Latest / History Dark / The Macabre History of the Halloway Family_ Five Wives Locked Alive in the Walls

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The Macabre History of the Halloway Family_ Five Wives Locked Alive in the Walls · History Dark

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When contractor Mike Torres broke through that basement wall on
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: a cold Tuesday morning in Pugbend, he expected to find
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: old pipes, maybe some rotted wood, perhaps a nest of rats.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: What he found instead was a human skull staring back
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: at him through the dust, still wearing fragments of a veil.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: The Halloway House had stood on Maple Street for over
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: a century, a hulking Victorian mansion that everyone in town
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: knew but nobody really talked about. Three stories of peeling
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: grey paint, turrets that leaned slightly to the left, windows
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: that reflected nothing but darkness even on the brightest summer days.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Kids crossed to the other side of the street when
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: they walked past it. Real estate agents quietly steered potential
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: buyers toward literally any other property in Pool Bend. Mike
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: had taken the restoration job because he needed the money.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: His daughter's college tuition wasn't going to pay itself. and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the current owner, some distant Halloway cousin from California who'd
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: inherited the place and never even visited, was paying triple
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the usual rate. All Mike had to do was make
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the structure sound enough to sell. Simple enough, right? The
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: basement had always felt wrong. Mike noticed it the first day,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: that heaviness in the air, the way sound seemed to
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: die instead of echo. The walls down there were thick,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: impossibly thick for a residential basement. Some sections measured nearly
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: three feet deep, far more than any structural need could justify.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: When he'd mentioned it to his partner Carlos, the guy
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: had just shrugged. Old houses were weird, he'd said. People
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: back then built things different. But Mike couldn't shake the feeling.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: He'd been in construction for twenty years, worked on dozens
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of historic homes across upstate New York. This was different.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: The way certain walls had been reinforced, plastered over multiple times,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the odd distribution of support beams that seemed designed to
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: hide something rather than hold anything up. And then there
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: were the smells. Some sections of the basement carried this faint, sickly,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: sweet odour that no amount of bleach could quite eliminate.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Before continuing check, right now, if you're subscribed to the
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: channel and tell me in the comments where you're watching from,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I want to see if there's someone from my city
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: here that Tuesday morning Mike was alone. Carlos had called
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: in sick, and the owner had made it clear he
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: wanted the job done fast. Mike set up his work light,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: pulled on his dust mask, and started removing the plaster
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: from what he'd marked as wall section B7. The eastern
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: corner of the basement behind what used to be a
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: coal storage area, the demolition went smoothly at first. Standard
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: horsehair plaster over brick, exactly what he expected. Then his
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: hammer punched through into nothing, not just empty space, a void,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a hollow that shouldn't exist. Mike pulled away more plaster,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: working faster now, that wrongness in his gut growing into
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: something closer to dread. The hole grew larger. Two feet wide.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Three feet. And then his work-light caught something white inside
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: the darkness. Too white. Too smooth. Bone. The skull was small. Delicate. Female,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Mike thought, though he was no expert. It sat atop
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: a pile of fabric, rotted and stained but still recognisable
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: as cloth. Expensive cloth, the kind women wore for special occasions.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Around the skull's crown— tangled in what might have been
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: hair once, was a circlet of fake flowers, a bridal veil,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: dissolved by time but still clinging to its purpose. Mike
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: stumbled backward, his hammer clattering to the concrete floor. His
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: hand shook as he pulled out his phone, fingers fumbling
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: the emergency call three times before he managed to dial.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: The operator's voice sounded distant, dreamlike, as Mike tried to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: explain what he'd found. A body in the wall, not
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: recently deceased, he managed to clarify. Old, very old. While
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: he waited for the police, Mike couldn't stop staring at
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: that hole in the wall, the way the bricks had
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: been laid. The precision of the work. Someone had built
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: that cavity deliberately, carefully, sealed it from the outside with
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: the same craftsmanship they'd used to build the rest of
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: the house, and inside they'd left a woman to die.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: The first police car arrived within fifteen minutes. Officer Sarah Chen,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a young woman Mike recognized from around town, stepped carefully
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: down the basement stairs, her flashlight sweeping the space. She
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: approached the wall slowly, professionally, but Mike saw her face
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: go pale when the light caught the skull.' Sweet Jesus,'
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: she whispered. More officers arrived, then detectives. By noon, the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: basement was crowded with official personnel— Photographers, someone from the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: medical examiner's office. They worked around Mike, who sat on
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the bottom step in a daze, watching them document and
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: measure and carefully extract the remains from their tomb. Detective
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Raymond Park, a stocky man in his fifties with kind
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: eyes that had seen too much, eventually sat down next
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to Mike.' You found it,' he said.' Not a question.'
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Mike nodded.' Tell me about the wall.' What made you
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: decide to open this particular section? So Mike explained. The
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: structural survey. The odd thickness. The way this whole corner
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: of the basement seemed designed to waste space. Park listened,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: taking notes, asking clarifying questions. How long had Mike been
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: working here? Had he found anything else unusual? Had anyone
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: else been in the basement? The thing is, Mike said,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: his voice still shaky, I think there might be more.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Park looked at him sharply.' More bodies? More walls? Look around, detective.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Look at how this basement is laid out. All these
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: thick sections, these weird angles. I thought it was just
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: bad planning, but now—' Mike trailed off, gesturing at the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: crime scene tech still working behind them.' Now I'm thinking
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: it was very good planning, just not for anything normal.'
