Ghost STories are stories that can be unlocked by finding certain Artifacts throughout the game in certain locations. Doing so will unlock a unique story relating to that item in some way (e.g. collecting all seven boilers in the apartment will unlock A Watery Grave). There are eight in total. Each story has been transcripted from the game's subtitles; any spelling/grammatical errors are from the source content. Each story will unlock an achievement/trophy sharing the stories name once all related Artifacts are collected.
A Watery Grave[]
- Collect all seven boilers in the Regal Apartments to unlock this story.
"I still remember seeing the ad for the Regal Apartments in the paper. It's easy for people to look at it and see a dingy, run-down, shithole. But me? I saw a place with history and character. I saw a place full of artistic inspiration.
Before I knew it, I was the official tenant of apartment 3A. Looking back on it, I wish I had never even unpacked. My new apartment turned out to have more character than expected. The carpets were occasionally soggy, the pipes were rusty, and I could hear the tenant below me banging against the walls and screaming at the top of his lungs. Sure, there were other problems with the place, but they just added to its charm. They were things I could live with.
What I couldn't live with was showering in brown water, mysterious leaks molding the carpet, and obnoxious neighbors. I called the plumber, who arrived just as I was about to have a word with the people downstairs. When I showed him the wet spots on the carpet, he scratched his head and explained that nothing was leaking and that the reason for the wet spots was most likely me spilling something and not realizing it. Did this guy take me for an idiot? I never spilled a thing. He apologized and said that without a leak, there was nothing he could do, so he moved on to the shower. Thankfully, the water had no trouble turning brown. He thought it could be an issue with a rusty boiler and went to check it out.
I took the opportunity to address the tenants below. I knocked on the door but no one answered. In fact, I couldn't hear anything at all. I tried the door, expecting it to be locked, but it just swung open. I was shocked to find it completely empty. That's when wet footprints began to appear on the floor. They were headed right for me!
Just then I could hear the plumber scream from the boiler room downstairs. By the time I ran down there, he was long gone, but he had discovered the source of the brown water. Packed into the old rusty boiler was a bloated, decomposing corpse.
The police are still investigating the homicide and the landlord has promised to renovate the boiler room. However, despite his efforts, 3A is back on the market.
I doubt I'll ever feel clean again."[1]
The Bell Tower Banshee[]
- Collect all eleven saws in St. Benedict's Church to unlock this story.
"It was somewhere around noon on a Sunday, when I got a call from the old pastor. He was looking for someone to fix up the old church. It had been sitting up on that hill, abandoned, for over forty years after suffering major fire damage from a lightning strike in '98. So, of course, I agreed to help.
I knew something was wrong the second I stepped inside, as an inexplicable chill came over me. Anyway, I shook it off, and set to work. As I started tearing up the damaged floorboards, they were all bad. I uncovered an old rat's nest. It seemed just like all the others I've seen over my twenty-two years of construction... Until I realized the rats had made this one of human hair and bones. Suddenly, the floorboards of the second floor began creaking above me and I heard the sound of a young girl, weeping.
Well, ya know, I was worried that the damaged section of the ceiling would give way under her weight. So I yelled, 'Hey! Stop! Come down immediately!" Well, my voice must have startled her, because she went completely silent. So I got up and went to look for her.
When I entered the room upstairs though, I was surprised to see it completely empty. It only took a minute to make my way up there, and I would have heard her run off if she did. But that's when I heard the weeping again. This time from the Bell Tower.
So I climbed up the long and treacherous, curving stairs to the top, and I noticed what I thought was dried blood dotting the way. When I finally got up to the belfry, I was just paralyzed with terror. Lying before me, was the withered corpse of a young girl. Judging by her sunbleached clothes and withered bones, it seems like she'd been lying there for the better part of those forty years the place had been empty. The rats, I mean, they had picked her bones clean.
I, well, I took off running. I didn't stop until I got all the way to town. The ravages of time made it impossible for the authorities to get any identity on this little girl. it seems Salem will never know who killed her.
Some people still claim to hear her weeping there. As for myself, I never went back."[2]
The Stalwart Specter[]
- Collect all 8 rifles in the Salem Police Station to unlock this story.
"I can still remember my first day on the force. Salem PD was in this tiny building on the edge of town. It was old, crowded and completely inefficient to handle the day-to-day operations. Protecting Salem was getting harder and harder. Finally, the city decided to convert the old armory into our new headquarters. When we finally moved in, I couldn't believe how big and modern the place was. Not bad for one of the first buildings in Salem. Plus, it just felt right. It used to be the city's first line of defense in a wild frontier and now it had resumed its post once again, only this time in a modern world.
The first week was a little chaotic as we settled in. One officer reported that someone had removed the gun from his locker. It took him twenty minutes to track it down, and when he did, he found it leaning against the wall in one of the unoccupied offices. Also, the late night station operator reported a strange phone malfunction. Occasionally, when someone would call in to report a shooting, the recording would just stop. The call would cut out and the voice of the panicked caller would just loop over and over again until the phone was unplugged. Soon it was pretty clear that these strange occurrences weren't just honest mistakes or faulty phone lines.
