Trials of the Dead: From Rome’s Corpse Pope to the Glow of Hollow Hill

Florence Frightengale

A very warm—though I suppose chilling—welcome back to the Frightengale Files, my haunted souls. I'm Florence Frightengale, still at large in the halls of Hollow Hill, and as ever, joined by our favorite surgeon-of-the-supernatural, Dr. Elijah Blackwood.

Unknown Speaker

Thank you, Florence. I must say, if there’s a more atmospheric greeting in the afterlife, I haven’t heard it. Tonight, we’ve quite the tale to dissect—one that involves corpses quite literally holding court, and another about a glow that promised life but dealt only death. Shall we begin?

Florence Frightengale

Let’s. And really, Elijah, “dissect” is a bit on the nose, even for you. Hold onto your lanterns, listeners. Our first story takes us back to ancient Rome and a trial that blurred the line between ritual and revenge—the Cadaver Synod.

Unknown Speaker

They say the dead tell no tales, but in Rome, they tried to wring confessions from corpses. The year: 897. The scene: a tomb disturbed, a body pulled from the earth, forced into vestments it couldn’t possibly protest.

Florence Frightengale

Honestly, you’d think the living would leave the dead a bit of dignity. But no—onward marched the Romans, dragging Pope Formosus’s body out to stand trial in what they grimly dubbed the Cadaver Synod—The Trial of the Dead.

Unknown Speaker

A posthumous spectacle if there ever was one, Florence. But that’s only the prelude.

Florence Frightengale

Picture it: the Lateran Basilica, a throne room for the ages. Priests, bishops, and Rome’s noble class pressed into shadowed pews, eyes darting, candles trembling. At the front—the pope’s corpse, an unwilling sovereign presiding over his own hearing.

Unknown Speaker

The tension must have been unspeakable. The crowd—expectant, fearful, tiptoeing the edge of heresy and spectacle as whispers chased the stench of decay through the aisles. The trial had begun.

Unknown Speaker

Poor Formosus had been buried for months, Florence. He should’ve been past all earthly concerns. But his enemies felt compelled to drag him back, not just from the grave, but from any hope of sanctity.

Florence Frightengale

A warning, perhaps, to anyone thinking of crossing the wrong cardinal. Imagine—such ceremony for a man beyond defense, as if justice could be served by interrogating a body the worms had already begun to cross-examine.

Florence Frightengale

This part always makes my skin prickle. They propped the body on the papal throne, mouth hanging open, fingers blackened. But the words? Those had to come from a deacon—a poor soul appointed to speak for the dead. But the silence—the weight of it—was louder than any defense he could mumble.

Unknown Speaker

There’s something about forced silence that lingers, isn’t there? A courtroom where every question clangs off absence, every answer is swallowed. Even so, there were… rumors of movement.

Unknown Speaker

Yes—the tales diverge wildly here. Some said the corpse actually shifted in its seat. Others, that its withered head turned to face the crowd. The most haunted insisted they saw a skeletal hand twitch in response to the charges. Mind you, Florence, collective delusion is as contagious as any plague—but in haunted spaces, the mind is never unarmed.

Florence Frightengale

Or was it something else entirely? A warning, that the dead don’t take kindly to being disturbed, not in Rome and certainly not at Hollow Hill.

Florence Frightengale

No surprise—the verdict came back guilty. I doubt anyone there expected a redemption arc. They stripped what was left of his robes, and as a finishing touch, they cut off his blessing fingers. Symbolic? Cruel? Oh, both, I think.

Unknown Speaker

A grotesque ritual—a kind of excommunication performed on the flesh itself. But desecration has a habit of echoing through time.

Unknown Speaker

Because this was never just about legalities or dogma. It was spectacle—ritualized humiliation, hatred elevated to law. The wounds left weren’t just on Formosus, but on everyone present, and the earth beneath their feet. Such acts are like stains: ritual marks that don’t wash off, Florence.

Florence Frightengale

Or fade, Elijah. Some ceremonies haunt the ground long after the actors have been buried. And in Hollow Hill, the ground remembers everything.

Florence Frightengale

What happened next is classic postscript: priests and onlookers clipped the pope’s robes for keepsakes. Some thought them private curses, others, tokens of hard-won authority. But relics are heavy things—never truly benign. They keep the echoes of their making.

