I assume you are here with me right now because you like a little scare, but nothing too… violent or disturbing. I’m sure we all have images from movies or TV shows (or Stephen King novels for that matter) that scarred us. The ones that let us know where our personal line is in terms of horrific content. I have several images that haunt me because it took me a long time to learn what to stay away from in the thriller/horror genre. For example, Tina in the body bag being dragged by an unseen hand down the high school hallway in Nightmare on Elm Street. The entirety of Natural Born Killers, I literally do not remember anything about that movie, I fully blocked it out, but I know it really really bothered me. That scene in American History X. And the cafeteria fight in Lean on Me. I watched that one home alone, far too young. That man’s head… Jesus.
I actually think that scene was the first where I thought, fuck, I will carry that with me forever. I can’t ever unsee that. I don’t have many vivid memories from childhood, but that is one of them. After watching that scene, and in my defense, that movie comes at you fast, I ran out of our family room, away from the television and stood beneath a door frame in our kitchen. As if my instinct was to hide from what I’d seen. The realization washed over me that I would have to work really hard to not envision what I’d just watched over and over and over again. And I was right. Even now, those scenes I just mentioned were just waiting right in the wings of my mind for me to pull up. Since then I’ve honed my personal list of red flags that let me know when a piece of media isn’t for me and I need to stop it before I watch something my brain will torment me with for years.
I’m not talking about current events. Bearing witness to the world, to history repeating itself, to our present reality is different. There are things I know I need to see and know and try to understand and learn from and change. What I’m talking about here is avoiding ever again seeing anything close to Se7en. The spaghetti. The dangling car air fresheners. Ugh. Another image just came to the forefront that I’d forgotten. Interior car door locks sharpened into points and slicing into fingers. I thought that was from Se7en but I looked it up, it’s from The Bone Collector. Another movie I had no business watching. What I’m getting at here is that I don’t want any more of it. However, those personal red flags don’t stop me from clicking the button to uncover a post on social media offering a warning of disturbing content. My curiosity almost always wins out.
The drive to north western Connecticut to visit the grounds of the old Hillview Academy for Children of Excellence was… anxiety ridden. To distract myself on the way down I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, Pod Mortem. This isn’t an ad, you all just know I like sharing the things I like, because we all seem to enjoy similar things. So, in keeping with the theme of my curiosity about horror, but knowing I have a line, Pod Mortem, recaps horror movies – in fun, funny, smart amazing detail – which allows me to know what happens without actually having to watch them myself. I’m fine to watch movies I personally deem horror light, like found footage, all those Conjuring type movies, monster movies like Jaws or Cloverfield. I can take a moderate amount of violence as long as there is make-believe involved. But slashers, home invasion or abduction movies, The Purge and Saw of it all… count me out. I have to be careful with books too because once I start, if the story is good, I have a very difficult time putting it down because, again, I need to know what happens. However, words on a page instantly become a movie in my mind so, for instance, my brain simply loves to occasionally drag out a couple of scenes from Jack Ketchum’s, Off Season, a bloody misogynistic romp into cannibalism, and play them over and over again. Likewise, I should have put down Anybody Home? By Michael Seidlinger immediately. I knew it would be too much for me. But it was so compelling that I plowed ahead, mental health be damned.
So in Pod Mortem, I found a sneaky little cheat code in my never ending quest to find out what happened. For instance, without it I would have no idea what happened in Hereditary (listening to their recap actually gave me the courage to try watching it, though I still fast forwarded through most of the film), The Purge, well, turns out I’m not really missing anything there, but Talk to Me – I knew I couldn’t watch it, I even had to even skip over a couple parts in the recap, but I was so happy to listen to the hosts tell me the story start to finish.
