In 1912, the field of what we today would call psychiatry was still being born. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung had just founded the International Psychoanalytical Association and theories about the working of the human mind were flying fast and free.
One man saw an opportunity in that burgeoning field and felt that he had a chance to change the world for the better.
That man was Dr. Austin Tisdale, a physician from Algiers that had become fascinated the growing field.
Specifically Dr. Tisdale had a fascination with phobias, seeking to find ways to cure people of their irrational fears. He had seen how such fears crippled many of his patients and that, while he could treat their physical symptoms, he couldn’t give them rewarding and fulfilling lives.
Dr. Tisdale worked on the problem as a side project and developed a theory that, at the time, was revolutionary. According to his hypothesis, you can help people with their fears by forcing them to confront them.
He set to work in his garage, building rooms that would help his patients confront their fears in safe, controlled environments.
Initially, Dr. Tisdale had a great deal of success. He managed to effectively cure several of his patients and help reduce the phobias in others. It seemed that he was on the verge of a breakthrough and the entire world started taking notice.
But then Dr. Tisdale began to tackle stronger and stronger fears, including ones that could not be done in a safe and controlled way. It was only a matter of time before one of his patients met an untimely end during one of his experiments, which happened in 1914.
Dr. Tisdale couldn’t let this minor slip upqset his work. He covered up the death and kept working. However, soon enough there was another death and another death, all the direct result of his attempts to “cure” them.
As the bodies piled up, Dr. Tisdale only became more obsessed. When he had started this quest, he didn’t tell anyone that he had a personal interest in it. Long plagued by an overwhelming fear of death, every action he had taken was meant to overcome it. When becoming a doctor and healing others didn’t defeat it, he sought to attack it in his own mind.
But his approach was a failure. Psychiatry wouldn’t have the answers to his problem for a long, long time. But still he pushed forward. However, now his treatments were so extreme that death was the fortunate way out. Those who survived were scarred, broken and often left insane.
But it wasn’t until Dr. Tisdale finally tried his treatment out on himself that his reign of terror ended. His self therapy first pushed him deeper into insanity and then into the grave.
It was only after his demise the truth of his methods were discovered and his name was removed from the history books. Dr. Austin Tisdale and his victims all became ghosts lost to history.
However, the good doctor had little to fear. Death, is not as permanent as some might think. As Dr. Tisdale is back, for three nights only, with updated treatments for some of your worst terrors.
Will you survive the doctor’s treatment and, if so, will you keep your sanity? You’ll have to come by to find out.