Unknown Speaker

Every fragment, Florence, a vessel for unrest. Even centuries later, such pieces retain their bitterness. Some were smuggled, some traded—old griefs, refusing to decay.

Unknown Speaker

Time marched on, but those relics have a way of wriggling loose from their contexts. They moved—hand to trembling hand, altar to altar. One such fragment, it’s whispered, sailed the long crossing—and eventually landed here, at Hollow Hill.

Florence Frightengale

It’s astonishing how curses outlast their creators. If something’s looking for a haunted home, Hollow Hill never fails to provide hospitality.

Florence Frightengale

And so it rests here, deep in the reliquary of Hollow Hill’s chapel. Tucked away, perhaps forgotten—though never, never powerless. For relics, time is an irrelevant detail. They wait. Especially for those inclined to linger just a bit too long in the pews.

Unknown Speaker

People think a locked box or a forgotten drawer neutralises these objects. But locked or not, relics always find a way to call the living back.

Unknown Speaker

There’s a heaviness in that space—Florence, you know what I mean. The air presses in, thicker than incense, choking rather than comforting. It’s silence, but not peaceful silence—suffocating, crushing, as though judgment itself is smothering you from somewhere just out of sight.

Florence Frightengale

The kind of silence where every sound is an intrusion and every breath feels like a small rebellion. Few who visit the chapel ever say they find solace—more often, they find themselves afraid to speak, as if the walls themselves are waiting to pass sentence.

Florence Frightengale

Sit there long enough, and… well, you start to realise the pews aren’t quite as empty as they appear. Out of the corner of your eye—shapes gather, silent as jurors, patient as executioners. It’s as if the trial is always moments from starting again.

Unknown Speaker

Quite, Florence. One becomes aware, acutely, that the dead haven’t really finished their business, merely paused for the next session.

Unknown Speaker

What’s dreadful is, there’s not a single accusation spoken aloud. The questions—the real ones—bubble up inside you, memories and guilt scurrying out of corners you’d rather keep locked. The dead don’t need to ask. They already know if you’re guilty.

Florence Frightengale

Mmm. There are verdicts written on our bones before the court’s summoned. At Hollow Hill, the only deliberation is whether you’ll confess or resist a little longer.

Florence Frightengale

Sometimes, visitors insist the old robe rustles, unfurling in a draughtless aisle. No breath stirs it, yet its folds ripple as if stroked by hands invisible. These relics remember their humiliation and hunger for its repetition—yearning for some poor soul to fill the old part.

Unknown Speaker

Echoes demanding a fresh reenactment—time’s appetite never sated. The past remains a living thing here.

Unknown Speaker

It’s a terrible realization, really: anyone who lingers too long becomes more than a bystander. They’re called up, defendants in the new court of the dead. And the outcome? Already decided, of course.

Florence Frightengale

Some people run. Others freeze, hoping stillness can buy absolution. But the dead love a new audience—especially if it’s uninitiated.

Florence Frightengale

Many leave with marks—barely-there scratches round the throat or collarbone, faint as old bone, but chillingly real. The spirits, it seems, require confession before they’ll ever grant you release. Some stains, you have to name before you can wipe them away.

Unknown Speaker

The lightest caress, yet the deepest proof—that you were judged, and found wanting.

Unknown Speaker

And then—silence. In 897, Formosus never uttered a word in his defense. That silence became not merely his answer, but his curse. In Hollow Hill, the verdict is exactly the same. You can shout, pray, bargain, but the silence always wins.

Florence Frightengale

I can think of no sentence heavier. Silence doesn’t absolve or forget; here, it only settles deeper into your bones.

Florence Frightengale

The Cadaver Synod didn’t end, not really. Wherever a piece of that curse rests, the trial picks up again—an endless courtroom, a circle with no exit. And now—Hollow Hill is its new bench.

Unknown Speaker

A judiciary with no recess. Even the walls remember the gavel’s echo.

Unknown Speaker

And here’s the cruel bit: to merely witness the trial is to be judged. To be judged is to walk away stained. The dead, Florence, are not known for their capacity to forgive—or, for that matter, to forget.

Florence Frightengale

Walk in curious—walk out carrying the burden, invisible, but ever-accusing.

Florence Frightengale

Remember, listeners—the trial of the dead isn’t history. It’s ritual. Rituals don’t end just because you stop believing in them. The doors of the chapel might close, but the silence has a way of coming home with you. Listen too closely, and maybe… you’ll hear your own name called, softly, from somewhere in the dark.

