supernatural phenomenon. Six car accidents, two fires, a drowning, a stroke, and a dog attack, have killed sixteen Hossenport family members. The last remaining Hossenport in the lineage, Mary Kate, was murdered by serial killer Charles Kork in 1993.

1965 – Reknowned psychic medium Mdme. Francesca Sillero gathered with a group of wealthy benefactors at Butler House to hold a séance on Halloween night. During the proceedings, she claimed to have channeled the spirit of Colton Butler. While Butler’s spirit was inside her, he allegedly forced her to pluck out both of her eyes and chew off her tongue.

1982 – A group of Charleston teenagers broke into Butler House to have a late-night party. Shortly after arriving, one of teen’s gums began to bleed for no explainable reason. By the time her friends got her to the hospital, every one of her teeth had fallen out. No medical explanation has ever been given.

1998 – A TV crew from the paranormal investigation show Ghost Smashers spent Halloween night in Butler House. Unconfirmed reports indicate a tragedy occurred. No one knows what happened, but the host, Richard Reiser, immediately retired from television without the program ever airing.

Tom clicked on the PHOTOS section of the website. The first picture looked a lot like the White House, but no columns and a darker color. The second was of three people, the Butler brothers and Annabelle.

Jebediah Butler was a bespectacled man with white hair and a Van Dyke beard. He looked a lot like a fatter Col. Sanders, minus the mirth. His wife was also plump, and either there was a spot on the photo or her left eye was severely crossed. Colton was the tallest, and rail thin. He leaned on his cane, hunched over as if his back was hurting him, and had one of those walrus mustaches with the ends curled up and waxed.

The next photo looked like a hole in the dirt filled with rocks, and Tom had to read the inscription to understand what he was seeing.

Over four thousand human bones found buried on the property.

Creeped out, he made the mistake of clicking on the next photo, which was a shirtless African American man who had so many scars on his body he no longer looked human. As Tom hurried to hit the ESC button, something in the image stopped him.

Something hanging on the man’s mangled shoulder.

A third arm.

It was small, withered, hanging over his chest like a wrinkled leather belt. But there were clearly five fingers on the end of it, and they were—

Holy shit. The fingers are holding a tin drinking cup .

Tom zoomed in, trying to spot if the photo had been altered, but it looked real enough.

What the hell was wrong with some people? Assuming even some of the facts on the website were true, what could make someone treat his fellow man like that?

Tom went to the next picture, partly out of morbid curiosity, partly because he wanted to see the Butlers get what was coming to them. He was rewarded by a photo that looked like two bloody, skinned deer carcasses.

Wrong again. The caption read The bodies of Jebediah and Annabelle Butler. They’d had every inch of skin on their body whipped off.

Thankfully, there were no pictures of the tortured Colton. But there was a portrait of Sturgis Butler, and Tom was shocked at how much he looked like Vlad the Impaler. Same dark, bulging eyes. Same pointy black beard. Tom found himself staring into those eyes, revulsion wiggling in his stomach.

Next came a picture of the house after the fire in ‘45. The structure remained intact, but there was telltale soot and fire damage surrounding the windows and front doors. Tom was going to move onto the next page, but something in the photo caught his eye.

He made the jpg the size of his monitor. In one of the blackened windows was a speck of white.

Tom zoomed in further.

The white speck looked like the ghostly face of a man screaming.

There was a sound and movement to Tom’s right, and he immediately glanced over his shoulder, adrenaline kicking in, and watched as his bedroom door—

—closed by itself.

As his fight-or-flight response kicked in, Tom remembered his window was open a crack. The draft sometimes blew the door open and closed; something that happened often enough that Tom actually looked it up and discovered it had to do with air pressure in the room.

Still, it was disconcerting after reading the history of Butler House. Tom’s mouth was dry. His heart was doing a fox trot. And he both felt, and saw, all the tiny hairs on the backs of his hands stick straight up.

He was afraid.

And the Feebies were right. Tom knew, more than most, what it was like to be afraid.

He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Tom stared at the phone, wanting to call Joan. Hearing her voice would reassure him, calm him down.

Instead he visited YouTube and played an upbeat rock performance by Bob Walkenhorst.

He also turned on the bedroom light.

In the bright room, with the music playing, Tom felt less frightened.

But he couldn’t relax enough to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that poor, scarred, three-armed slave. And thought of his partner, Roy.