All of this rambling about curiosity and knowing when I absolutely need to pump the brakes because I’m headed towards something I won’t be able to shake has been on my mind because the feeling I had about going to Hillview Academy is the same feeling I have when I know I need to shut the book, turn off the television, quickly scroll past the post. I was right. This rambling on and on is my anxious, round about way of offering a content warning. We aren’t in cozy horror land anymore. We’re far out of the Swells. This ones demonic. We’re headed to an old school, which obviously involves kids. Consider this your moment to choose “skip episode” or “listen anyway.”
Okay, for those of you who are still here (I bet you kept listening to the Black Eyed Kids story too, which, come to think of it, is actually kind of a coincidence actually. You’ll see…), here is a little background.
Hillview Academy was in operation from 1963 through 1976. Thirteen short, horrific years. So over the top awful, in fact, that it was closed for endangering children in the seventies. Let that sink in. Serving young men in grades six through twelve, the school motto was Excellence at all costs. Though it was built to house and educate up to 250 boys, enrollment never climbed to above 65. When it was finally shut down, there were just 32 students enrolled.
Hillview Academy Headmaster and founder, Edgar Locke, believed young minds were to be molded to reflect the coming age. The coming age he envisioned was one of increasing centralized global power and wealth and all the necessary bloodshed that implied. His intention was to raise young men who could not only survive, but thrive in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. By the time the school closed, two boys had gone missing and seven people were dead, including the Headmaster.
I know, it didn’t sound very Connecticut private school to me either, and it wasn’t really on anyone’s radar – until it was. Students came from around the country, Edgar Locke having a seemingly preternatural ability to identify wealthy families with a similar worldview. You might ask why you’ve never heard of Hillview Academy, I did. The answer is as unsatisfying as it is predictable. Hush money and lots of it.
I won’t go into detail about the location of the old Academy, because it now serves as the personal home of the Ashcroft family (dad – Hunter, mom – Amelia, daughter – Bree, 11, son – Baron, 9, and son – Crane, 5 – all names changed, of course). Suffice it to say, the Academy grounds lurk between the edge of a massive untamed forest and the outskirts of a rural town. A place you might rightly assume where the town people wouldn’t have the desire or time to pay any attention to what was happening on that remote campus for privileged children. And that was by design. Edgar Locke couldn’t carry out his plans with prying eyes.
It won’t surprise you to hear that I am a touch directionally challenged so I had a bit of a time finding the entrance to the campus. Service wasn’t great and my Waze app had some difficulty. I once actually took a wrong turn on my way home from Boston to Syracuse, I was listening to a book on tape (literally, it was the days of books on cassette tape) and I called my dad to tell him I was seeing signs for the Geo Washington Bridge, an abbreviation my dumb brain didn’t realize was for the George Washington Bridge. I’d made it damn near to New York City before it even dawned on me that I’d driven the wrong way for hours.
Anyhow, I eventually found the entrance off a long forest lined road, the drive narrowed by the encroaching woods. The drive had obviously been neglected for some time. I was too distracted by avoiding the potholes to pay attention to the building ahead. I parked behind a forest green Jeep Wrangler and got out of the car to stretch.
As I pulled on a warm hat and oversized scarf, I took in the surroundings. A stately brick Georgian home stood at the top of the curve of the driveway. What struck me was the quiet and I wondered if maybe my car bumping along the drive had scared the birds away. I took a few tentative steps towards the house, unnerved, no desire at all to approach it.
Thankfully, the sound of a car coming down the drive caused me to turn away from the house. Judith parked behind me and got out, hands full with a tray of coffees.
She kicked the door of her SUV closed behind her. “Have you been here long”
“Just got here,” I replied, accepting a coffee.
“You made good timing,” she commented, looking at her watch. I had. It was only eight-thirty.
Just then the front door to the house swung open. A man stepped outside, shutting the door behind him, a big smile on his face. “There you are. You brought coffee!”
“Morning, Eric. How did you sleep?”
Eric? It took me a beat to recognize him.
“How are you, Liz? It’s been too long.”
“You have a beard!” I said dumbly, giving him a hug.
