History: 1919-1939
In 1919, "Lost Souls Cemetery" was founded by Capt. John Flagg Moorstone, a European immigrant and decorated infantry medic. His experience as a battlefield doctor left him with a familiarity with and closeness to death. Even under fire by the enemy, Captain Moorestone was determined, even obsessed, with honoring the dead with a final resting place and a token of respect. This honorable reputation earned him an opportunity to immigrate to the United States and accept a contract with the State of Illinois. Under an agreement with the state’s Governor, the Captain was to give a proper burial and final resting place, upon their deaths, to the unwanted persons of whom the state had legal custody or possession. This new state cemetery was to replace the several smaller cemeteries at state run institutions, such as prisons, sanitariums, shelters for abused women, homes for the physically deformed, and orphanages; one location for those unfortunately known as “the unwanted”. The Captain would receive a handsome salary, 50 acres of land, and a private home on the cemetery grounds as payment for his services. This was to be a beautiful new adventure for the Captain and his 12 year old twin daughters, Abigail and Amelia.
The overseas voyage was long and difficult, running into several storms that wracked the ship’s decks and left the passengers weary and exhausted. In this vulnerable state, several passengers fell ill, and it wasn’t long before the twins showed signs of consumption; coughing, blood spattered handkerchiefs and labored breathing. The sea was no place to find care for the helpless, particularly against such a viral monster. Once on land, the Captain used all of his talents and knowledge to save his family from their inevitable fate, but in the end, he could only make them comfortable as they finally succumbed to its grip.
They passed away in his arms on the overland trek across the prairie grass.
Stricken with grief, his family wrapped in linen in the back of the wagon, he continued his now-joyless voyage to his new home. A man of his word, he followed through on his agreement with the state of Illinois. A home must be built and a cemetery created, and a grieving father must find a way to move forward. He poured his pain into creating Lost Souls Cemetery and christened it with his twin daughters’ tomb. Abigail and Amelia were its first inhabitants, and the Captain would be forever tied to this grounds.
This first tomb would not be the end of the Captain’s efforts to memorialize the memory of his children. He continued to build his family’s dream home, even if they did not live to see it. Moorestone Manor would be a monument to his daughters, every room fitted exactly how he’d told them it would be, down to the pink and white bedroom featuring a dollhouse replica of the manor. A father’s promise kept.
Deep in the furthest corner of the cemetery stands a monument that encapsulates the Captain's dedication and care for the unwanted. A mausoleum of massive proportions, designed to both intern and, more importantly, honor the dead. This structure rivaled the tombs of the rich in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery. To most, it seemed a great waste of time and money, but to the Captain, it was a place where people could come to honor and mourn with dignity. Not only did he build the tombs with expensive stone and masonry, but he also commissioned stone statues to stand as symbols of those interned: The Orphan, The Patient, The Prisoner, The Pagan, The Abused, and The Clown. These statues would be on display in the "mourning room", for anyone to visit and mourn with.
With no living family, the Captain dedicated his time and love to his work. The state was very eager to rid itself of the unwanted. Each person they dismissed as trash was received with respect and care by the Captain, and the new inhabitants at Lost Souls were buried with the love one gives to family. Each one of them was special, cared for by the man with nobody to call his own, who saw them only as souls lost in transition that he needed to guide to their final resting places. Tombs and markers were erected to honor the tragic lives of these forgotten souls.
Notwithstanding his deep depression over his loss, his determination and diligence endeared him to the Governor, which elevated the Captain’s status and political power. There was a place at the top for a man who could remove something unwanted, and “Lost Souls” was proving a great benefit to many people in the government.
Although the original name for the state cemetery was “Lost Souls”, appropriately named for its inhabitants (who were forsaken or abandoned by their families), Governor John Altgeld nicknamed it "Hell's Gate". It was the Governor's belief that "anyone buried in that graveyard could not be a good Christian, so if they're all doomed to an eternity in Hell, then this is the front gate." The Captain did not share the Governor's judgment of these people, he displayed an exuberant reverence for each of his inhabitants. He was a man alone and they became his family.
Some have said that this respect for the dead was borderline infatuation, and unhealthy.
They were right.
Instead of remarrying and starting a new family, Moorestone loyally worked the grounds and became devout in his rituals of mourning. He believed that if his family, both old and new, were to be at peace, they must see his dedication and commitment to honoring their memory, their stories. So obsessed with his philosophy of diligent mourning that he was able to convince the governor to award him custody of the children of the cemetery’s “residents”. In all, thirty-eight children were removed from the orphanages and sent to live out their childhoods at Moorestone Manor, on the cemetery grounds in which their parents were buried. Here they would study their lessons during the day and mourn at their parents’ gravesites at night. The Captain was a serious teacher and very strict with the children, but his actions were always motivated by a belief that he was bettering their lives with discipline, education, and the peace that only comes from diligent mourning of the dead.