One evening, the medical examiner came running down the hall in tears. She had noticed that her scalpels and other tools had gone missing. She went to get more from the cabinet, but stopped cold at what she saw in the reflection. A ghostly silhouette of a Civil War soldier was standing over one of the corpses. When she spun around, he was gone. She barely noticed how cold the room had gotten before running off. Of course the guys didn't believe her. Hell, I didn't even believe her, until I saw it with my own eyes.
I was working late and got up to get more coffee. As I rounded the corner, I saw it in the reflection of the trophy case. It was staring right at me. He lifted an old ghostly rifle and pulled the trigger. The trophy case fractured into a spider web of cracked glass and I took off running. The captain didn't believe me and docked my next paycheck to replace the glass. I didn't care if people thought I was crazy. I know what I saw. People sometimes ask me if anyone else has seen it since or if the specter still roams the halls. I always tell them the same thing. I don't know. I transferred to Boston."[3]
The Heirloom[]
- Collect all 8 old heirlooms in Ashland Hills Cemetery to unlock this story.
"I've always been a kleptomaniac. It's not that I was lazy or anything, I was just...bored. Stolen good were always more interesting to me. I could just look at whatever it was and relive the exciting memory of the theft itself. Sometimes I was worried that I'd get caught. Other times I was riding on an adrenaline rush. But it wasn't until the last thing I ever stole, that I truly felt afraid. I remember it like it was yesterday, despite the years I've spent trying to forget it.
My friends and I snuck into the graveyard to drink a few beers, like we normally did on a boring weeknight. We headed for our usual spot--an old, run down mausoleum. Only this time, it was locked. It seemed someone had finally taken an interest in the dead guy it belonged to and didn't appreciate us partying there. So, we split up and started looking for a new place. Finally, I found another mausoleum. One of its walls had begun to crumble away, but I squeezed through. The inside looked the same as all the others, except for one thing.
Lying there, on top of the central tomb, was a dusty frame that contained a wreath made of elaborately braided rope. Knowing that antiques were valuable, I took it. I figured I'd wait a week before selling it in case anyone reported it stolen. So, when I got home I hid it at the top of my closet and went to sleep. That night, I had horrible nightmares of a dead-faced hag with rotting flesh. No matter how many times I woke up, she always found her way back into my dreams. Over the next few days, the nightmares got worse. I'd wake up, only to find clumps of my hair missing and my scalp bleeding. I chalked it up to stress and feelings of guilt about stealing from the graveyard, so the next day I went to a pawn shop to sell the wreath and be done with it.
I could feel a shiver run down my spine when the pawn broker informed me that the wreath wasn't made from rope at all. It was actually made from the human hair of a deceased loved one, as was customary in the late 1800's. I wanted the nightmares to stop, so I sold it to him. Unfortunately, it didn't work that way. Now I spend my time trying to track it down. Hoping I can find it, so I can actually get some sleep."[4]
Man in the Box[]
- Collect all 10 straitjackets in Lux Aeterna Psychiatric Hospital to unlock this story.
"I've had a long career working as a state inspector for the Department of Mental Health. During that time, I've been to a lot of institutions and I have seen a lot of horrible things. But nothing even comes close to the evil events that I witnessed at Fairhaven Sanitarium, the place they now call Lux Aeterna. I first arrived in 1926, to investigate claims of overcrowding and neglect. However, Fairhaven's reputation was tainted long before that.
In 1911, Fairhaven opened its doors for the first time. A notoriously violent criminal by the name of Jack Yates was the hospital's first patient. He was to be the shining example of the hospital's ability to cure the mentally deranged. However, when the superintendent's family was visiting one day, Yates broke free from his restraints and, he uh, killed the man's wife. Since then, no one knew what happened to Yates or the superintendent. Well, that is, until now.
Superintendent Wallace Halsted greeted me at the door. He seemed as empty and unkempt as the patients he lorded over. As I conducted my evaluation, I couldn't help but notice how nervous he got when I passed by a small broom closet. Naturally, I felt it necessary to find out why. When I opened the door, I was hit by the overpowering smell of human excrement. As the light flickered on overhead, I was horrified at what I saw. A withering man lay shackled to the floor in a pile of his own filth. Years of a sunless existence had turned his skin, hair, and eyes milky white. He had been chained their for so long, that his skin had grown over the shackles. It took me a moment to realize that the husk of a man was Jack Yates.
The police arrived and Dr. Halsted was carted off. Doctors moved Yates from the small room for the first time in 15 years. The floor beneath him was permanently stained with the shape of his silhouette. They tried to remove the shackles from under his skin, but the shock of it all was too much for him. He died the next day. I watched as they walled up his tiny prison, trying to pretend that it never happened. I honestly hope he's in a better place, although the staff still claims to hear his agonized wails coming from inside the walls."[5]
Terror on the Tracks[]
- Collect all 15 rocks in Salem History Museum to unlock this story.