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Park stood up, his eyes scanning the basement with new attention.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Mike could see him doing the math, measuring spaces in
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: his head. After a long moment, the detective pulled out
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: his radio. I need a full forensic architecture team down here,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: he said, and someone get me the building permits for
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: this address going back to the 1800s. Every single one.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner, a tired-looking woman named Dr... Patricia Solis
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: approached them wiping dust from her hands. We've got the
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: remains out, she reported. Female, approximately twenty to thirty years
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: old at time of death. Based on clothing and the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: style of that veil, I'd estimate sometime in the early forties,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: but that's preliminary. We'll know more after analysis. Cause of death?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Park asked. Dr. Solis's face was grim. Judging by the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: position of the body and the complete lack of trauma
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: to the bones, I'd say she was alive when she
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: was sealed in. The cavity was only about four feet deep,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: maybe seven feet tall, less than two feet wide, barely
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: enough room to stand or crouch, no ventilation, no light.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: The cause of death was almost certainly suffocation, dehydration, or both.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Mike felt his stomach turn. He'd been working inches away
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: from this woman's tomb for three days, drilling holes, measuring spaces,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: completely unaware that someone's daughter, someone's wife, had died screaming
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: in the dark right behind the wall.' How long would
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: it have taken?' he heard himself ask.' For her to—''
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You know—' Dr. Solace looked at him with sympathy.' In
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a sealed space that small. Three, maybe four days.' Could
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: have been as long as a week if she was
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: very unlucky. The basement fell silent, except for the hum
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: of work lights and the quiet conversations of the crime
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: scene team. Mike thought about those four days. The darkness.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: The desperate hope that someone would hear her screaming, pounding
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: on the bricks. The slow understanding that nobody was coming.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: The final moments when the air ran out. We need
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: to check every wall in this house, Park said quietly.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Every single one. By evening, the Halloway house had become
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a crime scene. Yellow tape surrounded the property. News vans
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: were setting up on Maple Street. Mike watched from his
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: truck as more equipment was brought in. Ground-penetrating radar. Thermal imaging.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Structural engineers. The investigation was just beginning. His phone buzzed,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: a text from the owner in California.' What' s happening? I'm
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: seeing news about my property. Call me immediately.' Mike didn't call.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: He just sat there, watching the old house as lights
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: blazed in every window for probably the first time in decades.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Somewhere in there, sealed behind plaster and brick and wallpaper
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and paint, were the answers to questions nobody in Pug
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Bend had thought to ask. How many Halloway wives had
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: run away over the years?' How many had killed themselves
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: despite leaving no note, no body? How many were still
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: in the walls? By the end of the first week,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: they'd found three more. The second body turned up in
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the north wall of what used to be the master bedroom.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: The forensic team had been using ground-penetrating radar looking for
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: anomalies in the wall structure when they detected a cavity
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: similar to the one in the basement. This tomb was smaller, crueler.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: The woman had been sealed into a space barely three
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: feet tall, forcing her to remain in a permanent crouch.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: The remains of a nightgown clung to the bones. A
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: wedding ring was still on her finger. DOCTOR Solis estimated
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: she'd died sometime in the late twenties, based on the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: style of the ring and fabric remnants. The positioning of
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the skeletal hands suggested she'd tried to claw her way out.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Deep scratches marred the interior bricks, and several of her
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: finger bones were broken. Detective Park stood in the bedroom,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: staring at the hole in the wall, his face a
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: mask of controlled rage.' She fought,' he said quietly.' She
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: fought hard.' Sarah Chen, who'd been promoted to lead investigator
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: on the case given her initial response, looked pale but determined.'
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: The bedroom makes sense in a sick way,' she said.'
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Maximum psychological torture. The husband would have slept on the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: other side of this wall, might have even heard her
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: in those first hours.'' Might have?' Park's voice was sharp.'
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Probably did hear her,' Sarah corrected herself.' Probably listened.' The
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: third body was found in the dining room, sealed behind
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: what had once been an ornate, built-in china cabinet. This
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: victim was different. The cavity was larger, almost comfortable by
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: comparison to the others. There was evidence of food wrappers,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a bucket that had served as a toilet, even a
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: thin blanket. The woman had survived longer in her prison,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: possibly weeks. Look at this, one of the forensic techs
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: called out. carefully extracting a small book from the remains.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: A diary, its pages brittle and water-damaged, but still partially readable.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Sarah took it with gloved hands, carefully opening to a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: random page. The handwriting was shaky, desperate. November 17th. He
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: brings water twice a day now. Says if I'm quiet.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: If I learn to be a proper wife, he'll let
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: me out. I believe him. I have to believe him.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: The darkness is so complete I can't tell if my
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: eyes are open or closed anymore. Sarah flipped her head,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: her throat tight. November 28th. No water yesterday. Or today.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I think it's day. I screamed until my voice broke.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: The wall is so thick. Nobody can hear me. I
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: don't think he's coming back. I don't think— The entry
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: ended there, the final word trailing off into an illegible scrawl.'
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ!' Park muttered, reading over her shoulder. He kept
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: her alive deliberately, fed her just enough to extend the suffering. Dr. Solis,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: examining the remains, confirmed it.' This victim shows signs of
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: severe malnutrition and dehydration over an extended period— at least two weeks,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: possibly three. And look here.' She pointed to several bones.'
