381 – Night Stalker – Three

A series of bizarre phobia-related deaths has Kolchak’s supernatural -hypothesis generator running overtime – but which of his wacky ideas, if any, will be correct? Simon and Eugene discuss Three. Synopsis: A nervous young woman takes a bus to an unsavory part of town and arrives at a creepy old, abandoned house. She’s met by two young men, who seem to be known to her. Soon, they’re attempting to drown her in a bucket of water. She escapes and hides from them, but the shower door mysteriously closes on her and the shower fills with water, killing her. When she’s found, she has all the symptoms of drowning, but no water in her lungs. That brings Kolchak to the story. The story look more straightforward to Peri. There is evidence that others were in the house. The victim, Liza, had bruises on the back of her neck, consistent with violence, and an overturned bucket of water makes it look as if someone deliberately murdered her. Kolchak finds signs of paeanistic rituals, and follows that angle. [expand title=”More…” swaptitle=”Less” tag=”strong”] As the clues mount up, it is revealed that the three people in the house were initiates in a secret society known as Three. To join, each had to face their greatest fear. As each of the initiates and their Secret Society faculty advisor keep dying in a manner consistent with the greatest fear, Kolchak pursues the supernatural angle, while Peri works at making sense of a story she sees as a Secret Society initiation gone wrong, and possibly a wholly-human driven series of murders. In the end, Kolchak realizes that the creepy old house was the greatest fear of Jack, the one remaining initiate. As a child, he lived in that house and his father brutally axe-murdered his family, except for his younger brother and him. He hid himself and his brother in a cupboard to escape, but the brother died of fear. And it is that fear that permeates the house that was unleashed by the initiation and is now killing people. Kolchak and Peri save Jack from being fear-murdered by his dead father and the story is resolved. Later, Kolchak burns the house down.[/expand]