Simon St John was a boy born into a poor family in the mid 1930's. His father was a drunk who only worked enough to get by and his mother was a classic victim of abuse, sure that everything would be fine if she just ignored it and didn't let the neighbors find out. Simon himself grew up terrified of his father's outbursts. Whenever he did anything to draw his father's attention he was as likely to walk away with a beating as anything. All this while his mother pretended not to notice, usually cooking him something for after to cheer him up.

His school life wasn't much easier, teased for being poor and always having bruises... He wasn't sure exactly when it happened but at some point Simon decided that he liked being the bully more than he liked being bullied. He started to threaten and scare other kids, act out, and try to feel some measure of control. It felt good to not always be afraid, even if that terror came surging back the moment his dad slammed the door open each night. When it came out that Simon was picking fights and tormenting other kids his father beat him so bad he ended up in the hospital. His mother said he fell out of a tree and must have hit several branches on the way down. His mother defended that monster.

This was his life. When he got out of school he went to work in the same factory his father worked at. He worked next to his father who continued to treat him as he always had. Simon had little self-esteem and grew meaner and meaner each year. His father got sick one year. They took him to the hospital. Simon hoped he was going to die.

On his death bed his father said that he did it all to make Simon tough. He did it for him. He died saying he did it all out of love. Simon's mother said she knew and kissed her husband, the man who hit them both, and cried because she didn't know what they were going to do without him.

In a kind of trance Simon knew exactly what he was going to do. He killed someone. He found some bloke in the street, pulled him aside, and tormented the man for a little under and hour before killing him. Afterwards he felt... empty. It wasn't the same feeling he got as a kid, it was just nothing. He killed a few more times after that trying to regain that feeling of superiority he once felt but it never came.

What did come where the cops. They were on his tail for the murders and he wasn't sure what to do. His mom caught him one evening washing blood off himself and in a panic he hit her, but stopped short of killing. He drove her to the hospital himself crying over his own actions.

In the hospital when she woke up he spoke with her. He told her what he had done and she said he needed to go to the police and turn himself in. He felt so empty inside... he agreed. Then she said this wouldn't have happened if only his father were still alive. There it was, the last straw. Something in him broke and he killed his mother. Then he went room to room killing other patients until finally a guard found him and gunned him down.

Simon St Johns died 1955, at Alexius Health, Devil's Lake Hospital North Dakota.

Simon was somewhere else next, the empty halls of a never ending hospital. Yet it wasn't empty, things were there with him. Not people but feelings and he could feel them all. He tasted joy at a loved one's recovery. Sadness at someone's loss. But the sweetest that he tasted was the fear that people felt when they heard they were going to die. Tasting that fear was familiar to him and gave him that thrill he used to feel when he was a kid. He started to stalk and follow these people around feeding on their emotions. When he was strong enough he found he could follow someone from the endless halls of the hospital to their home.

He never remembered his first kill, just that he stalked the woman during the day and in her sleep until finally she couldn't take it anymore. She acted out of fear and her final moments were the strongest surge of emotion he had ever felt. He drank it in... then he waited in that place until someone else came by, someone else afraid, and latched onto them. This was how he hunted and how he survived. At times people would try and ask who he was, through shouting or some psychic they'd hired. He didn't remember... but he recalled the words Alexius... Devil's Lake... He didn't stay in North Dakota long as his victims led him farther and farther from where he originally died.

Alexius was satisfied... but it was like a predator content because it was eating. It wasn't until one of his victims fled to Easthaven that this changed. The town, the energies within, who knows exactly... but it woke up something inside him. For the first time in a very long time he wasn't just repeating the same patterns. He was making new choices... he was aware of himself.

His string of killings ended in Easthaven... for the town brought out his humanity. Something very at odds with the spirit's nature and intent. As the Ghost of Devil's Lake struggled with his own identity, meeting other spirits and creatures along the way, he eventually found a means of resolving his plight. He broke. Like a fracture in the image of himself, one side firmly reflected the hungry ghost that had been. The other side slowly formed a young man that, through the dreams of others in the town, came to call himself Alex Shudder. Now this spirit with two sides must carve out a place for himself in Easthaven, the only town that seems to let him be more than an animal.