"My husband and I stepped off the platform and onto the giant hissing locomotive. I remember looking back at our small town and thinking of all the happy memories we made there, but I was excited to start our new life in Salem. I must have dozed off, because I was startled awake by the sound of screeching metal. As the train came to a halt, all I could hear was the torrential rain pelting against the roof. I looked out the window, but there was only darkness. Then came the brightest flash of lightning I'd ever seen.
When my husband left to inquire about the delay, a woman at the back of the train started screaming. We rushed over to her and asked her what was wrong, but all she could manage to say through her sobs was something about seeing the spirits of the dead wandering in the rain. Stranger still were the passengers that were suddenly stricken with painful memories of their past. It was at this point that I became truly terrified, so I set out to find Joe.
When I reached the cab and still hadn't found him, I was worried. I looked out the front window and saw the train's conductor laboring to move a downed tree from the tracks, and there was Joe, walking up to help. However, instead of grabbing hold of the tree, Joe bent down, picked up a rock, and crushed the conductor's skull with it. When I left the train and ran up to him, I could see that this wasn't the Joe I once knew. Something had taken hold of him...something angry. Then, he saw something that terrified him. He dropped the rock and ran off into the woods.
However, right before he disappeared into the trees, during a bright flash of lightning, I thought I saw something chasing him...hunting him. I can only describe it as a ghostly spectre, cloaked in black. But more likely than not it was just a shadow. The authorities spent days combing the woods for Joe, but he never turned up. I tried to go back home, but the memories were too painful. Some nights I lie in bed, tortured by the thoughts of what our life could have been if we had never stepped onto that train."[6]
Ashes to Ashes[]
- Collect all 11 books and candles in Judgment House to unlock this story.
"Salem wasn't the most exciting place for a couple of rambunctious thirteen year olds. Playing with my friends after school usually required a healthy dose of imagination to spice up the underwhelmingly bleak landscape. To us, Salem's history was just a bunch of creepy stories and tourist attractions. Witches didn't exist, we all knew that. That's why Robbie Barnes was the laughingstock of the entire school. He actually believed that they were real. Looking back, I wish we hadn't teased him so much. Maybe then he'd still be alive. I forget which one of my friends actually came up with the plan to prank Robbie, but it didn't take him long to get us all on board.
My job was to find an example of an old spell. It took me all of fifteen minutes. The library had practically every book ever written on the subject. The next step involved the Judgment House. It sat up on the hill, abandoned. Everyone said it was haunted. What made it even creepier were the rumors that Judge Hathorne burned the remains of accused witches in the house's various fireplaces. That's where Robbie comes in.
We dared him to sneak into the Judgment House in the middle of the night and collect a handful of ashes from each of the fireplaces. Then he'd have to light some candles, sprinkle the ashes, and read the spell. We told him that if done correctly, the spell would supposedly blow out all the candles. If he agreed to do all this, and the candles so much as flickered, we would promise to stop making fun of him. We could see that he was scared, but to his credit he agreed to go through with it. What we didn't tell him was that we had set up a hidden camera to catch all the hilarity on tape.
The next day, Robbie didn't come in to school. We assumed he had chickened out and was too embarrassed to face the music. Then I heard that Robbie went missing. I felt the chill run down my spine as I retrieved the tape from our hidden camera. I pressed play and fast forwarded until I saw Robbie. He was doing just as we had instructed him to. But then, a shadowy figure crossed in front of the camera. Robbie turned in horror just as the camera cut to static. When the image finally returned, Robbie was gone and the only sign that anything had happened at all, was the now smoldering fireplace over in the corner."[7]
Eternal Flame[]
- Collect all 16 gas cans around Salem to unlock this story.
"We've all seen them by the side of the road, those unkept, smudged, hopeless people holding cardboard signs. Sometimes they have props: a baby stroller, a pet, a gasoline can, something to lend credence to the thin fiction that they need money for something other than booze. It was a man with a NEED GAS sign with the red gas can on the ground that I saw when I drove into Salem six unlucky years ago today.
I tried to ignore him, not making eye contact, but I was stuck at a red light, and pretending he wasn't there was getting really awkward. So I reached into my pocket and pulled out two dollars, rolling down my window just a crack. Here you go buddy', I pushed the money through the opening in the window. That was when, for the first time, I really looked at his face. Or what was left of his face.
It was a single eyeball looking back at me, bulging out of a charred skull. I was absolutely frozen in terror until the blackened shape of uncovered finger bones reached up to take the money. That was when I let it fall to the ground and slammed on the accelerator, I didn't even care that the light was red. In the time since then, I've picked up pieces of the legend. A shell-shocked war veteran, unemployable and alcoholic, became a familiar sight in Salem, begging by the roadside.
The citizens stopped giving him money, thinking he would just move on to a bigger city. He responded by creating one of the most traumatic spectacles in town history, setting himself alight in the middle of town during evening rush hour. Ever since that roadside encounter, I've been seeing little wisps of flame out of the corner of my eye, brief flashes that are gone as soon as I turn my head, sending nauseated chills through my whole body. Is this tormented spirit following me now? Whether he intends it as a blessing or a curse, I just want to be as far as possible from this horrifying spectre."[8]