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: These fractures are perimortem— happened around the time of death.' She
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: was beating herself against the walls toward the end. The
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: fourth body came from the attic, sealed in a false
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: wall behind the chimney. This one was the oldest, possibly
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: from the 1890s based on the remnants of clothing. The
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: cavity was the smallest yet, barely large enough for the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: woman to stand. The positioning of the skeleton suggested she
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: died standing up, pressed against the bricks, her skull tilted
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: back as if searching for air that wasn't there. Four victims.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Sarah said, standing in the incident room they'd set up
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: in the Poob and Town Hall. The walls were covered
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: with photographs, timeline charts, building permits, and family records. Spanning
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: at least fifty years, all women. All sealed alive into
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the walls of the Halloway House. All wives, Park added,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: pointing to the genealogical chart they'd assembled. We've been cross-referencing
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: with marriage licenses and death certificates— Every one of these
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: women was married to a Halloway man. The pattern was
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: horrifying in its consistency. Each victim had disappeared after a
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: period of documented marital trouble. Neighbours' statements from old police
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: reports mentioned terrible fights and violent arguments. D. In every case,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: there had been construction work done on the house shortly
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: before or after the disappearance. New walls built, old rooms renovated,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: basements expanded. and in every case the Halloway husband had
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: reported his wife either as a runaway or a suicide.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: The bodies were never found because nobody knew to look
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: inside the house itself. Sarah pulled up the marriage records
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: on her laptop. Thomas Halloway married Elizabeth Porter in 1889.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: She disappeared in 1891. Death certificate lists cause as presumed
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: suicide by drowning. Body never recovered. That's our attic victim,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Park confirmed. The oldest one. Right. Thomas remarried in 1893
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: to Margaret Chen, no relation to me. She lasted four
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: years before disappearing in 1897. Listed as abandoned family. The
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: basement victim, Dr. Solis said, checking her notes. Based on
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the deterioration patterns and depth of burial, Sarah continued reading.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Thomas's son, Robert Halloway, married Alice Thompson in 1926, missing
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: in 1928. Death certificate says suicide. No body found. The
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: bedroom wall, Park said grimly. Then we have Henry Halloway,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Robert's son, married Dorothy Campbell in 1940. She's listed as
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: missing in 1942, presumed to have run away with another man.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: No evidence, just Henry's testimony. The dining room, Sarah said.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: with the diary. That's four! Park looked at the chart.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: But the house has been in the Halloway family for
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: over a hundred years. There was a fifth generation. Sarah nodded,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: pulling up another file. William Halloway, Henry's son. He married
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Carolyn Reeves in 1947. And here's where it gets interesting.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Carolyn didn't disappear. Everyone in the room looked at her.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: She left him, Sarah continued. filed for divorce in 1950,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: citing physical abuse and fears for her life. The divorce
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: went through. She moved to New Hampshire, remarried, had kids.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: She died in 2003. She got out, Park breathed. She's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the one who got away. Which means there might be
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: a living witness, Sarah said. Carolyn had two daughters, both
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: still alive. One lives in Portland, Maine. The other is
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: in Boston. Park was already reaching for his phone. Get
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: me their numbers. We need to talk to them now,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: if their mother knew anything about this family, about the house.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Within two hours, Detective Park was on a video call
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: with Jennifer Matthews, the younger daughter of Carolyn Reeves. Jennifer
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: was sixty-eight, a retired teacher with kind eyes and a
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: tense expression as she listened to Park explain why he
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: was calling. My mother never talked about her first marriage,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Jennifer said slowly. Never. The few times we asked as kids,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: she'd just say it was a dark time in her life,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: and she didn't want to revisit it. Did she ever
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: mention the house? Park pressed gently. The Halloway house on
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Maple Street? Jennifer's face went pale. Once, she said. Just once.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Near the end. She had dementia by then. Kept confusing
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: past and present. One night I was sitting with her
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and she grabbed my hand really tight and said, The
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: walls have ears, Jenny. The walls have mouths, but they
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: can't scream. I thought it was just the confusion, the disease.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: But her eyes were so clear in that moment, so terrified.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Did she say anything else? She said, I heard them.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: At night I heard them crying. He told me it
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: was the wind. But the wind doesn't sob like that.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: The wind doesn't call for help. Jennifer's voice broke. She said,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I ran before he could put me in there too.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: The room went silent.' Mrs. Matthews,' Park said carefully, 'did
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: your mother ever tell you what she heard? Who was crying?''
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: She said— she said it was the other wives, the ones
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: who didn't run fast enough.' Jennifer wiped her eyes.' I
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: thought she was hallucinating, but she wasn't, was she? Oh God,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: she was telling the truth.' After the call ended, Sarah
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: stood and walked to the evidence board. She pinned up
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a photo of Carolyn Reeves, young and smiling, in her
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: wedding dress, next to the photos of the four skeletal remains.'
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: She heard them dying,' Sarah said quietly.' She was living
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: in that house while those women were sealed in the walls,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and she heard them screaming.'' And William knew she heard them,'
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Park added.' That' s why she ran.' She realized she was next.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: But why? One of the junior officers fresh out of
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the academy spoke up. Why would anyone do this? Serial
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: killers usually have a pattern, a reason, even if it's sick.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: But this? Spanning generations? Different men, all doing the same thing?
