In 1887, a Kentucky surveyor named Mordecai Ashford was hired by the county to map a new road through the remote hills of Eastern Kentucky. The route took him near an abandoned convent that locals had avoided for nearly three decades. At a boarding house in the nearby settlement of Cradens Fork, the owner, Safronia Merritt, warned him away from the property. She told him the place was cursed and recounted the story of her cousin, a circuit preacher who had visited the convent in 1858 before its abandonment.
He found all 23 sisters dead in their beds, with no visible signs of illness or violence. Above the chapel altar, written in what appeared to be soot, were three words in Latin that he refused to repeat aloud. Mordecai dismissed the warning as rural superstition and set out for the convent with his survey equipment. Inside, he found signs of a life that had stopped suddenly: a cup still holding dried liquid, a shawl draped over a chair, shoes lined up by the kitchen door.
On the second floor, he found the sleeping quarters locked from the outside, with the old keys still in their locks. In one room, he discovered a hidden journal belonging to a sister named Temperance Aldridge. The final entry described locked doors, whispers in the walls, and an infection that had spread through the convent. It also mentioned three sisters, identified as Prudence, Mercy, and Charity, who arrived in the winter of 1857 and brought something unnatural with them.
As Mordecai read, he heard singing from deeper in the building. A door at the end of the hallway led to a bare room carved with symbols and a circular design, including three elongated human figures. In the center, written in the same dark substance, were the three Latin words: “Sorores derelictae macabrae,” meaning the forsaken macabre sisters. The singing stopped, and he felt three presences blocking his path.
He fled through a servant stairwell and escaped the building, only to find his horse had chewed through its rope and disappeared. With the sun setting and miles of unfamiliar terrain separating him from town, he took shelter in a groundskeeper’s cottage. Through the night, the entities circled the cottage, singing and projecting visions into his mind. They showed him images of his dead mother, his estranged father, and the woman he had once almost married.
According to the journal and the experiences that followed, the three sisters had been non-human entities that entered the dreams of the convent’s residents, gradually consuming their minds until all 23 sisters lay down and died. The entities were unable to enter the cottage because they could not cross its threshold without invitation. Mordecai held out until dawn, when the singing stopped and the presences withdrew. When he returned to Cradens Fork, he told Safronia that the building needed to be burned.
She told him it had been tried three times and the building would not burn. She advised him to leave the place alone and pray the seal held for another century. Mordecai resigned from the survey contract and abandoned the profession entirely, taking a clerk job in Cincinnati. For the rest of his life, he dreamed of the convent and of three figures watching him from the foot of his bed.
He died in 1921 at a mental institution outside Cincinnati, with the official cause listed as heart failure. Staff reported that in his final days, he was terrified, claiming he could hear singing in the walls. On the night he died, patients reported hearing three female voices singing for exactly three minutes. The convent remains standing in decaying ruins.
The county later routed the road around the property, adding 15 miles to the journey. Locals continue to avoid the site and warn others away. Strange lights and singing are still reported in the area. While most visitors return visibly changed, some disappear entirely, with their abandoned cars later found near the gates.
The story maintains that the seal is weakening and that the entities remain trapped, waiting.