The Witching Hour: a Horror Short Story

The Marydel State Penitentiary was shut down in 1982 and by then it had already swallowed the lives of over one thousand people. Some went by way of the noose; others went by more personal means.Since its closure, and aided by the rise of the internet, the penitentiary and its list of popular prisoners become the center of many conspiracies. It all started four years ago, when a retired security guard took to the web to share stories from working at the prison. An old man’s second-rate creepypasta soon turned an ordinary prison into a proposed portal to the afterlife.Over the following months and years, dozens of stories emerged with people claiming they saw someone moving in the infirmary or heard voices coming from the long-abandoned cell block. However, whether by coincidence or copycatting, the sightings had one thing in common: they all occurred at three in the morning; known as the witching hour.