The Cursed Rosary of Hollow Hill

Florence Frightengale

You’ve come back. Or perhaps this is your first visit to Hollow Hill. Either way, the doors open for you. They always do.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

And here I thought I’d finally locked them. But no, here you are again, defying logic, as usual. Shall we begin?

Florence Frightengale

Ah, Dr. Blackwood, so pragmatic. But you must admit, there’s a certain charm to a place that refuses to stay silent.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

If by charm, you mean an unrelenting penchant for... the inexplicable. Then yes—charming. Or haunting. Same difference.

Florence Frightengale

And yet, you keep returning, Doctor. Just like our listeners, drawn to the stories that linger here, stitched into the walls and whispered through the corridors.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Let’s not keep them waiting then. Shall we pull the first thread?

Florence Frightengale

Indeed. Tonight’s tale takes us back to 1855... the Crimean War. Blood-soaked mud, unending prayer, and a sister whose silence carried a weight that no mortal could dismiss. Welcome to Hollow Hill.

Florence Frightengale

Picture this: the bleak expanse of the Scutari Barracks Hospital. It is 1855. The air hangs heavy with damp rot, and even as cannon fire trembles faintly on the horizon, silence grips the wounded souls within. Such was the world we enter tonight.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Cut through by the cries of the wounded and the clatter of bedpans, no doubt. A charming picture, Florence.

Florence Frightengale

Charming, indeed, if despair could ever charm. It was amidst that carnage that she arrived—Sister Morvena. Tall, veiled, and cloaked in something heavier than shadow. She carried no medical supplies, no worldly baggage. Only a single item—a rosary of black wood, its beads carved hollow and filled with ashes.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Practical. Nothing comforts the dying like a handful of plague remnants dangling from a string. Surely that made her everyone’s favorite nun.

Florence Frightengale

Not quite, Doctor. Her presence unsettled us all. Footsteps that didn’t echo, a silence so profound it seemed to absorb sound itself. But it was her prayers that told the true tale. Each night, she knelt by the dying, pressing the rosary to their lips.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

And then, as if on cue, they’d take the express route to eternal rest. Or... did I get ahead of the story?

Florence Frightengale

You didn’t. She prayed, murmured softly in Latin—Ave Maria—and the soldier’s breath would still. We couldn’t say if it brought them peace or... something far colder. But the next day, those lips—lips that should've been silent—would whisper, moving as though pulled by invisible strings.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Whispering prayers they’d never known. I doubt Saint Augustine himself could explain that. Rather chilling, I must say.

Florence Frightengale

Indeed. Not surprisingly, the rumors began. Surgeons claimed they saw her bleed from her eyes while she prayed. One swore he blinked, and when his eyes opened, she was gone. Yet, despite her absence, the dread she carried lingered—

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Let me guess. Along with the faint scent of brimstone and despair?

Florence Frightengale

You jest, but even the most skeptical among us couldn't deny what we felt. The final straw came on the morning she disappeared. All that remained was her rosary—neatly folded on the pillow of a young nurse named Edith Rowe.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Edith. Ah, poor Edith. I suspect this is where the story takes an even darker turn. That wasn’t any ordinary gift, now, was it?

Florence Frightengale

Not in the slightest. But what it whispered to her, and the changes it brought to our hospital after that... Well, Doctor, let’s just say you might want to brace yourself.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

So, Edith finds this cursed relic waiting for her—neatly folded, as if left by careful, unnatural hands. I suppose it wasn’t long before the ward noticed... something far more sinister stirring around her, was it?

Florence Frightengale

You could say that. Edith was... transformed. What began as whispered insights—precise and prophetic—soon spiraled into something unnatural. She’d walk past a patient and murmur, "He’ll die at 2:17," and she’d be right. Every time.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Ah, the perfect nurse or the hospital’s darkest omen? Hard to tell, really.

Florence Frightengale

Harder still when her insights deepened. She claimed the rosary whispered secrets. Yet, the changes weren’t confined to mere knowledge. One day, she lost her reflection entirely. Her shadow no longer followed her movements. And then... she spoke languages none of us could recognize.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Wait, hold on a moment. No reflection. No shadow. And she’s babbling in... what, Aramaic? Latin? Akkadian?

