Between the Crystal Mountains to the North and Neighagra Falls to the South, stands a monument of the most unusual home on the planet. Among the fields of January snow, there is a property with a stone and rusty iron fence that surrounds it. At present, the mountain of a structure stands alone in the falling snow, numb and frozen to the landscape. Yet, this mansion has been unusual, even to the locals of the nearest town that was miles away. It was tall, of seven stories of painted wood and intact, darkens windows. But the base of the residence was very wide as it hosted towers, balconies, and miles of roofing that seemed to stretch out like a castle than a home.
It was one of those places where the border was outlined with rusty signs, warning trespassers not to cross it. But up the old, snow-covered road, with their backs against the bitter winds, three ponies were approaching the front gate. They were by no means lost, nor unprepared. Three ponies approach the Gothic fence in thick winter coats, heavy saddlebags, and sleds that they pulled behind them.
The one leading the group stopped at a stone pillar next to the twisted front gate. Reaching up a hoof, he brushed away the frost for them to see the bronze plaque.
Harriet Hollow.
“This is it guys, we’re here,” the one to brush the plaque spoke, taking off his goggles and turning to the two behind him. “This is the place.”
The other two removed their goggles as well as their hoods. To the left was a soft red unicorn mare; on the right was a blue earth pony, both of whom looked up at the structure before them.
“Whoa,” said the unicorn. “This place is huge.”
“I know,” the other spoke, “just looking at it, I can tell it’s gonna be a nightmare to film.”
“How about once we get in, we can rest in there,” the leader of the group pointed towards the front door. “By then, we should be able to get out of this wind.”
The earth pony walked over to the gate that had a thick chain and an ancient padlock on it. “So director, do you still have the key with you?”
“Give me a sec,” he reached into the thick padding of his coat to pull out a skeleton key. It took a while to get it to turn as the lock was aged with rust. But once the mechanism gave in, popping the iron loop to release the chain, all fell away for them to open the gate.
They walked through the remains of the garden, the marble statues and around an arctic fountain until they’ve reached the porch. Up to the double front doors where the lower half was made out of redwood while the upper had stained glass that had a white and yellow diamond shape pattern. The leader of the group used the key again to find that it unlocked it with a “click.”
The director paused, “You all do realize that we’re gonna be the first ponies to step in here for the first time in eighty years, right?”
“Yeah, we’re aware,” the earth pony replied. “Now come on, it’s freezing as it is out here.”
After pushing on the door, the three of them entered into the foyer of the mansion. After pulling their sleds to the porch and unhooking themselves from it, they closed the doors behind them. The first room they’ve found themselves in, while although was layered in a coating of dust and neglected spider webs overhead, was magnificent. A wooden floor with different hues lay as a kind of mosaic in the circular room. Before them, a staircase that split itself in two that was lined in a red carpet where to the left and right side were entrances to corridors that lead off to different sections of the mansion. The walls showed cream-colored, textured wallpaper, with brass lamps sticking out. Overhead, a chandler in webbing loomed over on the ceiling.
At this point, the leader of the group finally took off his hood. The stallion that had a white coat and a very dark purple mane, unfolded his wings. “Oh wow…” he said to himself. “Now this is incredible.” He turned to the other two ponies, “So Lost Scroll, do you have the script with you?”
The earth pony nodded as he pulled out from his saddlebag a bundle of papers. “Ready to go,” he looked around. “So where do you think we should film Iris, Mr. Oatberg?”
Thinking for a moment, he looked around at the room, taking notice of the light from the windows and thought about angles, position until he said, “Let her come down from the staircase. In the meantime, while we catch our breath, let her look through her lines and then we’ll get started.”
About twenty minutes later, after they pulled their supplies inside. They set up the camera, a tiny microphone and have the unicorn mare time to memorize her lines; the three of them were ready to shoot. Iris took off her heavy winter coat to put on a smartly dressed suit to which she placed the tiny microphone on the flap of her breast coat pocket.
“Are we ready?” Mr. Oatberg inquired. When told that they were, the Pegasus positions that camera that was aimed towards the staircase. “Okay Mr. Scroll, let’s have the board.”
