Part 1

Russ’ second photo was even more-disturbing than the first. He showed me another black and white shot - this one of the same shockingly-tall, nude woman, looking hollow, this time holding a baby.

This photo was more gutting than scary. You could sense something was wrong with the way the woman was holding the baby - her eyes scared, her grip tight - like she knew someone was going to take the baby away. 

“I know who the baby is,” Russ muttered as I looked at the photo. “Her name is Cassie. She lives in a trailer in the woods.”

Russ followed that up by explaining he could take me to her trailer. Cassie would probably want to see that photo and it could help figure out what was going on at my house so someday I could live there and not be haunted. 

The county built a park on the ground of the mental hospital where my home’s former owner worked. It seemed morbid, but it certainly was beautiful. Endless acres in the foothills of the mountains - peaceful and serene - the perfect place to go when you lost your mind to be forgotten by society. 

Russ explained to me Cassie was a 6’6 basketball star at the local high school in the 80s, leading the plucky little school to the state title in each year she was there. She was wanted by every college in the country, but she wasn’t interested in leaving the town. 

Cassie had Marfan’s Syndrome and even with my very-limited knowledge of the disease, I could tell the mother in the photo had it as well. Russ explained it was one of the reasons Cassie didn’t want to play basketball in college, she didn’t like being a spectacle. 

Cassie went on disability and got a trailer and parked it deep in the woods of the park where the mental hospital was and the county kind of just looked the other way for decades. She walked into town to get her mail and supplies and that's the only time anyone saw her tall and slender frame slinking through the town. 

I knocked on the door of Cassie’s trailer about a hundred times and never got an answer until I started to walk away. I heard the door open behind me and a raspy voice whispered out. 

Cassie first came off ultra dismissive of me even being there. Then I told her I had a photo of her mom and she invited me right in. 

I showed Cassie both of the photos. She looked at them for five full minutes before responding in any kind of way. 

I explained I thought her mom’s spirit might be haunting my house. She shot back that someone had haunted her entire life. Watching her. Taking photos of her. 

No photos. No photos. No photos. She just kept repeating. 

Looking at Cassie was heartbreaking. I could tell she was a gentle soul, but tortured her entire life with a giant piece missing from her because of her mom. 

And I had to agree I got the feeling someone was watching us the entire time I was in Cassie’s trailer. I kept trying to peer out of her curtained windows, thinking I heard someone walking out there. 

Me explaining my haunting seemed to open up Cassie. She loosened and sat cross-legged on her bed in the cramped little trailer which reeked of ammonia.

“They came once a year for years, until I moved out here,” Cassie explained. “They took pictures of me. I think they still try - through the windows. That’s why I cover them.”

Cassie held up. She fought back against something that was running through her mind. Something I assumed was horrible. 

“I was adopted. Weird older couple. I was never told anything about my real parents. Once a year, men came from the hospital,,” Cassie cut off her story in a way that suggested to me there was a lot more to it she couldn’t proceed with. 

I didn’t push it. 

“That’s why I have to live in a place with only one room. I know if people are here or not. I lived in places with more than one room and they show up and take pictures. I’ll see the flashes in the night,” Cassie went on, fidgeting in her seat. 

I started to press Cassie on more details. What did she know about her mom? What did she know about the people who took the photos of her? 

She stopped volunteering information. Then she asked me to leave. 

I decided to go back to my house and try and tough it out. I now viewed what was going on as more of a mystery than a haunting. That’s not to say I wasn’t terrified every second I was there. 

Somehow though, I was able to fall asleep. 

-

I woke up to a light outside my bedroom window - trickling in through the cracks in the blinds. It was enough to make me stir and then get wide awake when I could tell it was a flashlight beam parting the blinds. 

I whipped the blinds open and saw nothing outside my window. 

I was fully rattled, and that was before I heard movement down in the basement again. 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I knew I shouldn’t have come back to that house. 

I knew Cassie’s mom was down in the basement, stumbling around, torturing me. I was terrified of creeping down into the space and seeing her again. 

But I also had an idea. 

I crept down to the basement quietly and made it to the old dark room. I peered in through the hole which was still there. I got my phone out and got my camera ready - stuck it in the hole in the wall and looked around it. 

Through the screen of my phone I saw what I was recording - the tall, nude, scary woman stumbling around the space again. She wasn’t alone. Standing in the corner were two older men, dressed professionally, holding cameras and snapping photos of her. 

The men looked up at me, angry, a few seconds into me recording video, their eyes cold and angry. 

-

I went to Cassie’s camper. I showed her the five seconds of video I had of the thin woman in my basement, with the men taking pictures, and she started to share so much more with me. 

Cassie knew much more about her mother and the ghost in my basement than she had led on. Someone who worked at the mental hospital tracked her down one day when she was a teenager and told her everything. 

The psychologist who lived in my house had a side business taking nude photos of the women at the mental hospital back in the day. There was a black market he would sell them on and it’s part of why he was able to afford building the then-luxurious house I now lived in. 

Her mom suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome. She was blind from it and had mild mental conditions, but was otherwise fine. Regardless, she was lobotomized at the hospital, leaving her more or less a blind vegetable after she was caught kissing another woman in the facility. 