Florence Frightengale

All of those, Doctor. Or at least, something similar. It was as if the rosary began to rewrite her essence. The culmination of these changes came on the night the chapel burned.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Ah yes, here comes your trademark climax, Florence. And chaos ensued, naturally.

Florence Frightengale

Indeed, Doctor. The chapel fire—roaring flames swallowing the altar, the pews, the ceiling beams—yet Edith emerged without so much as a singed hem. Witnesses saw her walking into the inferno, clutching the rosary. The very air seemed alive with dread.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

You’re telling me she waltzed into an inferno, made herself comfortable, and walked out unscathed? That defies... every medical principle I’ve ever held sacred.

Florence Frightengale

She was found kneeling in the ashes the next morning. Her eyes—once bright—were clouded white. The rosary, now pulsing faintly in her hands, almost... alive.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

And you weren’t tempted to toss the cursed thing into the deepest trench you could find?

Florence Frightengale

Tempted, yes. But fear stayed our hands. The rosary was sealed in a reliquary and buried deep beneath Hollow Hill. However, no barrier could restrain its influence entirely. Edith’s story was just the beginning. What followed... Well, perhaps it’s best we leave that for now.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Right. Let’s just say that rosary’s "retirement" might’ve come with... consequences. A lot more than anyone bargained for, I imagine.

Florence Frightengale

The rosary was buried deep below Hollow Hill, but its story didn’t end there. Above its resting place, the wards began to unravel—descending into a slow, suffocating chaos, as if the ground itself breathed its curse upward.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Chaos? Florence, in this hospital, chaos feels more like the default setting.

Florence Frightengale

It was different this time, Doctor. Nurses plagued by dreams so vivid they’d wake screaming. Dreams of rivers of ash and dark doors creaking open.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Prophetic nightmares... A touch melodramatic, don’t you think?

Florence Frightengale

Perhaps, but then explain the scorched handprints they woke with, or the echo of whispered prayers they swore were not their own. Death haunts hospitals, Doctor, but this was different—it was as though the shadows themselves had grown teeth.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Teeth, Florence? Come now, you’re not suggesting shadows started biting people, are you?

Florence Frightengale

Not biting, precisely. But moving, shifting in ways that defied light or reason. And then there were the figures—half-seen, always just out of focus, watching from corners that should’ve been empty.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Figures that vanish when you turn to look, no doubt. Classic hallucination fodder. Although...

Florence Frightengale

Although?

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Well, there’s the matter of the hospital’s own records. Active-duty nurses documented... inconsistencies. Several claimed to have seen a chapel appear in their peripheral vision—

Florence Frightengale

—the chapel that burned to the ground decades ago?

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Exactly. And these weren’t vague anecdotes, mind you. These were rational, reliable people with no history of delusion. I even found one entry noting black bead impressions burned into a patient’s palm. Now tell me, how does that happen?

Florence Frightengale

It doesn’t—not by natural means. You know this, Doctor. It seems the rosary bound more than its beads. Not all prayers ascend to the heavens, after all. Some are answered by something... waiting below.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

And there’s the dilemma, isn’t it? Science only illuminates part of the truth. But here—

Florence Frightengale

—here, in the corridors of Hollow Hill, it’s faith and fear that dance together. They twist and tangle, sometimes too tightly for the light of reason to untie.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Or perhaps we’re all just chasing shadows and trying to explain away the unexplainable. Personally, I think digging up that reliquary could solve a few mysteries.

Florence Frightengale

Or summon far worse. Sometimes, Doctor, it’s better to let the doors remain closed. The price of curiosity can be far too steep, even for the most skeptical minds.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

And yet curiosity is what compels us forward, isn’t it? Even knowing the dangers, there’s something about the unanswered and the unseen that we, as humans, simply cannot resist.

Florence Frightengale

Perhaps. But let this tale be a warning. The rosary remains below. Whispering. Dreaming. And once a month, on the night Sister Morvena arrived, the chapel doors still open.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Despite the small detail of there being no chapel left. Comforting.

Florence Frightengale

Indeed. To our listeners—thank you for stepping into the hospital that remembers. For walking these shadowed halls with us. Sleep lightly, dear friends. And may your prayers... always find the right ears.

Dr. Elijah Blackwood

Until next time, then. If you dare return. Goodnight.