"If I could show their [the dead] spirits that I have brought their family here to mourn, they may have peace in the hereafter."
“Our inhabitants left behind a broken legacy. I will put them back on the path.”
- Excerpt from the diary of Capt. John Flagg Moorstone
As “Lost Souls” expanded, the State of Illinois deepened its investment in Captain Moorestone’s endeavors, awarding him a complimentary work detail from the Joliet Correctional Facility to act as gravediggers and maintenance men on the property. Of these prisoners, a man named Luther "The Hammer" Haad was sent to serve out his remaining sentence on the cemetery grounds as a permanent watchman. At 6'10" and 395 pounds, he was fearsome to behold, like an ogre from an old fairy tale wearing overalls and a burlap sack to hide his face (so as not to frighten the children). While he may have looked the part, Luther was in reality a gentle giant that looked after the orphans, respected the Captain’s rituals and stood at the ready, loyal in service to his new boss. The prison warden had required that Luther be chained to a shed at the gates of the cemetery to act as guardian, but it was known to many that the Captain would often invite Luther to the house for a private meal.
Time passed, but time doesn't heal the kind of wound the Captain carried. No matter how much time he spent creating monuments to the unwanted or building his ever-expanding home, his mind was consumed by a fear that his daughters' souls were not at peace in their new home. Caught in a trap of his own mind’s making, he questioned whether or not he had done enough? Did they see the house he built, their bedroom, and the mausoleum that cradled their coffins? Over time this fear festered in his mind, warped his perception of reality and, ultimately, drove him to make extreme and dangerous choices. A man can accomplish great and terrible things when he is acting out of fear.
"I have called out into the void, begged them to come home. Yet, I hear nothing. If I cannot find their spirits with my physical efforts, I will take a more spiritual path"
- Excerpt from the diary of Capt. John Flagg Moorstone
With the state prison maintaining the grounds of the cemetery, the Captain had more time to dedicate to his thoughts. Days and nights were spent obsessing over the loss of his daughters; months spent lost in the fear that they were not at peace in this new land, and that he was to blame for bringing them here. For several years the Captain gathered all that was written on the subject of communicating with the dead and, with the mind of a scientist and the determination of a military captain, he became incredibly well-versed on the subject of the occult. He set a goal to reach out to the twins’ spirits to confirm that they were at peace and, if they were not, he needed to know what he could do to give it to them. After exhausting all literary options, both public and secret, on the subject, the Captain reached out to “experts” in the field of the Dark Arts. As was popular in those times, he would entertain fortune tellers, seers, and other mystics of the day at his home for dinner parties, hosting events for the elite while hiding his dark intentions from the public.
"I feel as if I am consorting with the enemy. Pretending to be one of them, so that I can speak their language. And now I can hear them in the night. I can hear all of them, screaming in my mind. It is my purpose to guide them here, I only want them to have peace."
- Excerpt from the diary of Capt. John Flagg Moorstone
On one fateful night in the year 1923, the Captain held a séance at his home. The attendees were all popular practitioners of the occult at the time, a collection of spiritually powerful people (or, at least, so they claimed). Where as the Captain believed most of them to be charlatans, he did have faith in the power and knowledge of a young fortune teller who had recently immigrated from eastern Europe. Buna was young, beautiful, and had come from a long line of true seers in the old world and, while she may have taken advantage of the occasional rube, her bloodline was tied to true mysticism, even magic. The Captain intended to use Buna’s power to open a line of communication with the other side, and with the knowledge he had gained over the years, he would break through the veil to find his daughters. He couldn’t have known that his plan, conceived in heartbroken love, would unleash an unimaginable and unending nightmare.
The table was set, Buna opened a line, the Captain reached into the Darkness… and the Darkness reached back.
Standing on the table between him and Buna, the Captain saw his sweet Abigail and Amelia looking down to him. For the briefest of moments, he swore he saw them smile. But the moment was fleeting, and its true magic was that it distracted the Captain’s heart long enough that his mind could not see what truly entered his home that day.
The Darkness.
The Pursuit of Science
The Captain was emboldened by the minor successes he had in contacting the spirits of his daughters through seers, fortune tellers, mesmerists, and seances, but the seance of 1923 changed him. He found reasons to believe that his daughters were just on the other side of the veil, but this wasn't enough to give him peace. He was now certain that his path was true, but the methods he deployed were lacking physical results. He longed for progress he could measure. This pursuit of the secrets of death and the "hereafter" took the Captain down several "science-adjacent" paths.
