Fraya

If you’ve heard of Deep Valley Asylum, and you saw that crazy video on YouTube with that guy running for his life then you’ve probably read this poem.

Call back at midnight, over your shoulder but don’t look back.

The thunder and lightning might not get you but beware of an electric shock.

The current runs through you. Around you and below you.

No one will hear you scream.

No one will remember your name.

No one will be there when you drown.

Call back at midnight, over your shoulder but don’t look back.

Shadows and storm clouds hang low.

Don’t reach up.

Don’t run.

The thunder and lighting might not get you but beware of an electric shock.

Electric shock.

Deep Valley Asylum had been abandoned for 10 years long enough for the building to look decrepit and decaying but just recent enough for the surrounding town to remember. The Deep Valley Asylum was home to more than 500 patients and a staff of about 1,000 but sometimes the numbers are switched around depending on who tells the story. What everyone can agree on is that one of the groups was hugely outnumbered by the other.

Deep Valley specialized in alternative therapies that only survivors know about but physically can’t talk about. All the staff have but disappeared and fled to faraway places. The stories tell of a sort of riot that made the town go completely into a shelter in place, it is said that the government was deployed to help out but those who talk about those days won’t confirm or deny a single detail.

Thrill-seekers, ghost hunters, mediums, and the like of them come to explore the old asylum but none have come out with any stories. The only evidence of an explorer almost escaping was an old camcorder found just at the edge of the drive of the old asylum. The drive was a long windy dirt path that led up to high military barbed wire automated gates. You can see a security booth and a looming watchtower that looms over it. Some say that if you look hard enough you can still see the watchman keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of the facility.

The camcorder revealed some shaky footage of an overenthusiastic nomad who begins his video with this.

“I’ve made it to the Deep Valley Asylum. You wouldn’t believe what I have been able to find so far!” His breathing increases as he seems to pick up speed. The camera is getting shakier and behind him, the viewer can hear a screech in the background “oh, shit! The stories are true! The stories are true. Just don’t look back whatever you do!” His breathing is heard above anything else and he is running now the viewer can only see the blurred fast-moving image of his shoes and the floor beneath him and a flash of light. “LOOK!” He has stopped running now to get the perfect shot of the poem painted in blood. Is it blood?

Call back at midnight, over your shoulder but don’t look back.

The thunder and lightning might not get you but beware of an electric shock.

The current runs through you. Around you and below you.

No one will hear you scream.

No one will remember your name.

No one will be there when you drown.

Call back at midnight, over your shoulder but don’t look back.

Shadows and storm clouds hang low.

Don’t reach up.

Don’t run.

The thunder and lighting might not get you but beware of an electric shock.

Electric shock

“If you have heard the legends of this then I can confirm that it is true.” The audio of the video is flooded with static and that screech again. The last thing you hear the man in the video says is “I have to see what it looks-“ and it’s cut off. Nothing is shown after that. The video goes black and somehow the camcorder made its way outside the gates all the way at the end of the drive.

Rumor has it that there is still a groundskeeper of the Deep Valley Asylum. This is because the gardens and the grounds are so well kept which only highlights the corpse of what was once a building full of psychotic life. His name is Charles Bayes and he is a town council member. A quiet and respectable man who has lived a time or two. He’s grey but no one really knows how old he is and he is married to the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet. Her name is Charlene Bayes, she is said to have been one of the nurses at the Asylum but if you ask either of them you’ll leave with more questions than answers. They’ll never answer with a yes or a no and that’s how most of the town is when asked about Deep Valley Asylum.

The Bayes couple has a lovely home about 5 miles from the asylum. Their home is an old lakehouse that Charle’s dad built when he was just a boy. Since he was a boy the Bayes men constantly built on and improved the lakehouse making it one of the largest houses in the town. The Bayes family never owned anything but they were resourceful and well respected amongst the townspeople. Charles was the first one to have plugged himself into something like the town council. He was asked to join it when he had used his own truck as a makeshift ambulance when the town had none due to an urgent need of all ambulances at the asylum. No one knows why they were all needed and no one questioned Bayes when he volunteered his truck.

For all intents and purposes, the Bayes couple is strange and their history of the Bayes family is even stranger. Across the lake just behind the Bayes home is the most perfect unobstructed view of the Deep Valley Asylum. So as one can imagine just opposite if one were standing across the lake they would be on the grounds of Deep Valley. The poem found in the video is said to be linked with the Bayes family. A story of an old crazy mastermind who built the place for alternative psychiatric treatments for his own enjoyment. The poem is said to be written about a game that was played at the hospital to get patients to behave.

It is said that they didn’t practice discipline but instead had a game involving shock therapy in the water. Patients were taken out to the lake in their undergarments and were made to go as far as they could into the water. The orderlies and staff would then turn a valve that apparently released electric currents through the water. Whoever could swim to shore without the shock would win for obvious reasons being that they did not die.

Another story goes that part of the alternative therapy was to do something called “nature therapy” the patients were made to go outside. All the doors were locked to the asylum not allowing them to come back in until a green light was given. They were forced to swim during a lightning storm with helmets that had a wire sticking out the top of them. The story goes that many of the patients would be used as experiments on how to attract lightning and how to harness it in order to administer natural shock therapy.

The final version of the story is about a woman named Fraya. She was a patient and of course no one knows why she was admitted into the hospital. Fraya used to sing the poem and write it all over the walls in her room. Beware of the shock! She would sing in an ear-piercing voice. Fraya would eventually go on to ripping off her fingernails one by one in order to write the big red mess on the wall that gave the poem its permanent presentation place.

It is said that Fraya survived one of the above events; no one can agree to which one she survived. Either way, Fraya survived something no one should have to even live to tell the tale. She was never the same after what she had witnessed. According to a single report made about Fraya she would often skip down the alls and scream “don’t look over your shoulder!” Don’t look back!” the report claims that Fraya would scream and clap as hard as she could and then pass out leaving the orders to come and collect her unconscious body to take back to her room.

Before the camcorder was discovered by a team of ghost hunters the poem, Fraya and the connection between the Bayes and the asylum were just rumors but things have only escalated since. There are rumors now that Fraya was Charle’s daughter and he was actually no mad man but he was forced by the head doctor of the asylum to admit her by hypnotizing him. Whatever the truth is, the story is that he was manipulated into believing that his daughter needed help and that the asylum could help her.

Fraya is the only story that involves the name of a patient, a backstory, and even a glimpse of what happened to her. Where Fraya came from no one knows. The story has it now though that on a stormy night around Deep Valley Asylum you can hear her singing through the halls and flooding out onto the grounds leading to the lake. The rain clouds hang especially low.

It is also said that if you ever go and make it out alive it is because you went to the lake and you saw Fraya’s soaked body staring back at you. She is swimming like a madwoman for her life, once she gets out of the water you can see that all of her fingernails are gone and that is when you run. Run and don’t look back. If curiosity scratches at you just remember to be aware of the shock. You can ask any one of the survivors that have done this, but apparently, you'll find that they're too in shock to speak. Lord, help you if you get close enough to touch the water.