He rubbed a hand over his cheek.
“Sorry, I didn’t recognize you right away,” I laughed. “What are you doing here?”
“I got a lead on this place, spent some time here and realized what a problem these people had on their hands so I reached out to Judith.”
“But, I mean, I thought you wouldn’t want anything to do with anything like this after what happened,” I said. [Eric was Biddy’s old ghost hunting team’s tech guy. For the horrific thing that happened to him, listen to Ghost Story #14 Kids are the fucking worst]
“Old habits die hard,” he joked.
“I didn’t know you guys knew each other,” I said looking between them.
“You know how small this world is,” said Judith.
“How are you? How is Noah?” I asked, referring to his husband.
“We’re good, really good.” Eric took his phone out of his back pocket. “Look.”
“Shut up!” I exclaimed, grabbing the phone from him for a closer look. “A westie!”
“I’ve been meaning to text you a photo. His name is Hamish.”
“Of course it is,” I laughed. “He’s perfect.”
“You still have your guys?”
“Oh, no, they passed a couple years ago. We had a little girl westie, too. But she’s gone. We have Wallace now,” I got my phone out. “And Bernie and Ivy.”
“That’s quite the crew.”
“Hodge podge,” I laughed. “Anyway, it’s good to see you. What’s the story here? I hate it already.”
“Let’s walk,” Judith suggested, glancing up at the house. I followed them to a brick path that curved around the side of the house. In the back yard it transitioned to a dirt path that passed through a pretty thick line of pines and oak trees, before opening up to a view of the campus.
Before us was a roughly oval shaped pond, its edges filled with cattails ( I couldn’t remember what they were called so I just googled “what are those pond plants that look like hot dogs” and google knew exactly what I meant, the internet is a wonderful thing).
Beyond the body of water, (“Gray Pond,” Eric supplied,) there was a large three story brick building, set back to its left a smaller two story brick building and set back to its right a long narrow building that extended far back into the woods beyond. Plywood covered most of the first floor windows. The grounds were overgrown, but the grass to either side of the path had been weed-wacked allowing us to walk beside one another.
“The one in the center held the classrooms, the one to our right was a gym/cafeteria/infirmary, and the four story on the left, Astaroth Hall,” Judith emphasized, “was a dormitory with beds for 190 students.”
“Astaroth?”
Eric already had his phone out, he read, “From Wikipedia, ‘Astaroth is the prince of accusers and inquisitors… yada yada, uh, he is depicted as a nude man with feathered wings, wearing a crown, holding a serpent in one hand, and riding a beast with dragon-like wings and a serpent-like tail.’”
“Who named it?”
“The headmaster,” said Eric. We continued on the path beside the pond. “Take a look at the statue above the entrance.”
Sure enough, there was a stone sculpture of a crowned naked, winged man clutching a snake and sitting atop a dragon.
“That’s a little on the nose,” I said. “Does the family own this entire campus?”
“Yeah, they told me it was a good deal because the town didn’t want it falling any further into disrepair. In purchasing the campus along with the main house, the Ashcrofts agreed to keep up the grounds.”
As we curved nearer the dormitory, I could see the buildings were in rough shape. “So they’ve just closed the buildings?” I assumed.
“Oh, no. They’re working to refurbish them,” Judith corrected.
“For what?”
“To honor the school’s history,” Eric said, his tone somewhat sarcastic.
“I take it the whole place is brutally haunted,” I guessed.
“Yeah, and the absolute worst of it is in the house.”
“Are we walking back into those woods?” I asked. The feeling of dread had been increasing with every single step we took.
“No, there’s another building we want to show you,” Eric explained.
“No Claire, huh?” Judith asked.
“No, she, uh, said she wasn’t interested in visiting a demon nest.”
Judith nodded. “Kind of like that house on Rockridge.”
“You went to that pond?” Eric said, obviously upset.
“Not the pond, a house on that street, there was… a demon there. Hold on,” I said, stopping in place. “You think he’s here?”