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Park walked to the genealogical chart. That's what we need
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to figure out. This isn't just one killer. This is
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: four generations of Halloway men. all murdering their wives in
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the exact same way. way. That's not coincidence. That's tradition.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: The answer came from an unexpected source, a trunk in
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the attic. It had been hidden behind a false panel,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the kind of compartment that might go unnoticed during a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: normal investigation. But this wasn't a normal investigation. The forensic
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: team was taking apart every inch of the Halloway house,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: and when they pulled back the old wallboard near the
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: attic stairs, they found it. A leather trunk, locked with
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a corroded padlock that broke apart at the first touch.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Inside were journals, dozens of them, dating back to 1872.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: The earliest was written in German, the handwriting precise and methodical.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Later volumes switched to English, though the same careful script remained.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: They were all written by Halloway men, passed down from
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: father to son like a treasured heirloom. Sarah sat in
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the incident room with a translator for the German entries,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: reading through the founder's words, while Park looked over her shoulder.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: The first entry was dated March 15th, 1872. I have
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: purchased the land on Maple Street, as father instructed. The
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: house will be built according to the old ways, with
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: walls thick enough to hold the family's honour. Grandfather's wisdom
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: must not die with our departure from the old country.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Here in America, we will preserve what the modern world
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: seeks to destroy. Old ways, Sarah muttered. What old ways?
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: The translator Professor Haupt from the State University looked troubled.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Keep reading, he said quietly. The entries continued, detailing the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: construction of the house, the specific thickness of certain walls,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: the careful planning of preservation spaces in the basement, bedroom,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and attic. And then, in an entry dated November 2, 1889,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: my wife Elizabeth has proven herself unfit. She questions my
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: authority— defies my instructions, poisons our home with her independence.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I have given her many chances to reform herself, but
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: she persists in her rebellion. Father prepared me for this.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Tonight I will preserve the family honour as Grandfather did,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and his father before him. The wall in the attic
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: has been prepared. Elizabeth will learn that a wife's defiance
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: ends only one way. Sarah felt sick. He's talking about
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it like it's normal, like it's just... What you do,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Professor Haupt nodded grimly. There's a tradition in certain parts
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: of rural Germany, going back to medieval times. Die Einmauerung,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the immurement. When a woman was considered to have brought
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: shame to her family, when divorce would damage the family's standing,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: sometimes they would... He paused, searching for words. They would
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: seal her away. alive inside the family home as both
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: punishment and warning. But that's medieval, Park protested. We're talking
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: about the 1800s, 1900s, modern times. Some families, Professor Haupt
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: said carefully, maintained very old traditions, especially families that emigrated
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: to preserve their way of life. They saw the modern
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: world as corrupting, dangerous. They held on to the old
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: customs even harder. even the darkest ones. Sarah continued reading.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: The next journal was written by Thomas's son, Robert, in 1926,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: right after his marriage to Alice Thompson.' Father has educated
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: me well.' I understand now the sacred duty of maintaining
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: family honour.' My wife must be moulded into a proper woman,'
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: obedient and respectful.' Should she fail, I know what must
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: be done.' The bedroom wall awaits.' Father says the suffering
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: is necessary.' that without it the lesson has no meaning.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: The house must witness their submission or their elimination. Each
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: journal was the same, Henry writing about Dorothy in 1940,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: William writing about Carolyn in 1947. Every entry clinical. emotionless,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: describing the sealing of their wives into the walls as
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: if discussing the weather. But it was the oldest journal,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the one written in German, that contained the most chilling revelation.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Buried in an entry from 1873, Sarah found this passage.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Today I received Father's final letter before his death. He
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: reminds me that we are the last of the true blood,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: the keepers of the old justice. He says that back
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: in Württemberg, our family was known for maintaining order through
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: twelve generations. Twelve women were preserved in the walls of
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: our ancestral home before we left for America. He makes
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: me swear that I will continue the tradition here, that
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I will teach my sons, and they will teach theirs.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: The family honour depends on our willingness to do what
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: weak men cannot. Twelve? Park's voice was hollow. Twelve women
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: in Germany. And then they came here and started again,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Sarah said. We've found four in this house. Carolyn escaped,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: so she would have been the fifth. That's five generations,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: five women. But the journal says this tradition goes back
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: twelve generations in Germany. Dr. Solis, who'd been quietly reviewing
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the forensic reports, spoke up. We need to check something.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: The building permits show this house was remodelled three times.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Major renovations in 1890, 1920 and 1940. Each time new
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: walls were added, thick walls that served no structural purpose.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Each time, right after a woman disappeared. Park finished. Sarah
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: stood and walked to the blueprint of the house they'd
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: pinned to the wall. We've checked the basement, the bedroom,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the dining room and the attic. Those are the four
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: bodies we've found, but look. She traced her finger along
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: the blueprint. There are three other sections with walls that
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: are architecturally unusual. Here, in the library. Here, behind the kitchen.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And here, in what used to be a sitting room
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: on the second floor. You think there are more, Park said.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I think we've only found the beginning. The excavation of
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the library wall began the next morning. The forensic team
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: worked carefully— knowing they might find another victim, another story
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of suffering sealed in brick and silence. When the wall
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: came down, they found the cavity immediately, but it was empty,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: not empty like nothing had been there, empty like something
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: had been removed. The interior of the space was clean,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: scrubbed down to bare brick, but there were marks, deep
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: scratches in the mortar, stains that luminol tests confirmed were blood,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: old blood, probably decades old. Someone was here, Dr. Solis confirmed,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: but the remains were removed, probably years ago. The kitchen
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: wall told the same story. Another empty cavity, another cleaned-out tomb.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Someone had known about these bodies and had moved them.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: It was the sitting-room wall that broke the pattern. When
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the team finally penetrated that wall, they found not one cavity,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: but two. Side by side, separated only by a thin
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: partition of brick— and both were occupied. The first skeleton