The Captain felt that this, perhaps, was destiny; that the secrets to death may be hidden among the secrets to life. And he had already spent most of his life studying the sciences that could heal and mend the ravaged and sick. He held so much knowledge of the living and the medicine that kept them as such. For the past several years he'd spent his time studying the occult, he decided that now he must turn toward his previous training as a doctor. This new direction of marrying his medical prowess with his newfound occult knowledge gave him a great deal of confidence; however, knowing that his expertise was somewhat limited to his specialty, the Captain reached out to fellow learned men of science to round out his skills and education. One of these men was Dr. Oremos, a fellow military surgeon that he had met in the war, and someone with a reputation for pushing past what society considered "acceptable" with his unorthodox experiments.
"If the body's "life" is a series of electrical transmissions, then a body can be given life again, with the correctly calibrated electrical stimulation,"
- The Captain's Diary
As the popularity of electric power was sweeping the nation and thrilling citizens with its seemingly limitless uses, the Captain began to imagine its incredible possibilities as applied to his experiments. So many were obsessed by Edison's "elephant experiment", where he demonstrated the great power of electricity by killing an elephant, that it appeared that nobody was looking at the inverse possibility. It seemed to the Captain that only Mary Shelley saw the life-giving potential of nature's raw power.
Retreating to a chamber in the basement, the Captain built his secret lab. He knew that if he were to experiment on bringing the flesh back to life, then he must create a place that was safe from the curiosity of the house staff, and somewhere his orphans would not wander into. The edge of scientific breakthrough is a dangerous place. Hidden from prying eyes, the lab would be fitted with a body chute that could quietly transport corpses from the cemetery to his operating table. With a neverending supply of bodies, the Captain and his compatriots dove directly into the work.
Countless attempts to reanimate a human were made, and there were many "successes". In fact, they were able to animate the flesh of several subjects. However, these successes only animated the muscles, leaving the mind empty of any thoughts. The experiments were both thrilling and disappointing to him. He had broken through the ceiling of scientific law and made great headway in reanimation. But, if the mind would not come back, then the soul certainly wouldn't. So close, he was. He could hear his daughters voices in seance, and he could animate their corpses, but he could not discover how to marry the two elements. Frustrated with his results, he tasked his assistants to release his subjects of their "life", before dozens of braindead zombies escaped the lab and caused ruin in the house above. Once again, he returned to his study, to search the books of dark magic for an answer.
The Captain may have left the basement in pursuit of a new line of thought, but his fellow doctors believed there was yet more to do. Contrary to the Captain's perceived failure, they felt quit successful. They reanimated a human! This was the century's greatest breakthrough and they had no intention of abandoning the experiment.
While several of the team stayed the path of electrical reanimation, Dr. Oremos was inspired to forge a way forward. He had noticed that a black substance was starting to infest the house above, and seemed to collect anywhere the Captain would work. This unique substance was found in parts of the home shortly after the Captain hosted his fateful seance. While the house staff attempted to clean it, they found that if they were not wearing protective garments, the substance could make them very sick. However, after the sickness wore off, they seemed to have incredible energy and increased strength. Although these traits appeared to be a windfall, they were quickly followed by a bout of hysteria that could slip into madness. The more the house staff attempted to destroy it, the dark vines of the substance would retreat and spring up stronger in another area. It moved as if it were colonizing areas of the house, and it had followed them into the basement. Unsure if it was a rare mold or spores flora, the doctor felt that it must be studied, and so should anyone who had become "touched" by it.
Still unsure of the substance's origin or molecular composition, Dr. Oremos became obsessed by its possibilities.
"Each subject that comes into contact with this mysterious material becomes stronger, faster, and somewhat impervious to injury or illness. It is still unfortunate that the long term side effects of contact seem to be madness and aggression. Clearly, not an ideal combination."
- Dr. Oremos.
Certain that he alone had stumbled onto a possible cure for all that ails and ages humankind, he pressed on.
After studying the effects of the dark substance on 6 house staff members (and a door-to-door salesman with terrible timing), the Doctor decided that it was time to develop a hypothesis and begin testing on a control group.
"Hypothesis: Dark substance infused into water that is injected directly into a subject's bloodstream will fortify the subject's physical abilities, without the previously noted side effects."
- Dr. Oremos.
If he was right, he may have the key to longer lifespans. The Doctor knew that he needed a secluded space away from all the activity of the house, and somewhere that nobody would accidentally come upon it, even the Captain. He believed this potential discovery was far more important than any of the Captain's goals. With a need for seclusion and unlimited water to use in the experiments, the Doctor created his makeshift lab inside the sewer, under Moorestone Manor.
Whereas the Captain only experimented on the dead, the Doctor needed live patients. His goal was to improve life, and his subjects should eventually be grateful for their inclusion. However, since he could not explain the secret program, he could not waste his time with consensual test subjects. In the dark of night, the Doctor and his technicians would slip an unsuspecting house staff member into the shadows and down to the sewer.
Evolution has a cost.
