Tales from Innsmouth

Innsmouth University is a place with a sinister past and a terrifying present. 

Two brilliant students, involved in illicit and unethical practices, believe they have found a cure for fear. The unwitting subjects of their experiments are subjected to a range of horrors as the students try to discover if it is possible for any individual to be truly fearless. 

“Ellie…?” 

Ellie told herself she had no worries about going into the sub-basement. Yes, there were lots of ghost stories, usually passed around by the weaker students and the less academic members of staff, but she knew better than to believe such nonsense. She had to admit, some of those stories would be considered disconcerting if there was any credibility to support them but she had a PhD in English Literature and believed herself above such juvenile campfire stories. 

“Ellie…?” 

Her favourite ghost story of those that supposedly occurred on the campus, was the one that had echoes of the "Bloody Mary" urban legend. According to this tale, and she’d heard it from probably half a dozen undergrads, students were dared to go alone, at midnight, to the corridor approaching Legrasse. Traditionally they were supposed to take a candle and stand facing the doorway to Legrasse Building. Ellie had the idea that this legend came from before the days of motion detectors and automatic lighting because, the students in the story were supposed to stand alone at the entrance to Legrasse and call the name of John Legrasse three times with their candle burning in front of them. After saying his name for the third time, the student was meant to blow the candle out and the spirit of John Legrasse would appear. 

Ellie had asked each of the students who recounted this story, “So what happens then?” 

Two had said they had no idea. One had honestly admitted that they doubted anything ever happened. But the others had been a little more graphic. A pair of girls who’d recounted the story in breathy whispers said that Legrasse had appeared. They hadn’t been able to see him, because the lights were out and they’d just extinguished the candle. But the air in the corridor had dropped to hypothermia temperatures and their flesh had prickled with the goose bumps that came from being in the presence of a ghostly spirit. Something as cold as Death’s icy finger had scraped against the backs of their necks. 

One of the girls had screamed and pushed through the emergency exit and fled to the sanctuary of the car park. The other had rushed out behind her. The final girl’s story had been even more disquieting. 

She had done the same as her friends, walking down the dark corridor with a candle in her hands, and then she’d gone through the ritual of saying Legrasse’s name three times. However, she didn’t have a chance to blow out the candle before some unseen draught snatched the flame from the wick and plunged her into darkness. 

The temperature plummeted.
An icy finger touched the nape of her neck and crept downwards.
And it seemed clear that other things had happened.
“What happened next?” Ellie had asked.
But the student refused to say. She had remained silent on the subject and continued to remain silent. A fortnight later, she decided to leave her programme of study and had not been heard from since.
“Ellie…?”

Shivering at the memory, telling herself that it was pretty stupid to be thinking about creepy ghost stories as she wandered along supposedly haunted corridors, and even more stupid to be unnerved by them when she knew ghosts did not exist, Ellie folded her arms across her breasts and began to walk faster.