Welcome Home (A Story from The Sealed Book)

The Great Sealed Book contains tales of every kind. Tales of murder, madness, and ‘dark deeds that are strange and terrible beyond all belief.’ In this episode, the Keeper of The Book has chosen to share the strange story of a man named Leonard who returns to his birthplace to claim his inheritance. It’s called “Welcome Home.”

Leonard’s family estate, Pirate’s Rest, lies deep in the Louisiana swamplands, and his family have lived there for over a century, but Leonard, who is the black sheep of the family, has not been home for many years because his father forbade him to come back. His father is long dead though, and Leonard’s brother Tom has recently died as well. Now only his Aunt Emily remains, but she hates Leonard because, when he was 12 years old, he locked her in the family mausoleum and left her there overnight. Ever since then, Emily has claimed to be able to talk to the dead.

When Leonard tells Emily that he has come for his inheritance she informs him that Tom left everything to her, but Leonard, who is not the kind of guy to let a little thing like that stop him, is soon ransacking the house, looking for money, while a terrible storm rages outside. He fails to find any money, but he does discover a document that states that Tom recently received $300.000 from a property sale and Leonard is convinced that the money is in the house somewhere.

While he is searching the house, Leonard also discovers his Aunt Emily’s servant, Martha, busy working on a voodoo doll that she has fashioned to look just like him. She is trying to force the doll into a coffin, but her efforts only succeed in angering Leonard so much that he kills her. Then, when Emily comes looking for her servant, Leonard ties his aunt to a chair and begins interrogating her as to the location of the money. She tells him that there is a coffin ready for him in the secret lower vault of the mausoleum. The money is inside it, but if he wants it he will have to hurry because the bijou is rising fast and is already flooding the cemetery.

Leonard and his wife Florence wade through the knee-deep water in the cemetery and find their way down to the lower vault where, just as Emily stated, they find a coffin full of money. Finding their way back out of the vault proves to be a much harder task.

The Sealed Book: Welcome Home

(Listen to the Full Episode)