“No, no. Not necessarily,” Judith replied, “but, as we know, the guides tend to stay away when there’s a really powerful demon around.”
We continued on the path, Eric detailing some of the strange practices at the school.
“Parents were discouraged from contacting the kids. Letters were allowed weekly, sent on Monday mornings only. Incoming mail delivered to the boys on Wednesdays. All communication in and out was closely monitored. Phone calls were discouraged except under extreme circumstances.”
“So the children were being abused,” I guessed.
“Absolutely. I’ve spent some time in the historical society in town. There isn’t a lot of information about the school, until the missing kids and the deaths came out, but once that was exposed a lot of people from town wanted to share things they’d observed. A man who worked on the grounds witnessed organized fights between the boys, apparently the teachers and headmaster looked on as the kids fought it out with what he described as ‘savage brutality.’ A woman who worked in the cafeteria came upon a group of boys standing around a squirrel they’d obviously stoned to death and just as she began to admonish them, the headmaster strolled up and told her to mind her station. It was her opinion that he’d been watching the boys and let them do it. She was fired later that week. There are rumors of corporal punishment, but no proof. The kids completely clammed up when the authorities questioned them. Whatever they’d been told, or threatened with, they didn’t speak a word of what really happened here.”
“And the parents had no idea?”
“They must have had some idea of how militant Locke was in his beliefs. But from what I could uncover anyway, none of them admitted to knowing just how brutal things were here.”
“You have your guards up?” Judith cut in abruptly.
It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me. “Oh, yes. I do.”
“Good.”
When she didn’t elaborate I said, “It’s so damn quiet. You’d think these woods would be a bit noisier. I mean my street is super busy and the bird chirping is distracting there.”
I’d been looking into the dense stretch of trees beside us, as we curved around the back of the building Judith and Eric stopped. Both staring ahead.
“What is that?” I breathed.
“The Chapel,” Eric answered in a low voice, as though he were afraid the building would hear us.
The woods had all but reclaimed the small wooden structure. Trees towered above, moss covered its roof, that vine you find in New England woods, I don’t know what it’s called, again I Googled and I think it might be Bittersweet, draped itself over the building. It being early February, the forest was all mushroom gray bark and vine, so it looked as though the building, painted a similar shade, was a part of the landscape.
“Don’t see a lot of dark gray wooden Chapels,” I said, making a weak attempt at humor.
Judith moved forward without a word.
Eric and I followed.
The closer we got the more that, “turn off the movie, put the book down, scroll past the post you idiot,” feeling grew.
I stopped when we were ten feet from the Chapel entrance. “We’re not going in there are we?”
“That was the idea,” Judith said shortly. I knew she wasn’t annoyed with me, but that she was feeling just as tense as I was.
“Catch me up, first. What in the hell happened here?”
Eric began to speak but Judith shushed him. “See what you can see,” she directed.
I shook my head.
“It’s why we’re here,” she pressed.
“Fine,” I huffed. I closed my eyes and let my guard down.
The first thing that I noticed was the noise. Birds began chirping. I opened my eyes, “Oh!” I said, “there they are.”
Eric shifted beside me, taking a step back.
I gazed around the Chapel, counting five cardinals and three blue jays. There were sparrows too. Some in the trees, some pecking on the ground. Rustling in the underbrush startled me. A squirrel and then three rabbits took tentative steps towards us.
“Oh! Hello,” I said quietly. “They mustn’t see many people, no fear.” I commented. And then, from out of the shadows behind the building came a parade of cats, several dogs of various breeds, and a fucking goat.
“Oh no,” I whispered. The animals stood before us, watching. “No, no, no. I can’t do this. This is too much.”
“What do you see?” Eric asked, having taken another step back.
“What the fuck is this place?” I demanded, to no one in particular.
“Edgar Locke created his own brand of devil worship.”
“What the hell are you seeing?” Eric demanded.
