When the Civil War ended in 1865, most soldiers returned to their homes to rebuild and start over. Unfortunately, a small number of them had suffered immeasurable anguish from years of deafening shelling and watching their comrades die. The poor veterans had become mentally incapacitated, bordering on insanity.

A small-town psychiatrist from Weldon, Massachusetts, went to the government to offer his services. Willing to do whatever was necessary to help the soldiers, the government complied with his every wish. Within six months, the doctor had chosen a location for the new sanitarium, handpicked his staff and guards, and had the facility ready for the veterans. The site was on a small farm on the outskirts of Yardley, Pennsylvania. From the outside, all seemed to be going well. But inside, a nightmare of horrific proportions was unfolding for the innocent patients. The “doctor” was no doctor at all. His real name was Colonel William Reapord of the former confederate army. He was better known as “The Reaper” by the few Union soldiers who survived the dreadful prisoner of war camp he ran in southern Georgia during the war.

Reapord was a brutal warden who had prisoners savagely beaten and tortured for his own entertainment. Starvation, disease and viciousness were the norm for the poor Union soldiers at Camp Witchner. By war’s end, thousands had died under his rule at the camp. For those who lived, life would never be the same. Reapord escaped capture at the war’s end, knowing he would be hung for his cruelty. In disguise, he fled north where he plotted his next move. It wasn’t the first time Reapord had fled from justice. He had come to the U.S. a decade before the war started, fleeing from the local constabulary in Germany where he was wanted for devil worship. The townspeople had found the body of a missing blacksmith in Reapord’s barn. The poor man had been tortured to death.

When he arrived in the States, he blended into the population in a small town in Massachusetts where he found his next victim. The unlucky psychiatrist had no surviving family and would serve nicely for Reapord’s plan. After murdering the doctor hiding the body, Reapord assumed his identity and headed for Pennsylvania, knowing he wouldn’t be missed.

Reapord’s cunning idea was to build the sanitarium at the governments expense. There, he would “take care” of the disturbed soldiers by putting them to work as his own slaves in a secret silver mine under the buildings. The guards who helped him carry out his evil deeds, were the same loyal former guards from Camp Witchner, otherwise known as “The Witches Cauldron”. Reapord and his guards had all made a pact with the devil. They would bring him willing new souls and the devil in return would give them power and wealth. But the patients of Shady Brook Sanitarium would have no part of siding with evil. This infuriated Reapord who brutalized them to the brink of death.

Reapord’s plan then fell apart when a patient escaped and reported the Colonels wickedness. The army surrounded the sanitarium and demanded that Reapord surrender and free the patients. But he had no desire to meet the hangman’s noose. He ordered his men to force the patients into the mine and had them dynamite the entrance to the shaft. A shootout followed between the outnumbered guards and the army, and soon Reapord was surrounded by his dead guards with the army waiting outside the walls. Defiant to the end, Reapord stood atop a guard tower and held a pistol to his head. “You’ll never take me!” he shouted before pulling the trigger.

The army performed a veteran’s funeral service for the deceased patients before burying them in a small field on the farm. Reapord and his guards were buried in an unmarked mass grave in the woods. The facility was burned to the ground. Over the years, farmers have tried numerous times to cultivate vegetables on the lot where the building of horror once stood, but nothing will grow there. To this day, the lot remains void of any plant life.

Peaceful woods and open fields are all that remain at the small farm, but no rest has come the dead. Unable to keep their pact with the devil, the ghosts of Colonel Reapord, “The Reaper” and those of his guards are forced to wander the woods at night, waiting patiently for another soul to fulfill their contract with Satan. Meanwhile, the ghosts of the patients stay behind to keep Reapord and his henchmen from ever leaving the farm.

So if you’re ever walking through the woods of Shady Brook Farm at night, and you feel a cool chill, it may not be the wind…