History:

Years before the mansion was haunted, it was a home.

Hans and Louisa Freimark were wealthy German immigrants, who'd traveled eagerly to the eastern shore of America to live in the sumptuous elegance they'd heard existed across the Atlantic. In 1901, they watched the construction of their glorious three-story Victorian estate and marveled how it seemed to spring from the rich soil overnight. It had fifteen rooms and held the promise of a dozen children they would have one day.

Alas, there would be no children. Against Hans' warnings, Louisa impatiently ascended the steep spiral staircase during construction, lost her footing, and tumbled to her death. Hans, anguished and without reason to live, cursed the house and plunged a broken shard of glass through his heart. The two lay dead for three days before workers arrived and found the bodies decayed and violated by rats.

Freimark Manor stood empty and incomplete for years. The townspeople believed that bad fortune and demons plagued the manse, and some swore they could hear the mourning cries of the mansion's dead owners inside. Rumor had it that the ghosts were fitful and at unrest due to their separation in the afterlife, and that the unfinished mansion was their only home. No one ever went near it.

Then, in 1951, fifty years later and long after most people had forgotten the tragedy, a prominent psychiatrist moved to town and purchased Freimark Manor. With thousands of dollars, Chester Morton was able to breathe new life into its dilapidated walls to restore Freimark to its once-promised glory.

Chester Morton lived as simply as a wealthy doctor could. The 1950s were simpler times, so Dr. Morton was unhurried, uncomplicated, and very kind to the patients he treated. Chester and his sweet wife, Rosemary, turned the second floor of their lavish new three-story mansion into a psychiatric ward, where Chester could treat patients around the clock. For the Mortons, having Chester's psychiatry practice inside their home was ideal; with a small staff of nurses and orderlies, Dr. Morton could ensure that his patients received the best possible care any time of day or night, and he could still see his beloved Rosemary any time. Nothing ever went wrong.

Then one day, tranquility vanished. Rosemary Morton gave birth at home to a baby boy, and nothing was right ever again. While they loved Albert desperately, Chester and Rosemary noticed that he seemed different he never smiled and he never blinked. As he grew older, Albert showed odd proclivities toward clowns and experiments involving live rats, and he filled the family's extensive library with volumes of books on torture and psychoses. He spent his free time on the psychiatric floor staring at the patients. He sometimes painted their faces.