Explore our Haunted Estate

To most, it seems as if Mortis Manor always been there, growing out of the hillside like a cancerous growth sprung from the land itself. Those who venture near its dark, sprawling jumble of spires, peaks and turrets, say it seems to almost breathe, throbbing with a disturbing alien life all its own. It's hard to imagine it was ever inhabited by mortals, but it was.

James Mortis arrived in town in the mid-1800s. He was a wealthy man, and that is the extent of what the townspeople knew about the mysterious stranger. Soon after his arrival, he acquired the hillside property and began building an expansive home. The locals would glance furtively up at the construction while they scurried about their daily errands, as if too nervous to stare openly, for fear of inviting the house's attention.

Mortis Manor grew by the day, though no one ever saw it being worked on — no crews trudging up the hill with hammers and saws — just a house that seemed to expand, nightly, on its own. The townspeople whispered to each other, seeking explanation for the inexplicable. Some said James Mortis had made a deal with the devil, channeling dark, magical arts to complete his eccentric homestead.

When the house was complete, or so the general populous assumed, James sent for his two young daughters, Rosa and Lily. They arrived by train and went straight to Mortis Manor. They were rarely seen in town after that, and when they were, people took pains to avoid them, giving them a wide berth on the street and leaving stores without purchasing what they'd come for when they entered. There's something not right about those girls, people said, something wicked.

James Mortis ventured into town only slightly more often than his onerous offspring, but when he did, he frequented the only tavern in town. He often met with a man folks heard him addressing as "Doctor," but no one knew what sort of doctor he might be. As time went on, James and The Good Doctor were sighted walking together on the street or conspiring in the park across the street from the town graveyard. James would spend long nights away from the manor, leaving Rosa and Lily to fend for themselves, as Silas, the caretaker he had hired to watch over the grounds, took little interest in the girls. There were rumors of grave robbing, talk of grotesque experiments carried out on the cadavers they stole. Some scoffed; some said there was more to it than just rumor.

Rosa and Lily grew taller, stranger and more bewitchingly attractive by the year. Rumors drifted down from the hillside that they argued and schemed against each other constantly, vying for their father's sparse attentions. Lily was taken to the local physician late one night, and gossip-prone neighbors reported it was because Rosa had tried to poison her sister's tea. But it was Lily who had the last laugh.

When James Mortis and his odd little girls built Mortis Manor, no one knew from whence they came. It was rumored the girls' mother had died in childbirth, but the truth was far stranger.

Alice married James Mortis after courting for only two weeks. He was handsome and charming, even to her overbearing father. Alice was overjoyed to leave her parents' home for an idyllic life with her new husband. Soon, she gave birth to twin girls, Rosa and Lily. It was after the girls' birth that James began acting strangely.

Alice would wake in the night to find James's side of the bed cold. She would discover him in the nursery, prodding their sleeping children in an unsettling manner, examining them. Sometimes, he would simply be gone from the house. In the morning, he'd ignore her inquiries. Still, Alice stayed busy with her children, on whom she doted.

As Lily and Rosa grew, James took little interest in the children during the day. But one night when Alice again found James in the children's room, she spied a dark brown bottle in his hand, his long fingers just refastening the dropper lid.

By the time Lily and Rosa were, three, the man Alice had married seemed a stranger. As he repeatedly deflected her questions about his nocturnal habits, she became agitated and demanded to know what he was doing to their children. That was when The Doctor arrived.

When Alice descended the stairs one evening after putting Lily and Rosa to bed, she recognized the man sitting in her living room. He was the boy, now grown, who lived at Hillside Sanatorium. He had come to the sanatorium as a patient — a disturbed and abused child. As he had no family, he had remained at the facility into adulthood. He became an assistant to the resident doctor, then an intern, and, when the old doc died suddenly while on duty at Hillside, the young man naturally took over his role.

Now, frozen on the stairs of her own home, Alice stared at The Doctor, panic blossoming in her chest. There could only be one reason for his visit. She tried to escape upstairs, but orderlies wrestled her outside and into a waiting carriage, subduing her with ether.

When she awoke in a dark, damp space, chained to a bed, at Hillside Sanatorium, she heard moaning. She turned her aching head to the side and could just make out a figure slumped in the corner. She knew him. It was Mr. Cowan from the penny candy store, his once plump and merry face now gaunt. He sat on the floor with useless legs splayed in front of him. But as her eyes adjusted to the dimness and with dawning horror, Alice realized they weren't his legs. They were the hindquarters of a horse, grotesquely stitched to his waist. He raised his head, and through his lank, stringy hair, his still-human eyes saw her. In those eyes, she saw soul-crushing sadness and…madness. The man who had always been so kind to her as a child had been made into a monster. Alice began to scream.

She never saw her children again, but Alice had visits from The Doctor quite often. The experiments he performed on her and the other people of Hillside Sanatorium are too horrible to mention. They were enough to drive any sane person mad. And they did.

During the summer, when the unseen membrane that separates this world from the next is thinnest at the portal known as the witching well, Rosa seeks out companionship. Deprived of love, she feels connected to the twisted creatures from the world of fairy tales. Most people believe those long-told childhood stories are fiction, but in fact, they are real. They are not, however, as happily-ever-after as those of this world choose to tell them.

