In One Shell Straight to Hell you meet a mansion with its own devilish personality. If you want to know how that devilish personality came to be you may want to familiarize yourself with Godwin Halliwell, the founder of the estate.
You will start to know the meaning of "a thin place".
Tapescript:
"It wasn’t just the heroism of the church’s bravest warriors who have left their mark on the world. Before I continue, I owe a debt of gratitude to the late Father Crosali whose tireless work in recording the incursions of the underworld and whose unfortunate fate was at the hands of possessed weave. Some have said that the psychological marks of those who were at the Halliwell mansion that day will be worn by humanity like a dead man wears a scar.
The Halliwell Estate at Ravenstor has always been a “thin” place. Since time immemorial eerie sightings, disappearances, even rumours of demons have plagued this place. However, the local boggy ground and dearth of civilization meant that, when England reconverted, the Church was unwilling to build a chapel there and instead simply told locals to keep away. When Godwin expressed a desire to do something to safeguard the world against evil, Hubert of Canterbury saw a way to kill two birds with one stone and sent him to build a house there and serve as a warden or custodian of sorts.
Godwin was a knight who followed Richard I on the Third Crusade to the Holy Land. Although Richard and his allies won several important victories against Saladin, the English king elected not to march on Jerusalem and many of his soldiers returned home disappointed.
It is not clear what Godwin thought about the crusade. It is known, however, that at some point in the crusade he had a troubling experience. Some Halliwell scholars think it was a fit or a wound. Others think it was a crisis of faith. Regardless, Godwin wrote in a testimony to Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
“As I lay there on my bed, fearing that I might die, one appeared to me as though sent from God, with eyes of flame and it was as though the sun shone, although it was night. I had not wit nor strength to speak, but he said, ?You are very near to death, oh man, but your master has need of you. Ask him for strength and he will never desert you?.
What man could say no? I bade the angel, for surely an angel it was, for the master?s strength, and the angel took a cup and poured it into my mouth. In the morning, my strength had returned, and with it a strength that was new.
Intrigued, the Archbishop sent for Godwin and, convinced that the man had been miraculously saved and fortified, bequeathed to him an estate on Ravenstor, an isolated and cursed site, as well as a generous sum of money. Halliwell and his descendants would have ownership of the hill and its surrounding lands in perpetuity in exchange for keeping the evil there at bay. Halliwell, convinced that this is why God had saved him, agreed. Although the Church of England and the Church of Rome split a few centuries later, the Halliwells have continued to do their duty in obscurity, at least until the Restoration of the Hierarchy."
