I bought my apartment off the plan. I thought there may be catches – teething problems and cheep materials. I didn’t anticipate night knockers.
Warning: contains horror themes
Spoilers Ahead!
Author’s Note:
My apologies for the lateness of this episode! Unfortunately, I’ve reached the upload limit for this period with my podcast host, and it will only renew today. Until it does, I don’t have enough minutes in my limit left to post the episode. It will be up by Friday, however!
Spoiler warning starts here!
If you’ve looked through some of my other stories, you’ll find a curious preoccupation of mine this year was old asylums. Callan Park gets a couple mentions, but this story was more inspired by another asylum.
Stumbling upon defunct asylums, or the land they used to occupy, is something that’s happened a couple times in my life. Once with Callan Park, and, many years before that, with a place called Woodlands.
Back when I lived in Vancouver, I’d go for jogs around this lovely river-side area filled with new apartment buildings, some, if I remember correctly, still being built. Though filled with large apartment blocks, in and around it was a lot of nice green space – the whole place looking like a lot of care had been put in to making it a nice high-density residential area.
I only learned later that this area had been the site of a demolished asylum: The Woodlands School, or, before then, going by the name of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum. Infamous for it’s terrible history of abuse, this place was a real life horror story, and there are survivors of it still impacted today.
It stuck with me, that idea of a large modern high density development being built on land with such a horrendous history. I suppose I shouldn’t feel this way, seeing as it’s prime real estate and people need a place to live, but I can’t help but be unnerved by the idea.
Though inspired by the land that used to house Woodlands, the horrors in my story do not reflect the real-life experiences of those people, and children, who were kept in that facility. That is their own story to tell.
Attributions:
Podcast intro and outro music:
The Dark Tile , by Rafael Krux. Full licence purchased.
Episode soundtrack:
Otherworld Evil by Brian Holtz Music
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7546-otherworld-evil
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Windswept Plains by Brian Holtz Music
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8039-windswept-plains
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Lost Place Atmospheres 002 by Sascha Ende®
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7665-lost-place-atmospheres-002
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The Lantern Library 