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: was positioned like the others, curled in eternal agony, but
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the second was different. This victim had been placed standing up,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: arms raised above her head, wrists bound together with rotted rope.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: The cavity was so narrow she couldn't have moved, couldn't
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: have sat or even shifted her weight. She died on
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: her feet, trapped in a coffin of brick that forced
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: her to stand until her legs gave out. until exhaustion
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and dehydration and suffocation finally claimed her. Why two? Sarah asked,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: staring at the grotesque tableau. Why seal two women in
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the same wall? Dr. Solis examined the remains carefully. Different ages,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: she said. This one, she indicated the standing skeleton, based
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: on bone density and teeth. I'd say she was in
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: her sixties, maybe seventies when she died. The other one
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: is younger, maybe thirty. Mother and daughter, Park suggested. Or
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: mother-in-law and wife, Sarah said, the horrible logic clicking into place.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: The journals mentioned maintaining family honour. What if it wasn't
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: just wives who were sealed away? What if any woman
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: in the family who caused problems, who knew too much,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: who threatened to expose the tradition? She didn't finish the sentence.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: She didn't need to. That night, Sarah couldn't sleep. She
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: sat in her apartment, the case files spread across her
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: kitchen table, reading through the journals again. The clinical descriptions
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of suffering, the matter-of-fact planning of murders, the careful preservation
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: of this horrible tradition across generations. And then she found it,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: an entry she'd skimmed past before, written by William Halloway
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: in 1949.' Caroline has fled. Mother says I should have
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: acted sooner.' should have prepared the wall before she grew suspicious.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: But Mother was always soft, always fearful. She questions whether
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: we should continue the old ways in this new American time.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: She forgets that tradition is what defines us. Without it,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: we are nothing. I have made a decision. When my
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: son is born, I will teach him properly, and Mother
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: will learn that even she is not exempt from the
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: family's justice if she threatens to break our sacred trust.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Sarah's hands shook as she called Park. I found it.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: she said when he answered, his voice groggy with sleep.'
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: The empty cavities. I know where those bodies went.'' Where?''
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: They weren't removed,' Sarah said.' They were moved, resealed. William's mother,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Helen Halloway. She disappeared in 1951. Death certificate says she
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: died of a heart attack at home, body cremated immediately
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: per her wishes. No autopsy, no witnesses except William himself.'
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: You think he sealed his own mother in the wall?
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Park's voice was fully awake now, sharp with understanding. And
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: his aunt, his father's sister, she vanished in 1953. No
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: death certificate, no missing person report, just gone. The family
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: claimed she moved to Florida, but there's no record of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: her anywhere after that year. The two in the sitting room,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Park breathed. William cleaned out the old tombs and created
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: new ones. probably to hide the evidence, to make the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: house seem normal if anyone ever searched it. But he
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: couldn't help himself. He had to continue the tradition. His
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: mother questioned it, threatened to expose him, so she became
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: another victim. And his aunt must have known too much.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: The next day, the forensic team confirmed it. Dental records,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: when cross-referenced with old photographs, proved that the two skeletons
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: in the sitting room were Helen Halloway and her sister-in-law,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Patricia Halloway. Both had died in the early fifties, right
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: after Carolyn escaped. William panicked, Sarah explained to the team.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Carolyn ran, filed for divorce, and probably told people about
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the house, about what she'd heard. Nobody believed her or
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: took her seriously, but William knew the risk was growing.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: so he sealed away the two women most likely to
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: corroborate her story. And then? Park asked. And then he stopped,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Sarah said. Look at the records. William never remarried. He
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: lived alone in that house for forty more years until
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: he died in 1992. The tradition ended with him. Why?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: one of the investigators asked. If this was so important
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: to the family, why stop? Dr. Solis had the answer.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: William had no children. Carolyn left before they had any kids.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: The tradition was patrilineal, passed from father to son. When
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: William died alone and childless, there was no one left
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: to teach. The cycle finally broke. Sarah looked at the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: evidence board, at the photos of all the victims they'd identified— Elizabeth, Margaret, Alice, Dorothy, Helen, Patricia,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and the dozens more in Germany they'd never find, never name,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Never give justice to. Six, she said quietly. Six women
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: in this house, plus the twelve in Germany, eighteen victims
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: that we know of. Probably more we'll never discover. The
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: room fell silent, the weight of that number settling over
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: everyone like a shroud. The excavation took three months. Every
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: wall in the Halloway house was examined, tested, documented. In
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: the end they found eight cavities total. six with remains,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: two that had been emptied and cleaned. But something else
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: happened during those three months, something that the investigators didn't
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: include in their official reports, but talked about in quiet
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: conversations over coffee, in hushed phone calls to family members,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: in the private journals some of them kept to process
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the horror they were witnessing. The house started to feel different.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Mike Torres, who'd found that first body— and stayed on
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: as a consultant to help the forensic team navigate the structure,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: was the first to notice it. He was working late
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: one evening, helping document the removal of a section of
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: wall in the second-floor hallway when he heard it, a
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: sound like crying, faint and distant, coming from somewhere above him.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: He climbed to the third floor, following the sound, but
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: it seemed to move, always just out of reach. When
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: he stood still and listened carefully, he realised it wasn't
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: crying at all. It was the sound of someone breathing,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: harsh and laboured, the kind of breathing you do when
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you're terrified and trying to stay quiet. Just the house settling,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: he told himself. But his hands were shaking when he
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: packed up his tools and left early that night. Sarah
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: heard it too. She was alone in the master bedroom,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: reviewing the photographs of the cavity where Alice Thompson had died,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: when she heard a scratching sound. Fingernails on brick. She froze, listening.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: The scratching continued, rhythmic and desperate, coming from the wall
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: right next to her. The wall they'd already opened. The
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: wall that was now just a hollow space with no
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: one inside. She pulled out her flashlight and examined the
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: cavity carefully. Nothing. No animals, no logical source for the sound.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: But when she turned off her light and stood in
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the darkness, she heard it again. Scratch, scratch, scratch. The
