by Jack Kilborn
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 lo
oked 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.
Mililani, Hawaii
Fran
Fran stood in the safe room with her family, watching the porch monitor. The two men who stood at their front door looked around when Josh hit the intercom button and spoke.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“Mr. VanCamp?” They still couldn’t find the camera. “We’re from the FBI. We want to talk to you and your wife.”
Josh glanced at her, and Fran gave her head a small shake.
“We’re not interested,” Josh answered. “Go away.”
“It’s an opportunity for you to each earn a million dollars.”
“Two million bucks?” Duncan said. “Mom, that’s a crapload of money.”
“And probably a crapload of trouble,” Josh added. “Hon?”
“No way,” Fran said.
“If you’d let us in,” the man on the porch continued, “we could explain in detail. It will only require a day of your time. It’s a government-sponsored experiment.”
Josh snorted. Fran saw the incredulity in his eyes. She felt exactly the same way. She’d jump off a cliff onto a bed of nails before trusting the government.
“You have ten seconds to get off of our property,” she said into the intercom. “Or we’re going to shoot you.”
One of the men on the monitor reached into his pocket, and produced some folded papers. “We have all the information right here.”
“Five seconds,” Josh said.
“We’ll, um, leave it here for you.”
Fran watched the man stick the papers in the door jamb, and then they left. She followed them, monitor to monitor, until they walked off the grounds.
Duncan stared over at her, his eyes wide. “Would you really have shot them, Mom?”
Fran didn’t answer. But her thoughts went back to Safe Haven. To all the friends she’d lost. To all the horror she and her family had endured.
Would she have shot them? Hell yeah.
No one will ever have a chance to harm her, or her family, again.
Not as long as Fran still had the strength to rack a shotgun and pull a trigger.
Cleveland, Ohio
Mal
“It’s just for twenty-four hours,” said the FBI agent in the doorway. “You’ll arrive, have a meal, get examined by a doctor, then be locked in the Butler House overnight, and closely monitored to study how you react to fear.”
“So they’ll be purposely trying to frighten us?” Deb asked.
Mal had tucked the gun into his bathrobe pocket, and his wife was holding his hand so hard she was cutting off his circulation.
“It’s a fear study,” the agent said. “You both have had unique experiences that make you ideal candidates.”
“And we live with those experiences, every day,” Mal said. His apprehension had been fading since they answered the door, and was slowly being replaced by anger. “You have no right to come here and make this offer.”
After all he and Deb had survived, why would they willingly expose themselves to even more horrors, real or convoluted? To even ask that of his wife made Mal’s blood pressure skyrocket, and there was no way in hell he’d ever allow—
“Can we think it over?” Deb said.
Mal stared at her, unable to hide his surprise.
“Deb?”
“I didn’t say we’ll do it, hon. But I think we should talk about it.”
Mal didn’t understand. Sure, two million dollars was a lot, but they were doing fine financially. Why would Deb even consider this?
The agent who’d done all the talking reached into his jacket and handed Deb some folded papers. Mal detected the tiniest smirk in the corner of the man’s mouth.
“The experiment begins this weekend. Good evening to you both.”
The Feds left, and his wife closed the door, locking the various latches and deadbolts.
“Debbie, you’re not serious.” He searched her pretty face. “Are you?”
“I think we should at least discuss it, before you make a decision for the both of us.”
“I don’t understand.” Which was as true a statement he’d ever made. “I thought—”
“That’s the problem, Mal,” she snapped. “You thought, but didn’t ask me.”
“Is it the money?”
“I wasn’t even thinking about the money.”
“So what’s there to discuss? We can’t sleep as it is. You want to go someplace where they’re purposely trying to terrify you?”
“It’s a fear study, Mal. Something you and I suffer from, every single day.”
“Exactly, so—”
“So maybe a doctor who studies fear could somehow teach us how to deal with ours.”
Mal was about to object, but caught himself. They’d both had psychiatric treatment since the Rushmore Inn. Hypnotherapy. Exposure Therapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Interpersonal. Group. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And a pharmacy’s worth of drugs, from sleep agents to SSRIs to beta-blockers to anti-psychotics.
Nothing seemed to work. In fact, some of the treatments worsened their condition.
“You remember exposure therapy,” Mal said.
“Of course.”
They’d been subjected to shocking images of mutilations and congenital malformations in order to desensitize them. Deb had freaked out during a session, crying so uncontrollably they’d had to quit, and later that night Mal had gone to the ER, unable to stop hyperventilating, convinced he was having a heart attack.
“This seems even worse, Deb. They’re not just going to show us pictures. They’re going to try to scare us.”
“We’ll get through it,” Deb said, reaching for him again. “Just like we got through the Rushmore. But maybe we’ll learn something this time.”
“I don’t know, Deb…”
“Can we discuss it, at least?” She moved a step closer to him, the hydraulic cylinders in her prosthetics whirring softly.
Mal didn’t want to discuss it. He wanted to run away, someplace where it never got dark. Where nightmares didn’t exist, both the ones in his head and the real ones.
But the longing in his wife’s eyes made his heart hurt.
“Of course, Deb. If this is something you want.”
“It is.”
Deb moved in for the hug, and he reluctantly embraced her, a thought bouncing through his mind and forcing out all others.
Be careful what you wish for, because it may come true.
Solidarity, South Carolina
Forenzi
Dr. Emil Forenzi could barely hear the phone ring above all the screaming.
“It’s okay,” Forenzi told his patient, giving him an affectionate pat on the cheek. “It’s all going to be okay.”
The screaming didn’t abate. Forenzi gave him a dose of traumesterone and the noise went down to a hoarse wheeze.
Forenzi answered the phone, located on the wall next to the EKG machine.
“I’m with a patient,” he said into the receiver. Which was unnecessary, because he was always with a patient. Even at ungodly hours like this. Who could sleep when there was so much to do?
“We have a head count for this weekend.”
“Go on.”
“Three confirmed.”
“And the others?”
“Still deciding.”
Forenzi frowned. He’d been hoping for better results.