Thistlewood Asylum was a favorite place for gutsy people to visit on Halloween. Of course, teenagers ventured onto its grounds—or even inside—throughout the year as dares or solutions to their boredom. But on Halloween, Thistlewood became alive again. Suddenly, the windows that had been dark for eighty years were alight with flashlights. The halls once again were a chorus of footsteps. The rooms actually had guests after so long, because the town of Grantsmith actually opened up Thistlewood for tours and haunted overnight stays on Halloween—for a cost, of course.

Dani and I had done the Thistlewood sleepover a few times, and we’d taken the tour too many times to count. We were pretty sure we knew more about Thistlewood than the average Grantsmith citizen, and even though it was a fun and thrilling experience every time we did it, this year we were looking for something a little scarier.

“Hey,” Dani said suddenly from the computer. My room was bathed in darkness, only lit by the blue glow of the laptop screen. “Did you know that the warden’s house is off-limits?”

I knew at once what she was referring to. The warden’s house sat on Thistlewood’s property, mostly boarded up and in such disrepair that I had often wondered when Grantsmith would have it dozed. “Well, yeah, I figured as much, or else that would be part of the tour, wouldn’t it?” I replied absently.

She turned to look at me, her face eerily shadowed by the dim light. “I say, instead of doing Thistlewood again this year, we visit the warden.”

So on Halloween night, we found ourselves in front of the warden’s house. After an hour or so of research, we had learned plenty about the warden. He had been a cold man, and on more than one occasion, he had decided to perform one-on-one therapy with an inmate of Thistlewood at his home. The inmates almost never returned to their rooms. We had realized that the warden’s house was not just off-limits for safety reasons, but also because it was considered to be more haunted than Thistlewood. The warden had died in that house, along with how many unknown others, and various people throughout the years (government officials, construction workers, etc.) had sworn it was a haven of the devil’s demons.