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as
demonic and cursed.
    “Over the years, many have considered the idea of a curse
irrational, and set off to prove it wrong. There were more incidents of people
becoming unresponsive after sleeping in the house. The town considered condemning
and leveling the place several times, but the family was never amenable to that
idea, and no local contractor was willing to set foot on the property to take
the work. So it sat.”
    The professor stopped and took a long drink from his root
beer can. “The most recent rumors are certainly urban myth, built upon the
reputation of the place. Hardly worth mentioning.”
    “I’d like to hear them,” Deem said.
    “Well, as I say, you must classify what I’m about to tell you
as the typical kind of irrational story that grows from an historical place not
well documented, such as the Blackham mansion. In more recent times, it’s said
that spending a night in the house will cause you to wake up somewhere else,
miles away. As though you’re picked up and moved while you sleep!” He scoffed,
taking another sip. “People say all kinds of crazy things you have to discount.
I’ll never forget one old woman I talked to. She said that when they were kids,
they dared each other to go in and try to get away from ‘the Creepsis.’ I asked
her what the Creepsis was, and she said it was what they called the thing that
walked around in the house.” He chuckled. “I found the name so unusual; it
really made an impression on me. I tried looking into the etymology of it, but
came up dry. I’ve remembered it all these years. Creepsis!” He chuckled again.
To Winn it seemed like feigned amusement.
    “Wow,” Deem said, turning to look at Winn. He could tell she
was a bit overwhelmed by the information, unsure what to make of it or how to
respond.
    “Was there ever any attempt to explain what happened to Henry?”
Winn asked. “Or explain what happened to his friends?”
    “There was one point of coincidence,” the professor replied,
“that had a lot of people in Paragonah speculating a hundred years ago. The
disappearances seemed to occur around the same time an executed serial killer
was buried at the cemetery. Some people felt the serial killer’s conviction was
erroneous and that they’d hung the wrong man, citing the subsequent disappearances
at the Blackham mansion as evidence of the man’s innocence. The odd thing about
that theory was that the only people disappearing were the ones in Henry’s
house, the ones participating in the séance. That led others to believe that
the serial killer’s ghost was continuing the work it had conducted in life,
preying on the souls of the people in the séance. Members of the church in the
town saw it as a just result of the participants having opened themselves to
communication with the other side. It became a popular sacrament meeting
subject, and helped turn the tide in the area against Spiritualism of any kind.
Particularly in Paragonah.”
    “Do you know who the serial killer was?” Deem asked.
    “A man by the name of Willard Bingham. He was accused of a
string of murders from St. George to Tremonton over three years. There was
plenty about him in the local records. By all accounts his murders were violent
and gruesome. There was a lot of brutality in the west at that time, and people
were a lot more accustomed to lawlessness. Even by those standards, Bingham was
a monster. Of course, his reputation made it easy to hang more on him after
he’d been put in the ground.”
    “Do you think that’s true?” Deem asked. “The serial killer
was responsible for the disappearances at Blackham mansion?”
    “Of course not!” the professor replied. “Pure superstition! At
that point the killer was incapable of doing anything other than rotting. Why,
do you think he rose from the grave and spirited those people away?”
    “Maybe,” Winn replied. “I’ve seen the dead do some pretty despicable
things.”
    Winn watched as the professor