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: sound of someone trying to claw their way out. Other
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: members of the team reported similar experiences. Detective Park heard
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: whispers in the dining room, too quiet to make out words,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: but unmistakably human. Dr. Solace saw a figure standing in
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the corner of the basement, there for just a moment,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: a woman in a rotted white dress, before the shadows
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: swallowed her again. They didn't talk about it openly, not
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: at first. Each of them thought they were losing their grip,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: that the horror of the case was getting to them.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: But eventually, in the third month of excavation, Sarah brought
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: it up during a team meeting.' Has anyone else experienced
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: unusual things in the house?' The room went silent. Then, slowly,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: hands started to rise. Mike. Park. Dr. Solis. Three of
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the forensic techs. Even the young officer who'd asked about motives.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I see her sometimes, the officer said quietly. In the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: windows upstairs, when I'm pulling up to the house, just
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: for a second, a woman looking down at me. But
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: when I go up there, there's nobody. I hear my name,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: one of the techs admitted. called out, really soft, like
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: someone's trying to get my attention but they can't speak
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: too loud. Mike nodded. The breathing. Every night when I'm
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: working late I hear someone breathing, heavy, like they're suffocating.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: The scratching, Sarah said. Always the scratching. They looked at
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: each other, these professionals who'd spent their careers dealing with
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: death and evidence and logic, now forced to confront something
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that had no logical explanation. It's the house, Park said finally.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: That sounds insane, I know, but we've all felt it.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: This place is wrong. It absorbed what happened here, all
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: that pain, all that suffering. Professor Haupt, who'd been brought
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: back to help translate more of the German journals, spoke up.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: In the old countries, they believed that violent death could
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: imprint on a place, that suffering left scars on the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: world itself. The tradition of immurement was considered especially cursed
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: because the victims died so slowly, with so much terror.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Their final moments were drawn out over days, sometimes weeks,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: all that agony concentrated in such a small space. You're
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: saying the house is haunted, one of the sceptical forensic
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: techs said flatly. I'm saying, Professor Haupt replied carefully, that
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: we're excavating what is essentially a mass grave built into
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the architecture of a residential home, We're pulling apart tombs
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: where women died in possibly the most psychologically torturous way imaginable.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Whatever your beliefs about the supernatural, you have to admit
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: there's a psychological weight to that. Whether it's actual ghosts
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: or just our minds reacting to the horror of what
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: we're discovering, does it really matter? We're all feeling something.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: The investigation continued, but the team started working in pairs—
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Nobody alone in the house after dark. The sounds persisted,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: the glimpses of figures in corners, the overwhelming sense, especially
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: in the rooms where bodies had been found, that they
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: were not alone. Mike had the worst experience. He was
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: in the attic late one afternoon, helping remove the last
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: section of wall near where Elizabeth Porter had been found.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: The sun was setting, long shadows creeping across the floorboards.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: He heard footsteps behind him, clear and distinct, the sound
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: of someone walking across the wooden floor. He spun around, nothing,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: but the footsteps continued moving toward him now. He could
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: hear the boards creaking with each step. Closer, closer. He
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: backed up against the wall, his heart pounding, watching the
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: empty air advance toward him. Then he felt it, a
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: hand on his shoulder, ice cold, the fingers pressing into
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: his flesh with desperate strength. He shouted, stumbling forward, and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: the presence was gone, but when he looked back at
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the wall he'd been standing against, he saw something that
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: made his blood freeze. Handprints. Small, delicate handprints in the
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: dust that covered the wall. Not old prints. Fresh ones. Still,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: slowly fading as he watched. He left the attic and
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: didn't go back. Sarah had her own moment of truth
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: in the dining room, standing in front of the cavity
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: where Dorothy Campbell had spent her final weeks. She'd been
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: reading Dorothy's diary again, those heartbreaking entries that detailed every
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: desperate day of her captivity. On impulse, Sarah spoke to
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the empty room. Dorothy, if you're here, if any part
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: of you is still here, I want you to know
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: we found you. We know what happened. The truth won't
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: stay buried any more. For a moment, nothing. Then very
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: softly Sarah heard a voice. Just one word, barely a whisper,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: but clear enough that she couldn't doubt she'd heard it.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Sarah felt tears on her cheeks. She didn't
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: know if she believed in ghosts, in spirits, in any
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: kind of afterlife, but she knew with absolute certainty that
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: something in this house had heard her. Something had responded.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: The formal investigation wrapped up in late November. The house
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: was officially declared a crime scene in perpetuity, to be
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: demolished once all evidence had been catalogued. The Halloway family
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: property was seized by the state. Plans were made to
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: create a memorial on the site, dedicated to the victims
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: whose names they'd recovered and the countless others whose identities
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: remained unknown. On the last day before the demolition crews arrived,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Sarah stood outside the house one final time. The sun
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: was setting, painting the old Victorian in shades of gold
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: and shadow. For just a moment she thought she saw
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: figures in the windows— six of them, maybe more, standing together
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and looking out at the world they'd been stolen from.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Then the sun dipped below the horizon, and the windows
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: went dark. The Halloway house came down on a cold
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: December morning. The demolition crew had been briefed on the history,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: on what they were taking apart. They worked respectfully, carefully,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: as if they understood they weren't just demolishing a building,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: but dismantling a tomb. It took three days to reduce
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the house to rubble. As each wall came down, the
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: excavation team watched carefully, still half expecting to find another cavity,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: another victim they'd missed, but there were no more surprises.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: The house had given up all its dead. The story
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: of the Halloway murders became national news. Major publications ran
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: features about the House of Horrors, the Immurement Murders, the
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Halloway Family Tomb. Documentaries were produced. True crime podcasts devoted
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: dozens of episodes to analysing every detail. But for the
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: people of Parbend, it wasn't entertainment. It was a reckoning.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: How had this happened in their town? How had five
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: generations of Halloway men murdered their wives, sealed them in walls,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: reported them as runaways or suicides, and nobody ever questioned it?