“Animals, a lot of animals,” I said, sadly. I walked forward, the sad menagerie eying me warily. “I’m sorry,” I offered. “You all can go.” I reached out to a small ginger cat, who rubbed against my hand. It felt like a tingle. “Go on now, you don’t have to stay here. Thank you for showing me. I am so sorry.”
Slowly, the forest quieted again as the birds faded away. I let out a sob as a dog nuzzled my arm and faded away.
“You really can see this stuff,” Eric said, sounding genuinely surprised.
I wiped at my eyes and stood, taking a deep breath before turning around. “You could have warned me,” I said to Judith.
“We weren’t sure,” Eric offered. “There were rumors of sacrifice and-”
I held up my hands. “Stop. I have a pretty good idea of what went down here, I do not want details.”
“Daily mass was mandatory,” said Judith. “Offerings were made on Sunday evening service.”
I shuddered. “In front of the kids?”
“They had them participate,” said Eric.
“And the parents had no idea?” I said, equal parts skeptical and horrified.
“They knew they were sending their children to an incredibly strict, supposedly Christian values based military adjacent type learning environment,” Eric explained. “None came forward to say they knew about the, uh, violence that happened here.”
I took a deep breath, “Okay. So do we have to go in there or what?”
“No way,” said Eric, as Judith said, “We probably should.”
“Well, then,” I laughed.
Eric sighed and put his hands on his hips. “We need to decide our ultimate objective here.”
“To help the family,” Judith replied.
“Sure, but how are we supposed to do that? What was described to me before coming was a typical demonic infestation. I thought we were coming to document and clear things out. I don’t think that is possible anymore.”
“Agreed,” said Judith.
They both looked at me. “What?”
“We’re at an impasse and need you to weigh in,” said Judith.
“Ok, this place feels like the literal edge of hell and no one should live here. Ever again.”
They exchanged a look.
“I’m not going in that building,” I said after a length of frustrated silence, “Let’s keep going.”
We continued along the path that curved in front of the creepy Chapel. The trail led us towards the building that held the gym, cafeteria and infirmary. Most of the windows in the back of the campus buildings were not boarded up like the ones out front. The dark windows reflected the winter woods. It was unsettling.
I fought the urge to run back to my car and get the hell out of there with every step.
“How long have you been investigating this place?” I asked.
“This is my second week,” said Eric.
“Sleeping here?”
He nodded.
“I’ve been back and forth since mid January,” Judith said. “But I stay in a hotel a town over.”
“Are you just documenting?”
“Yes, and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“Did the family reach out to you?”
“The grandfather requested a wellness check. He’s in New Jersey and couldn’t get in touch with them for two full days. They’d pulled the kids from school and had begun homeschooling them about a month prior, which from what he said was out of character for them, so he got worried.
“The police went in, mom, dad and the three kids were fine. Odd, but fine. One of the police officers who came for the check is a member of a local ghost hunting group. She asked if the family would ever be open to letting the group run an investigation on the property. She was local and had heard stories. The dad was hesitant but mom pushed to allow them to do it. She’d seen strange things in the woods when she’d walked the property and she kept finding sharp objects stuck into the furniture and floors.”
“Sharp objects?”
“Scissors, knives, a metal ruler, pencils.”
“Geez.”
“The ghost hunting team came in late January, with three investigators, one of them is a guy I know from way back, that’s who pulled me into this,” Eric continued. “Their plan was to set up their equipment on a Friday afternoon, camp out in the gymnasium through the weekend and pack everything up Sunday.”
“It must have been freezing in that building.”
“I’m sure it was but they didn’t even make it through the first night.”
“I’m not surprised,” I commented, picking up on the godawful vibes from the hulking building beside us.
“They’d done the initial walk through and were in the middle of setting up cameras in different parts of the building. One of the guys was trying to get proper placement for a camera in the infirmary and their teammate who was watching the feed to help direct the placement saw-”
Suddenly there was loud splashing behind us. I spun around, letting out a yelp.