The earth pony walked in front with a black and white board in his mouth. Scrolled on it, was the name of their documentary: “Exploring Harriet Hollow: Scene 1, Take 1.” After which he positioned it to be held in his hooves, raise and slammed the clapper, he moved out of the way.
“Action,” called out the director.
The mare slowly walked down the staircase and recited, “The story of Harriet Hollow is have been said by modern horror writers to be the inspiration of the haunted house. Any stories from ‘The House of Usher,’ to ‘House on Haunted Hill’ are indebted to this real location. The seven-floor mansion has a history in which became the muse of so many ghost stories – and for good reason. Harriet is the strangest house in Equestrian history. Shrouded in mystery and speculation, this very house has been closed off to the public for eighty years since Mrs. Harriet died in 922. It has been left abandoned, sealing itself from the world, leaving everything exactly the way it was all those years ago.
“This film is going to take you on a journey. Not only to its history but into the mansion itself, for we have gained special access to this mysterious place to explore for the first time in eighty years. With director, Oatberg, historian, and writer Lost Scroll, and I, your narrator, Iris Lens, we will take you into the home that was said was designed from the beyond.”
“And cut,” the director said as he stopped filming. “Let’s do that a couple more times before we start our exploration.”
“Sir,” the writer spoke up as he glanced down a hallway. “Where exactly are we going to go after we film this scene? And more importantly, how are we going to be able to find our way back here?”
“You have the map with you, right?”
“Yes, but that’s still a problem.”
“How so?”
The blue earth pony reached out into his papers until he pulled out what he was looking for. “These copies, I’m rather concerned about how reliable they are. Because this was drawn up about five years before Mrs. Harriet died. And she was known to the workers of changing her mind on a whim when this thing was in construction. On a daily occurrence, she would order a new room, hallway or whatever one day and have some of them being torn down the next. It makes me wonder what if we get to a point we’re so deep in the house that we can’t find our way out.”
“That’s why I’ve brought these,” Oatberg went over to where his supplies were and pulled out a fishing reel. “Each of these as enough wire to stretch ten miles, and they have the strength of holding up a wagon. So once we get started with this exhibition, I’ll hook one end of the line to the front door, and we’ll start walking. That way, if we need to turn around, we just follow the line back.”
“This place just gives me the creeps,” Iris shuttered. “I swear that its cold inside as it is outside.”
“Do you need to warm up a bit?” Mr. Scroll inquired.
“I’m fine for now, but let’s hurry up with the takes so I can put my coat on again.”
“Sure thing,” the director nodded. “Back on the platform of the staircase and let’s start again.”
Only when the tiny crew had finished filming the first scene did they began to set out exploring the mansion. It was agreed upon that they should search the first floor to see where else to shoot. They went down through hallways and rooms while sticking to the sides where they could see the falling blizzard outside. Despite the numbing cold where they could see every breath they take, and the dust that chokes the air, the three of them admitted to themselves that they’re amazed of how well preserved it all was. There was an icy elegance through the carved, wooden arches to the elaborate stained-glass windows. Every so often, they would pass by an oil painting or two that showed still lifes and landscapes.
“Am I the only one that's starting to notice that there are no photographs so far?” Iris asked. The two stallions inquire what she meant by that. “I mean, even when we’ve filmed at those other haunted houses that were built at the same time as this place, there were photos from the period. Heck, you did say that the lady of this place was super rich, right?”
“She was,” Lost nodded. “Mrs. Harriet was the heir to the Harriet Repeating Crossbow Company. The same weapon that made it quicker to reload arrows was the one that won the North Luna Seas War. At the time that she married her husband, they were incredibly rich.”
“Okay, but for the sake of the next scene, what was the reason she builds this place and where did she get the money from to do so?”