Unknown Speaker

Which is why I prefer to keep my visits short and my confessions even shorter. Shall we… breathe a little, Florence, before we step into the next shadow?

Florence Frightengale

Let’s exhale, if only to make sure nothing’s rattling around inside. That was a lively courtroom—if you’ll pardon the pun. I think we’ve earned a lighter moment before our next descent.

Unknown Speaker

Agreed. I rather miss the times when hauntings just meant a bit of draft in the hallway. Alas, our next story is only lighter in the literal sense—a legacy of eerie luminosity, tragedy, and a glow that never quite dies. Shall we step into the green light?

Florence Frightengale

Onwards, Elijah. Onwards into the glow.

Unknown Speaker

So, Florence, the 1920s—a brighter, busier age, but no less haunted. Factory girls, young and lively, spent their days painting watch dials with luminous paint. The magic ingredient? Radium—thought harmless, even healthy. Brushes dipped, licked to a fine point—what could possibly go wrong?

Florence Frightengale

This always chills me. They truly believed the paint was as safe as milk, just a touch exotic. Imagine—every evening, their fingertips and lips glowed faintly in the dark, a badge of honor among factory girls.

Florence Frightengale

And the world encouraged it! Advertisements hailed radium as a miracle—the very elixir of vitality. Everything from health tonics to toothpaste to children’s toys boasted a sprinkle of its “life-giving” power. These girls believed, utterly, that they glowed with health, never suspecting the true cost beneath their radiant smiles.

Unknown Speaker

Industry chased the glow, never the consequence. Odd, isn’t it—how easily we mistake poison for progress, when it shines just so?

Unknown Speaker

It began subtly. A toothache. A nagging stiffness of the jaw. Gums bled for no apparent reason. Doctors, unwilling or unable to see the danger, blamed poor hygiene, diet—everything but the luminous paint these women consumed every workday. Denial is always easier when the truth is monstrous, Florence.

Florence Frightengale

And the first signs were always dismissed, always minimized. You’d think by now we’d have learned to listen—to bodies and girls alike—but history is terribly hard of hearing.

Florence Frightengale

One of the eeriest images: girls walking home at dusk, hair and clothes faintly shining. They laughed about it, even nicknamed themselves the “ghost girls.” The glow wasn’t just at work; it followed them, drifted across their bedsheets, hung in their breath at night.

Unknown Speaker

Laughter, Florence, masking an invisible rot. How quickly the miraculous turns menacing, when the cost is hidden from view.

Unknown Speaker

It wasn’t harmless—far from it. The radium wormed itself into their bones, setting up a grisly shop. Jaws weakened first, then collapsed at the gentlest touch—bone not turned to gold, but to ash. The glow wasn’t proof of health. It was a warning label, written in agony.

Florence Frightengale

It was as if the very thing they were told would keep them alive was eating them from the inside out—the cruelest alchemy.

Florence Frightengale

From teeth, the horror crept through their bodies—teeth fell out, wounds refusing to heal, bones snapping with the smallest movement. Some girls simply collapsed in the street, the faint green glow illuminating the panic on their faces as they gasped for breath.

Unknown Speaker

Haunted not by outside spirits, but by their own, transformed bones—every step, every breath, a reminder that light is sometimes only a mask for decay.

Unknown Speaker

And still—the company doctors insisted nothing was amiss. Hysteria, they said. Weakness, or some secret curse. Never the paint. Naming the real monster was simply unacceptable. Sounds a bit like what we’ve seen in Hollow Hill, does it not, Florence? When denial and secrecy become deadlier than ghosts themselves.

Florence Frightengale

It’s an old song: blame the victim, hide the wound. And sometimes, the hospital corridors echo with more ghosts of denial than of actual death.

Florence Frightengale

Still, a few did fight. Fading, barely able to stand, they went to court. Imagine the scene: trembling women, their skin glowing faintly under the courtroom lights. Their bodies failed them, but still—they spoke the truth. Sometimes the greatest hauntings happen in broad daylight.

Unknown Speaker

Spirits shining just beneath the surface—further proof that silence doesn’t always mean surrender.

Unknown Speaker

And not all those lost girls found rest in cemeteries. Some were brought here—to Hollow Hill. Donated for “study,” they’d say. But even in death, their bones glowed faintly in the dark wards, casting a green shimmer down cracked tiles and onto the trembling hands of any late-night wanderer.

