Few remain who remember the ancient Celtic legend of the Kryptorium and the demonic harbingers of evil spirits who where trapped there between this world and the one below. Some say that the legend is as old as Halloween itself, passed down through generations to the present day. Legend has it that in the darkest pits of hell the devil himself would make a pact with a fallen spirit to return to earth and be given unnatural life in exchange for the wicked souls of others deserving to pass through the fiery fence and burn for eternity.

The harbingers or “soul stealers” would return to earth in semi-human form and rise from the cemetery from which there original body was laid to rest. They would then wander the earth in search of their prey and bring their catch back to their own gravesite or Krytorium. The soulstealers would then keep them there until the devil would come to collect his dues.

One such story tells of a man by the name of Shaemus O’Grady, A poor and wretched soul trying to survive as a gravedigger during the great potato famine in Ireland around 1865. As food became increasingly scarce Shaeamus’s hunger increased. As his hunger grew so did his insanity and his greed! Shaemus began to rob gravesites, first digging the hole and then returning after the wake and the burial to dig up the fresh remains and plunder the tomb. Legend has it that Shaemus’s hunger soon got the best of him and he began to eat the portions of the corpses to keep his strength up. Sometimes he would even bring a bundle of meat home to share with his wife and six children!

Kathrine O’Grady, Shaemus’s beautiful wife, worked her poor fingers to the bone looking after the O’Grady offspring. Living deep in a marshy wasteland of an abandoned farmstead, she never really questioned her husband’s source of food, even though she did notice that the more the famine increased the better her family would eat. She also noticed that Shaemus’s fanatical stories about ghost and leprechauns in the graveyards where getting worse. At first the stories seemed to be told to scare the children, but soon theses stories seemed to become an obsession with Shaemus.

One fateful dark night in October Kathrine had finally had enough of the stories and the terror being placed on her six children. She secretly followed Shaemus to his work to spy on her husband’s strange behavior. What she witnessed that night went beyond description. Before Kathrine could sneak away she was discovered by Shaemus who beat her unconscious with a shovel and buried her alive in the graveyard.

The terrible act of murder the grave digger committed on his own wife finally drove Shaemus O’Grady to complete madness. Covered in dirt and dried blood, Shaemus went home to his six children and one by one, from oldest to youngest killed them all with and axe. He chopped them into pieces, cooked their bodies in a stew, then dumped their bones in the marsh lagoon behind his house. The next night Shaemus started having horrible nightmares and visions of Kathrine’s angry spirit haunting him both in his dreams and while awake. It only took a few days until he could no longer stand it. Shaemus then burned down the farmhouse and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in order to escape his curse. Shaemus traveled deep into the Midwest of the United States but could not escape Kathrine’s tormenting ghost.

On Halloween night 1869 Shaemus, now a diseased and bloodthirsty ghoul of a man, went to see a preacher and ask for help. When the preacher explained to Shaemus he was truly damned for his wickedness, Shaemus attacked the preacher. He snapped his neck, paralyzing the old man and then ate his helpless victim alive.

After his meal Shaemus was once again paid a visit by Kathrine. Shaemus decided not run this time. Instead he found his axe and started swinging wildly, smashing every thing around him in a feeble attempt to strike at the ghost of Kathrine. Soon the town folk were drawn to the sounds coming from the old church and came to investigate along with the local sheriff. When the crowd forced open the doors of the old church they saw Shaemus standing there with an axe over the mutilated corpse of the preacher!

O’Grady charged the angry mob, axe in hand, he chopped through many before the sheriff managed to gun him down. As Shaemus lay there coughing up blood and dying, he remembered back years ago to the cemeteries in Ireland. After chasing what he believed to be a leprechaun he found an ancient tomb marked with a strange looking stone centuries old. On that stone was inscribed a legend about the curse of the Kryptorium.

Shaemus cursed the town folk and called for the devil just before he died. The town folk took O’Grady’s body to an old abandoned cemetery almost erased by time, then dumped and buried his remains in a shallow hole. Shaemus’s ghost followed the motley procession all the way. On the horizon a treacherous storm blew in, and just as the last scoop of dirt sealed his tomb the devil himself appeared to fulfill his wish!! Eternal unlife in exchange for the souls of the wicked. Shaemus agreed and then rejoined his body underneath the dirt. What crawled out of that hole was something horrible. The birth of a soulstealer!!

Over a century passed and many evil persons across the land went missing. The cemetery vanished into oblivion. Obscured and covered by the rise of industry. Many say the tomb of Shaemus O’Grady is still there, buried under concrete and full of the wicked spirits of the soul stealers’ victims.