The Bloodletting Choir

Florence Frightengale

Welcome, dear listeners, to another descent into the Frightengale Files. Tonight, we unravel a tale where medicine, music, and madness are stitched together—sometimes with actual thread. I’m Florence Frightengale, and I promise, this story will leave you humming... or perhaps, bleeding.

Unknown Speaker

And I’m Dr. Elijah Blackwood. A word of warning before we begin: some notes don’t echo—they enter. They linger. If you’re squeamish about blood or song, well, you might want to keep the lights on for this one.

Florence Frightengale

Tonight’s file is the legend of Hollow Hill’s lost therapeutic choir. The Bloodletting Choir. Not a metaphor, mind you. That was the actual chart note. A choir meant to heal, but recovery was never the outcome. Our goal? To trace its origins, its rituals, and to find out if its music still echoes through these walls.

Unknown Speaker

So, settle in. Listen closely. Some stories are sung, not told.

Florence Frightengale

And as we begin, do you hear that? A low hum, just beneath your skin. That’s the episode tuning itself.

Florence Frightengale

You know, Elijah, I heard it again last night. That humming from inside the old linen cabinet—sealed shut, mind you. No one inside, but the sound was unmistakable. Like a lullaby with teeth.

Unknown Speaker

I saw the staff report—blood bags in the storage room pulsing in rhythm, as if keeping time with an invisible conductor. I mean, I’ve seen a lot in my day, but blood with a beat? That’s a new one.

Florence Frightengale

We even had a listener write in—let me find it—ah, here: “Dear Florence and Dr. Blackwood, I heard a melody coming from inside the blood bank fridge. It was cold, but the song was warm. I haven’t slept since.”

Unknown Speaker

Music in hospitals is supposed to be calming, isn’t it? A bit of Chopin, maybe some Debussy. But this... this is something else entirely.

Florence Frightengale

It all leads back to Sister Gaelle. She arrived at Hollow Hill with nothing but a voice and no past. No records, no references. Just a song that no one could place. Who was she, Elijah? And what did she summon through her singing?

Unknown Speaker

Let’s start at the beginning—before the rehearsals, before the bleeding.

Florence Frightengale

Survivors of the choir—if you can call them that—still bear the scars. Not just physical, but musical. Some say they hear incomplete performances in their dreams, always ending on the same, unfinished note. The Red Canticle’s final movement, never played to the end.

Unknown Speaker

And it’s not just old stories. We’ve had recent reports—singing in empty wards, bedsheets vibrating as if plucked by invisible hands. Blood samples forming what looked like musical symbols under the microscope. I’m not sure what to make of that, honestly.

Florence Frightengale

I once followed a humming echo down a deserted corridor. It led me to a locked room, and when I pressed my ear to the door, the song stopped. But the silence felt... occupied. It makes you wonder if the choir’s influence ever really left.

Unknown Speaker

Let’s go back to 1927. Hollow Hill introduced a so-called “trauma therapy choir” for patients in recovery. Sister Gaelle led it. No credentials, no birth record, but a voice that could shatter glass—or so the stories go.

Florence Frightengale

They found music sheets in her office, written in symbols that changed every time someone tried to copy them. The rehearsals had side effects—patients sweating blood, surgical scars reopening. The first performance, Canticle for the Severed, ended in seizures. One patient died on the spot.

Unknown Speaker

The hospital shut it down, officially. But unofficially, the choir went underground. That’s when, I think, its real work began.

Florence Frightengale

And the music only got stranger from there.

Unknown Speaker

The choir wasn’t just therapy anymore. It became a procedure. Gaelle started using tuning forks—inserted into veins, she said, to “calibrate resonance.” There were surgeries to alter vocal cords, all in pursuit of a so-called purity of tone.

Florence Frightengale

Patients began bleeding during rehearsals, sometimes from old wounds, sometimes from nowhere at all. The choir robes were stained red, and no one could explain where all the blood was coming from. One patient told me he could feel the music inside his lungs, as if he was being played like an instrument.