When Rosa was a child, her jealous sister pushed her down the abandoned well hidden in the unseen acreage behind their family estate, Mortis Manor, and left her for dead. Her father called The Doctor from Hillside Sanatorium, who revived her, but she was.…changed. Rosa now spends days at a time lurking near the well, peering into it, murmuring incantations. The witching well is most active during the balmy, oppressive heat of summer nights.

When Rosa draws her children from the well, not even she knows what will emerge. A white-faced, emaciated maiden with impossibly long, filthy tresses, having only escaped her tower prison after starving to death. A man-being, hunched and hairy with a face more canine than human and long yellow claws, rancid pork forever on his stinking breath. A short, stooped witch of a woman with red eyes, grown fat on the flesh of the children her palate prefers. A being impossibly tall and menacingly wide — a giant whose livid and painful bellows can be heard across the land. Only when Rosa has conjured these twisted children does she feel something like love. Some of her creatures lurk near Mortis Manor, content to remain close to their mother. Some are drawn, by some familiar and sinister energy, to Hillside Sanatorium.

They are not of this world. They do not understand you any more than you understand them. They lash out in fear of what they do not know, in anger at their torturesome trek between the two worlds, and sometimes, simply in hunger. Come visit Rosa's fascinating children, if you dare.

It's been so long since the house has been fed, Silas thought. It was the year 1989, and Mortis Manor seemed to be lying dormant after almost 100 years as a cancerous tumor on the hillside, but the caretaker knew it would be ready soon. So Silas trimmed the tall weeds that had grown up around the rusty wrought iron gate and left it unlocked. The house would take care of the rest.

It didn't take long for Katie and her teenage friends to let their curiosity draw them up onto the decrepit porch and find that the door was locked, but the window next to it was open, completely devoid of glass, as if someone had carefully removed every shard. The dusty gossamer drapes beckoned them inside.

Silas watched from between the walls as Katie, Kevin, and soon more of their friends gathered in the house, thinking they'd claimed it as their own. They set up a television and liked to watch horror movies, which gave Silas some wonderful ideas. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He planned to play with them, savor their young souls, before letting the house devour them. The house would allow him that.

One night, as Katie and Kevin nestle into the dusty, afghan-covered sofa watching a hockey-masked monster chase people through dark woods, a party rages in the kitchen beyond. It's a night like any other, but soon people begin to disappear. First, Caroline and Jesse, then Kevin from right under Katie's arm, when she looks away for only a second.

Katie is scared, but she feels a presence reach out to her, calming her mind enough to draw her upstairs in search of her friends. As she pushes open a door, she sees Kevin, half-crouched in the shadowy corner with a hockey mask where his face should have been. It's the very one from the movie and she laughs at his pathetic attempt to scare her. "Kevin–" she starts, but Katie doesn't get to finish her sentence. Katie's sense of calm evaporates, and her laugh is cut short.

The last thing Katie remembered was being dragged down the hall by her foot, struggling for consciousness, unable to move, thinking hysterically Oh my god, it has us. It's the house. Then, the Kevin thing pulled her through the door at the end of the hall where Silas was waiting, and she remembered no more.

Silas continued to play with his new toys for quite some time before letting the house finish them. He created some glorious creatures out of their raw material, derived from the monsters of their movies. He'd like to play with you, too.

Perhaps you've heard the tale of Krampus, seen films about the half-goat, half-demon who terrorizes the Yuletide in place of placid Santa. Maybe you believe him a less kind, alter-ego to Saint Nick himself. This is not that Krampus.

Mortis Manor is decorated for the holiday season. Dolls dressed in red velvet finery sit in the windows. Their cherubic faces stare with empty sockets instead of eyes. Candles flicker from within, though no one's lived there for years. At Hillside Sanatorium, holly wreaths with sharp leaves adorn the barred doors. Nestled in one is a lone elf. His outfit is festively trimmed in white fur with subtle streaks of dark red here and there. In place of his right arm, a scrawny sparrow's wing is attached at the shoulder.

Deep in the bowels of the sanatorium, the man known only as "The Doctor" takes no holiday. He is obsessed with his experiments that humans could be made "better." One night, taken by the Austrian tale of the horned Krampus, who arrives during the season to punish misbehaving children, The Doctor sought to birth his own demon. So with raw parts taken from graveyards and nearby farms, Hillside's newest creation came to life.

The Doctor intended to keep the beast at Hillside for further experimentation, but his creation outstripped his cunning. Far more intelligent than The Doctor had bargained for, the beast-demon escaped.

It has been spotted lurking as far away as Mortis Manor, prowling the grounds, collecting…things. It, he, returns to Hillside Sanatorium when The Doctor is away and conducts his own experiments. It seems the Yuletide beast has become possessed by the spirit of The Doctor's inspiration. He has become Krampus.

From his collections at Mortis Manor and The Doctor's spare parts, Krampus has stitched together legions of minions to do his bidding — twisted versions of elves, goblin-like creatures and faeries with evil intent. And he has set out to fulfill his destiny.

Hillside's Krampus will kidnap children if he deems them not worthy of the joy of the season. They become fodder for his creation of more minions. The devilish spirit of Krampus is centuries old, so to him, all humans are children. Visit Krampus, if you dare, and see if you have what it takes to survive.