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: How had the screams gone unheard for over a century?
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: The answers were uncomfortable. Neighbours admitted they'd heard raised voices
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: from the Halloway house over the years, seen bruises on wives,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: watched women become more withdrawn and frightened. But they hadn't intervened.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: That wasn't how things were done. Marriages were private. Family
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: business stayed in the family. We knew, said Ethel Morrison,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: an 86-year-old lifelong Poe Bend resident, in an interview with
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: the local newspaper. Maybe we didn't know they were being killed,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: but we knew they were suffering, and we did nothing.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: We told ourselves it wasn't our place. God forgive us.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: The memorial was unveiled on a rainy spring day six
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: months after the house came down. It stood on the
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: empty lot where the Halloway Mansion had loomed for over
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: a century. A simple granite monument, engraved with the names
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: of the victims they'd identified, Elizabeth Porter Halloway, 1869-1891, Margaret
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Chen Halloway, 1872-1897, Alice Thompson Halloway, 1904-1928, Dorothy Campbell Halloway, 1918-1942,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Helen Weiss Halloway, 1895-1951, Patricia Morgan Halloway, 1897-1953— and below
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: their names a simple inscription, For these six women and
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the countless others whose names we will never know, may
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: their suffering be remembered, may their silence finally end. Udun,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: the memorial, became a gathering place. Women from across the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: country came to pay their respects, to leave flowers, to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: whisper their own stories of abuse and escape. Domestic violence
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: organizations used the Halloway case as a rallying cry. a
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: stark reminder of what happens when society looks away from suffering.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Sarah Chen stood at the memorial on the anniversary of
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: its dedication, reading the names carved in stone. She'd left
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the police force, taken a job with a national domestic
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: violence prevention organisation. The case had changed her, made her
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: understand that law enforcement was only part of the answer. Prevention, education...
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: breaking the cycles of abuse before they could claim another
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: generation of victims. That was the real work. Detective Park
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: retired shortly after the investigation concluded. He'd spent forty years
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: in law enforcement, seen hundreds of murders, but the Halloway
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: case was different. It haunted him in ways none of
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: the others had. He spent his retirement volunteering at a
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: crisis hotline, talking to people in danger, trying to be
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: the intervention that nobody had been for Elizabeth, Margaret, Alice, Dorothy, Helen,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: and Patricia. Mike Torres couldn't bring himself to work in
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: historic restoration anymore. Every old house now looked suspicious to him,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: every thick wall hiding potential horrors. He retrained as a
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: code inspector. focusing on making sure modern homes were built
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: to modern standards, with no hidden spaces, no places for
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: secrets to be sealed away. Dr. Solis continued her work
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: as a medical examiner, but she became an expert on
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: historical cold cases involving missing women. How many Alice Thompsons
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: were out there, she wondered, women reported as runaways who'd
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: actually been murdered? How many families had their own dark traditions,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: their own ways of making inconvenient women disappear. The forensic
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: team published a landmark paper on architectural analysis in cold
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: cases using the Halloway House as a case study. It
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: changed how investigators approached historic properties with suspicious disappearances. Houses
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: across the country were re-examined with ground-penetrating radar and thermal imaging,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: and sometimes, horribly, they found something. A farmhouse in rural
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania yielded two bodies in a sealed root cellar. A
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: mansion in Virginia had a woman's remains in a bricked-over fireplace.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: An apartment building in Chicago revealed a victim in a
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: false wall between two units. The Halloway case had opened
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: a door to a hidden history of domestic violence, sealed
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: away behind plaster and lies. But perhaps the most important
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: legacy came from Jennifer Matthews, Carolyn Reeves's daughter. She wrote
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: a book about her mother's escape titled The Woman Who Ran.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: It became a bestseller, a story about survival and courage,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: about recognising danger and choosing life even when it meant
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: leaving everything behind. In the book's final chapter, Jennifer included
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: excerpts from her mother's private journals, recovered after her death.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: One entry, written just after Carolyn's escape, read, I hear
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: them sometimes, in my dreams. The other wives, the ones
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: who didn't run, they're calling to me from inside those walls,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: begging me to tell someone, to save them, but I
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: was too scared. I ran to save myself and I
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: left them there, and I'll carry that guilt until I die.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: If anyone ever reads this, please know, if you're in danger, run.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Don't wait for him to change. Don't hope it will
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: get better. Don't tell yourself it could be worse. If
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: something in your gut says you're not safe, listen to it.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Because those walls are real, maybe not literally, but they exist.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: And once you're sealed inside them, once you let fear
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: and hope trap you there, it's so much harder to
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: break free. The book saved lives. Women in abusive relationships
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: read Carolyn's story and found the courage to leave. Helpline
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: numbers were printed in every copy. Support resources were listed
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: in the appendix. Jennifer donated all proceeds to domestic violence shelters.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: What this case teaches us about the psychology of inherited
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: violence is clear. Abuse doesn't exist in a vacuum. The
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Halloway men were taught to see their wives as property,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: taught that male authority justified any cruelty, taught that tradition
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: mattered more than human life. They learned from their fathers,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: who learned from their fathers. creating a chain of violence
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: that seemed unbreakable. But it did break. When William Halloway