Unknown Speaker

That’s... well, that’s when things crescendoed, isn’t it, Florence? You had your own encounter, didn’t you?

Florence Frightengale

I did. It was a night shift, and I heard a melody coming from beneath the floor tiles. I opened a cabinet—inside, there was folded gauze, stitched with music notes in blood. I blacked out mid-shift and woke up with the taste of music in my mouth. One of the pages I found was titled Lullaby for Hollow Bones. An assistant collapsed while humming a tune he swore he’d never heard before. Afterward, my own handwriting was in perfect meter, but I have no memory of writing it. I wasn’t singing. Something was singing through me.

Unknown Speaker

That’s... unsettling, to say the least. I mean, I’ve seen possession, or what people call possession, but this—this is different. It’s like the music itself is the entity.

Unknown Speaker

Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. There’s research on infrasonics—low frequencies that can trigger fear, even bleeding. Maybe what you experienced was a kind of sonic trauma, not a haunting.

Florence Frightengale

But these events follow specific lyrics, Elijah. Invocations, not just notes. Music as ritual. Hymns have always been tied to sacred rites, haven’t they?

Unknown Speaker

True, true. There’s neurological research on music and trance states, but I can’t explain the symbols that appeared on patients’ skin. Or the mirror that shattered during a silent room scan. No sound, but the glass just... exploded.

Florence Frightengale

So is it a haunting, or a harmonic infection? I don’t think it was ever just sound. It was intent. The music wanted something.

Unknown Speaker

On that, we agree. Whatever it was, it was never benign.

Florence Frightengale

Very few survived a full Bloodletting Choir performance. Those who did were left speechless—literally. Their bodies covered in cryptic musical scars. The Red Canticle had thirteen movements, but the thirteenth was never completed. One survivor drew the final page in blood, then died humming. Doctors called it “resonant bleeding”—as if the blood itself was responding to the melody. I have an excerpt here: “The human body is a poor instrument, but it plays well in pain.” The music wasn’t for healing. It was for opening something else.

Unknown Speaker

That’s... chilling. I don’t even know what to say to that.

Unknown Speaker

And yet, the reports continue. Singing in silent rooms, bedsheets vibrating with no one in them. Security cameras show figures with open mouths, but no sound is ever recorded. A nurse fainted after hearing her own name sung in a three-part harmony. Blood samples arranging themselves into treble clefs under the microscope. Florence, you found those old robes in storage, didn’t you?

Florence Frightengale

Yes, still damp after all these years. And last week, the same sheet music appeared again—on a patient’s lunch tray. The ink was fresh. The choir isn’t dead, Elijah. It’s rehearsing.

Unknown Speaker

I wish you were wrong, Florence. But I don’t think you are.

Florence Frightengale

There’s a new theory. The choir wasn’t a service—it was a summoning. Each movement weakened the veil between the physical and the spiritual. Blood was the offering, harmony the invitation. The symbols under survivors’ skin—marks of submission, or maybe ownership. Attempts to drown out the music only led to hallucinations, even death. And Sister Gaelle? She vanished. No body, no obituary. Just silence.

Unknown Speaker

She didn’t die, did she? She ascended. Or was absorbed. Either way, she’s not here, but her music is.

Florence Frightengale

And that brings us to the end of tonight’s file. Elijah, I have to admit, my blood pressure dropped when we started—and it hasn’t recovered.

Unknown Speaker

If you hear humming, don’t harmonize. That’s when they notice. Next week, we’ll be back with the story of Stretcher 9 Never Stops. If you want more hauntings and unreleased recordings, visit Patreon.com/FlorenceFrightengale. And please, send us your own hospital hauntings. We’re always listening.

Florence Frightengale

Let’s have a moment of silence—

Unknown Speaker

—wait, did you hear that? Just one note. That... was not us.

Florence Frightengale

Goodnight, Elijah.

Unknown Speaker

Goodnight, Florence. And goodnight to all our listeners. Stay wary.