Yet, there was still something stunning about her mom.She was beautiful and haunting. They even had a pet name for her on the market - her name was Elizabeth and she became “Thin Lizzy.” Cassie spat as she said the name out loud. Rage building in her soul. 

Cassie had to stop more than a few times as she struggled to get this all out. 

Especially when she explained she was the result of something so heinous she wouldn’t actually talk about it, other than saying the people at the hospital arranged something with her mom and that Cassie was the result. She also explained that her mom knew she had a daughter, though she wasn’t even coherent enough to give her a name. 

Cassie theorized me being a new person being in the house had probably stirred up her mom’s spirit. The dead psychiatrist’s family had the house for years after he died, but no one had ever moved in. 

“Maybe they ran into your mom? That’s why they wouldn’t move in,” I theorized. 

Cassie agreed it was a good theory, but she also thought the two of us trading shots was stirring up the other spirits - the ones that would terrorize her mom, and her. She could bear it herself, but she didn’t want her mother’s spirit tortured down in that sealed-up dark room, with the spirits of her torturers taking pictures of her in the afterlife. 

I had an idea…

Cassie would stay at my house that night. So would I. We would see if we could intentionally draw out the spirits this time. 

Cassie and I had a nice dinner. Talked about things in life outside what we were doing as much as we could as the sun went down. I was genuinely interested in her basketball career and she was happy to share. She hadn’t had a real conversation with people in decades. 

I could finally see through her veneer of fear and trauma and see who Cassie really was. She may have been in her 50s at this point, but she still looked and felt like a little girl. She was never able to mature. 

The dinner we had seemed to soothe her for just a little bit, momentarily, and I was happy to provide that. 

Then we had to go to bed. 

I knew I wasn’t going to go to sleep, but I thought each of us should go to bed to not tip off anything to the spirits in the basement about our plan, as if we were going to trick the supernatural or something. 

I woke up to the sound of crying coming from the basement. 

I followed the cries down to the basement and found Cassie outside of the room where her mom had been appearing. Cassie was laid out on the floor, crying uncontrollably and writhing on the dirty ground. 

I approached slowly. Once I was a few feet away from Cassie a bright flash splashed across the room, she screamed in pain and was dragged across the floor by an invisible force. 

The flash went off for a second and, for the briefest of moments, I saw what looked like those two men from before, standing over Cassie, taking pictures of her on the floor. 

I stepped up to Cassie and that flash came right at me again - stunning and blinding me. 

I kept my balance enough to stumble over to the sealed room, falling into it and having my face smash right into the hole where I could see in. 

Thin Lizzy’s face instantly greeted mine as soon as I opened my eyes in that hole. Her cold gray pupil was just inches from mine. I could smell a thick stench of death coming out of the space. 

A crazy idea flashed through my head. I looked at the boards that sealed Thin Lizzy in. I looked at her hands trying to reach out of the space at me. I locked onto her fingernails, which were untrimmed and basically blades perched on the end of impossibly-long fingers. 

I started to rip through the wall in front of me, getting through it as fast as I could with the soundtrack of Cassie fighting behind me. I felt Lizzy ripping on the other side.

I watched Lizzy tear through the rest of the wall and go right to where Cassie was fighting with the men. It was clear Lizzy was wrestling with the two older men I had seen in the dark room before. 

The men looked exceptionally startled by Lizzy being freed and in their faces. In a flash, Lizzy had a hold of both of them with her claw hands. 

I was ready to join the fray, but quickly thought I wasn’t needed. With Lizzy’s help, Cassie was able to get the jump on the men. The two women - one of them in flesh and the other in spirit - pushed the two men up against into the back of the hallway. 

Cassie and Lizzy showed no relent. They kept pushing at the men. They got them pinned up against the wall and there was nothing left they could do. 

I started to feel like a proud parent when I watched Cassie and Lizzy lock eyes for a moment with the two men beaten back. 

Lizzy reached forward and slapped the cameras out of their hands. Then Cassie and Lizzy wasted no time going after the men. 

Lizzy slashed at one of them with her nails, right across his neck. Cassie started choking out the other. 

Both women took out the men right before my eyes, and rather quickly, eviscerating them into nothing. There was no blood. No screaming, just watching the men disappear before my eyes. 

I was alone with Cassie and Lizzy in my basement and things suddenly felt peaceful. 

The two of them uncoiled their rage and caught their breath in the hallway. 

I started to back away, wanting to give them their own moment. 

The last thing I saw was the two tall women embracing. 

-

I haven’t seen Lizzy since that night. 

But I’ve seen Cassie. A lot. 

I brought Cassie back to her trailer and we had a sad goodbye. She had a feeling she would never see her mom again after she left my house that night, though she also said she thought that was for the best. 

-

My house suddenly felt fine. I slept like a rock that first night. 

Then for weeks after that. 

Until I was woken by my doorbell ringing in the middle of the night. 

I grabbed a bat and slid up to the door, trying to see out, see who was ringing me so later. 

My grip loosened when I saw Cassie outside. 

I let her in.

She explained she now couldn’t sleep at her place. All alone out in the dark and cold woods…was she crazy? 

Yet, she also didn’t know anywhere else to go. I was the only friend she ever really had. 

Could she stay the night in my guest room? 

Yes, she could. She could stay forever if she wanted to.