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: died without passing on his poisonous legacy, the cycle ended.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: That's the terrible truth about abuse. It thrives when it's normalized,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: when it's kept secret, when it's framed as tradition or
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: discipline or just the way things are. The moment we
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: drag it into the light, name it for what it is,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: refuse to let it hide behind closed doors and thick walls,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: we begin to break its power. The lot where the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Halloway House stood remains empty except for the memorial. The
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: town voted to keep it that way, a permanent reminder
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: of what happened when people looked away. On quiet evenings,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: some residents claim they still hear sounds from the empty lot,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: not crying or scratching or breathing, but something softer, something
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: that sounds almost like singing, like women's voices finally free
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: to speak, to be heard, to exist without fear. Nobody
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: in Poobend talks about building on that land. It's sacred
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: ground now, bought with suffering, dedicated to remembrance. And maybe,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: if you believe in such things, it's still occupied. Not
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: by horror, but by resilience. Not by the men who
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: tried to silence these women, but by the women themselves,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: finally able to tell their stories, finally released from their walls.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: Sarah visits the memorial every year on the anniversary of
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Mike's discovery. She leaves six roses, one for each named victim.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: And sometimes, on particularly still days, she swears she feels
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: something like gratitude in the air, like the women are
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: acknowledging her presence, thanking her for refusing to let their
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: suffering be forgotten. The Halloway case closed officially in June.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: All victims identified or memorialized, all evidence catalogued, the property demolished.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: The journals sealed in the state archives with restricted access,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: their contents too disturbing for casual reading, but preserved for
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: future researchers, future investigators, future generations who need to understand
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: how darkness can persist when good people choose silence. But
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: for Sarah, for Park, for Mike and Dr. Solis, and
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: everyone who worked the case, it will never really close.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: They carry those women with them. Elizabeth and Margaret and
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Alice and Dorothy and Helen and Patricia and all the
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: unnamed others, the twelve in Germany, the countless victims of
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: immurement throughout history, whose screams were never heard, whose names
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: were never recorded, whose suffering was sealed away and forgotten,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: until now. The truth about the Halloway family is out
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: there now. preserved in court documents and memorial stone, in
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: the DNA records that finally gave the victims back their names,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: in the photographs of those sealed cavities that show exactly
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: how narrow the spaces were, how impossible escape would have been,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: how prolonged the suffering must have felt. The house is gone,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: but the story remains, and that's exactly as it should be.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Because forgetting these women, letting their stories fade back into silence,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: would be another kind of murder. The Halloway men tried
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: to erase their wives from existence, tried to make it
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: as if they'd never been, never mattered, never had voices
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: worth hearing. They failed. Those voices echo now, not just
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: in Pugbend, but across the country, across the world. Every
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: time someone reads about the case... learns the victims' names,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: understands what happened in that house of horrors. Those women
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: are remembered. Their suffering means something. Their deaths demand something
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: from us. Vigilance, compassion, the courage to intervene when we
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: see someone in danger, the refusal to let tradition or
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: privacy or fear keep us silent when silence enables violence.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: The walls came down. The secrets were exposed. The dead
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: were honoured. And in the end, though it came far
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: too late, justice of a kind was served. Not for
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: the Halloway men who died unpunished, who never faced consequences
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: for their crimes, but for their victims, who are finally, finally, heard.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: The wind blows across the empty lot on Maple Street,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: rustling the flowers people leave at the memorial, whispering through
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: the grass that grows where the house once stood. And
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: if you listen very carefully— on certain nights when the
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: air is still and the town is quiet, you might
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: hear something in that wind, not crying, not screaming, not
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: the desperate sounds of women dying in darkness, but something else,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: something that sounds like relief, like release, like six women
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: and all the others they represent, finally, finally free to rest.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: That's what happened in the Halloway House. That's what we
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: uncovered when we broke through those walls.' not just bones
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: and evidence, not just the facts of murder, but the
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: truth about what happens when we value tradition over life,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: authority over compassion, silence over justice. We found the victims.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: We gave them back their names. We told their stories.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: And we promised all of us who worked that case,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: who witnessed what human beings are capable of doing to
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: each other, who saw how suffering can be inherited and
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: perpetuated across generations. We promised that we would never let
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: anyone forget. The Halloway House is gone. But the women
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: who died there, the women who suffered there, the women
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: who were sealed alive in those walls and died in
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: darkness and terror and desperate hope that someone, anyone, would
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: hear them, they're remembered now. Every single one. And they
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: always will be. Now, I don't have good news. I
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: love to produce these videos. But creating them takes me
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of time, and the only way I have
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: to continue is to reach 1,000 subscribers, because this way
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: I start receiving from YouTube. If you like our stories,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: do not let this channel die. Sign up and share
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: our videos. I'm so grateful.