Eric latched onto my arm. “What?” He yelled out, “What the fuck?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Jesus, you’re jumpier than I am.”
“You’d be jumpy too if you’d spent two weeks here.”
“What happened?” Judith demanded. “What did you hear?”
“Hold on, what’s going on with you? Why aren’t you experiencing anything?” I demanded.
“I’ve got my walls up, high and tight. I’ve seen plenty.”
I just stared at her.
“So what did you hear?” Eric pressed.
“Big splashing in the pond, and maybe a boy’s voice call out.”
They exchanged a meaningful look.
“What?”
“Did you read anything about this place before you came down here?” Judith asked.
“The six dead children?” I guessed.
“Do you know how they died?”
“Let me guess, it had something to do with that pond.”
“It was a suicide pact,” Judith replied. “They believe one boy coerced the others, but we’re certain Edgar Locke influenced them.”
I stared at the pond’s murky waters, those hot dog topped reeds along the edge bobbing in the cold breeze. A small hand pushed a clump of weeds aside. A boy, water dripping from his hair stared at me, his face expressionless. I took a step forward, resisting the urge to run over and drag him out of the water to get him inside, to warmth.
“That little boy didn’t make a suicide pact,” I whispered.
“The kids who died by suicide were all older teens,” Eric offered.
“Then who…” I trailed off as something bobbed to the pond’s surface. The boy in the reeds watched the form float in the gently rippling water. “Fuck,” I breathed. “Two kids went missing, right?”
“Third graders, they never found them. The school pushed the narrative that they’d wandered off into the woods. Search dogs scented the pond and did lead the team to one of the boy’s shoes a ways back behind the Chapel.”
“They’re not in the woods. That was an attempt to throw off the search. They’re in a pond.”
“They can’t be in that pond, it was-” Eric began.
“They’re not in that pond, they were killed in this pond but… there’s another small pond, a really small pond. Just outside of town. Behind a farm… um, with brown and white cows. They were almost found when we had that drought a couple summers back but now with all the rain…” I closed my eyes for a moment, it was so awful. When I opened them the boys were gone.
“I’ll get in touch with the guy I know in that ghost hunting group that came here, that police officer will want to talk to you.”
I nodded, turning away from the water and we walked by silent agreement back towards the front of the property.
“You hadn’t picked up on any of that?” The question was directed at Judith.
“No. I’ve only tried to get a sense of the family home since I encountered the six boys in that gymnasium building on my second visit here. I shut myself down on the campus grounds after that. ”
“I’m guessing those six kids are why the ghost hunting team didn’t make it through the night?”
“Yup,” Eric affirmed.
“Their spirits are being held,” Judith explained. “They’ve become tainted. Corrupted.”
We’d made it back to the driveway, the path having led us all the way around the campus. The wind had picked up and I pulled my scarf up over my nose. The brick home towered before us.
“How can a family live here?”
“The activity took its time revving up,” explained Eric. “Small things led to big scares they couldn’t ignore. The parents are… loopy. The kids-”
“Influenced,” Judith supplied.
“By that headmaster?” I guessed.
“Undoubtedly.”
“Ok, so what is the debate, exactly? Bulldoze this place, burn it, just let nature reclaim it.”
“The town doesn’t want that.”
“Then let them set up town offices here, see how long they last,” I argued. “I mean, at least get the family out of here.”
“They won’t leave,” Eric said quietly, staring up at the house.
I followed his gaze towards a second floor window. A curtain twitched back into place behind the glass.
Suddenly, the front door slammed open and an incredibly tall man stomped out onto the front step.
“You walk the property?”
“We did,” Eric called back. “This is Liz, she came down to lend us a hand.”
The man nodded towards me in acknowledgment then stepped back into the house without another word, leaving the door open behind him. An obvious invitation for us to follow.
ghosts in the burbs 