“Well,” the historian began as they turned a corner into another long hallway. “The story goes that at one point, the two of them had a daughter that quickly died when she was an infant. Years later, her husband basically drowned in his own blood and dies. Leaving her alone, grief-stricken as you can imagine. Well, legend has it that at her own home in Fillydelphia, she had the continuous feeling of being watched at every waking moment, as if something was following her. Her friends got her in contact of a medium in Manehattan to have him come down to explain what was going on. In a séance, the medium was able to contact her husband that was warning her that their company was cursed by everypony that was killed by the weapon they’ve manufactured. That the spirits were out for blood and they were targeting the family that created the crossbow that killed them.
“However, the spirit of her husband told her that there was a way to escape this same fate. In it that she must move, and build a home for the innocent spirits that once construction has begun, it would never, ever be finished. And to make it big and confusing enough to bewilder the evil ones so that she may remain not only safe but could live forever. But if work did stop, she would die. So that’s exactly what she did. Mrs. Harriet bought an unfinished eight room farmhouse, and from there she hired carpenters, glass-makers, masons, bricklayers, painters, servants, you name it to build this house. And construction went around the clock for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the next thirty-eight years – up to the day she died.”
“So how was she able to afford to do that?” Iris asked.
“Records said that she basically had an income of a thousand bits per day at the time, thanks to the inherited company. So money was no object.”
“I’ll say,” Oatberg said, taking note of another staircase. “It’s like walking around a museum. So Scroll, how did you find out about this place’s history?”
“Admittedly, there’s actually very little of it to go around. Everything I could find about this place was from old newspaper clippings, a couple of journal entries that talked about what they’ve heard from the workers here. And a very important memoir that was written by the butler of Mrs. Harriet herself, however, everything else is left up to obscurity. I have tried hard to separate what is indeed fact from rumor.”
It was then that Iris paused, through an open doorway, from the corner of her eye; she could have sworn that something moved. Lighting up her horn, she pulled open the door. “Hey guys, take a look at this.” Behind it, the three of them entered a rather large room that had a wide space of marble flooring, thirteen chandlers that hung overhead, an organ with black pipes trimmed with gold at the ends, and two large stain-glass windows that looked out into a courtyard. They were the only things that illuminated the space in a gloomy light.
The director went up to the windows as that it had written on them: “These same thoughts ponies this little world,” read one. “Wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts,” read the other.
“They’re from Shakespeare,” Iris pointed out. “Only, they’re from different plays, and neither of them is using the full quote.”
Scroll raised an eyebrow, “And how do you know that?”
She snorted, “I was in the theater for a while, and I have my share of Shakespeare too. Still, I find it odd that she would use these in windows. Especially in, what I think is the ballroom.”
“Makes me wonder about the context of ‘thoughts’ in both,” The director thought aloud as he prepared the camera. “Do you think that it might be referring to ponies from the outside wondering what she’s doing in here?”
“Possible,” Scroll shrugged, “the locals from the nearby towns did become curious at the sheer size of this place when it was being built.”
“I think we’ll shoot our next scene in here,” Oatberg told them. “So let’s do this, I’ll film you between those windows where you walk forward and I’ll pan out to reveal both of these things. Then you head over that way towards the organ, finish your lines there and we’ll call it quits.”
Iris took a moment to look through to memorize her lines before taking off her coat and putting the tiny microphone on her. She took her place by the windows, but before Scroll, with the clapboard, could call out to start the scene, the three of them heard something coming from above. From the ceiling, they heard hoofsteps walking across to the other side. All three of them looked at one another.
“I thought you said that we’re the only ones allowed in here?” Iris inquired.
“We are,” the Pegasus put down the camera and flew up to the dusty ceiling to put his ear to it. Listening carefully at the direction of the steps, and he could swear that there was a faint whistle. “Hello? Somepony here?” he called out, banging against the ceiling. After that, there was nothing. No other sound other than the wind outside. Looking down, he saw Scroll picking up the camera, aiming at him. “Did somepony else get here before us?”
“How could they?” Iris pointed out, “You were the only one to have the key to this place.”
“And we didn’t see any tracks in the snow on our way here.” Scroll added, “And we’ve just come from the nearest town.”
The ballroom was still, as the ponies waited to witness something else. But after a few minutes of nothing happening, the film crew proceeded to film their next scene.