Florence Frightengale

You can almost picture them, even now—so many years later, the wards never entirely dark. Their suffering turned to a strange, contagious light.

Florence Frightengale

Down in the heart of the relic collection, there’s still a jar of the original radium paint, a relic from an age that called poison a cure. It hums—quietly, persistently—in the silence of Hollow Hill’s chapel. Seems every haunted place needs a souvenir.

Unknown Speaker

It’s a warning, Florence. Or perhaps, a dare?

Unknown Speaker

At night, the jar isn’t alone. Shapes drift up and down the pews—ghostly figures, jaws slack, teeth missing, shimmering faintly with a sickly green light. Hungry, hollow, forgotten. Their wounds are visible, but it’s their laughter you should fear.

Florence Frightengale

A congregation of suffering—one the living would do well not to join. But their presence means the chapel’s never truly dark. Not anymore.

Florence Frightengale

Some swear they hear laughter echoing through the chapel’s stone—thin, brittle, mocking. It’s not the laughter of joy, but the laughter of those betrayed—by science, industry, and the very hands that painted their doom.

Unknown Speaker

It’s the sort that chills you, makes the hairs stand up, as if they’re laughing at everyone who believed the old lie: that glowing means thriving.

Unknown Speaker

The bones, Florence—still so delicate. They crumble to powder at a touch. Yet the powder glows—dangerous, exquisite, deadly. To breathe it in is to court the same fate—to invite that sickly light inside, to become a ghost among the “glowing girls.”

Florence Frightengale

Each breath a tiny act of inheritance. In Hollow Hill, the past is inhaled—never merely remembered.

Florence Frightengale

And then—the hands. Pale fire, ice-cold, reaching out from the dark. Those touched leave with faint bruises, marks that glow in the night, spreading slow, like frost or mold. The curse is contact, the story never finished.

Unknown Speaker

Every touch a warning—glow with us, or find out what true darkness means.

Unknown Speaker

Not that all the doctors emerged unscathed. Some tried to “contain” the remains, to study and catalogue what they could not understand. But the glittering dust took its own revenge—laboratories found empty, the scientists replaced by new drifts of dust and faint, ghostly light.

Florence Frightengale

Some things, Elijah, aren’t meant for research or reason. The past punishes those who prod too deeply.

Florence Frightengale

And so they gather. A silent choir glowing in the old chapel, unsung hymns on their lips, waiting for someone to conduct the service. But there’s only silence, and the soft, irresistible glow in the pews.

Unknown Speaker

No songs, no prayers—just the accumulated weight of their watching. It’s a vigil without end.

Unknown Speaker

No candles needed now—even a flicker would be drowned by the ghostly green. The light is soft, sorrowful—too much to ignore, too dim to truly see. It pulses, Florence, like old pain trapped in the walls.

Florence Frightengale

A chapel made for mourning, yet never dark enough for sleep—or for forgetting.

Florence Frightengale

If you’re waiting for prayers—don’t. The ghost girls want something fiercer: for every visitor to swallow what they swallowed, to become what they became. They don’t crave compassion. They demand company in the glow.

Unknown Speaker

Confession by consumption—a hunger one can never sate, nor atone for.

Unknown Speaker

And their verdict? It isn’t handed down with words, Florence. It’s written in fire, invisible but permanent. Once you’re marked, your bones will never be clean again—the judgment of light is the harshest possible sentence.

Florence Frightengale

And like the court of silence, it’s a sentence without end. The glow lingers, a judgment no living voice can overturn.

Florence Frightengale

So remember them, listeners—the Radium Girls, and the price of swallowing what you do not understand. Hollow Hill still holds their glow, spreading quietly through the silence. And if, one night, you spot a light where no candle burns—well. I’m afraid it may already be too late.

Unknown Speaker

Let that be the last lesson for tonight: never trust a glow that promises eternal life. Florence, I do believe we should let our listeners return to their own quiet darkness.

Florence Frightengale

Indeed, Elijah. Thank you for joining us, dear listeners, in these haunted halls—both Roman and radioactive. May your night be free of unearthly laughter and unwelcome glows. Until next time, keep your lanterns lit and your confessions short.

Unknown Speaker

Sleep lightly, all. Goodnight, Florence.

Florence Frightengale

Goodnight, Elijah—and goodnight, frightful friends. Until the next tale calls us back.