CURSED SKELETON KEY FROM ST. PIOUS:

Item: Class III Demonic Tool (SSV-III)
Creation Date: 1908
Host Object: Skeleton Key
Location of Incident: Moxie Manor, Moxahala, Ohio
Object: Skeleton Key, Forged inside Moxie Manor

THE CONSECRATION - The Skeleton Key

The key was forged not by a locksmith, but by a priest.

In 1908, construction finished on St. Pius Church, an immense stone church nestled in the hills of Moxahala, Ohio, a coal town too small for visitors and too isolated for oversight. The priest who oversaw the consecration—an ascetic figure brought from Europe, stern in voice, pale in skin, and never seen without his gloves.

The townsfolk were grateful. They needed a sanctuary. Miners were dying in sudden, unexplained collapses. Children whispered about figures in the smoke above the mine. And every few weeks, a local would wander into the woods and never return.

The priest claimed the town was “spiritually breached.” He spoke of a gate, buried long ago beneath the ground where the church now stood. Something had passed through once, he said—and it would again unless sealed.

At midnight on the church's final day of construction, the priest descended into the crypt with a key he had crafted by hand—fashioned from melted iron collected from miners' lanterns extinguished in death. He called it "The Seal of St. Pius." But no one knew what it truly sealed.

The next morning, the townspeople awoke to find the church locked—doors chained from the inside, windows blackened. No service was ever held. The priest was never seen again.

THE INCIDENT IN THE CELLAR

Decades passed. The town shrank. Children were warned never to go near the abandoned church. But in 1954, a group of three boys dared each other to break in. They found a shattered window on the north side and slipped through.

Inside, the pews were overturned, rotted. Crucifixes hung upside down. The air smelled of rust and candles, though no flame had burned there in years.

They descended the narrow stone steps to the cellar, where they found a single door—heavy, nailed shut, wrapped in chains so tight they bit into the wood. Embedded in the center was an empty keyhole, black and yawning.

One boy, the bravest of the three, reached out. His hand froze inches away from the keyhole. He collapsed, bleeding from the nose and screaming in a language that wasn’t his own.

The boys fled, dragging him out. He would never speak again. But he wrote—obsessively. Pages and pages of the same message:
“The key is the lock. The key is the lock. The key is the lock.”

THE CURSE BORN IN IRON

The key was discovered again in 1981, hidden behind a loose stone near the altar. It was wrapped in aged velvet embroidered with Latin text long faded. The man who found it, a restoration worker named only in records as “The Contractor,” brought it home.

Two nights later, his family was found outside their farmhouse—doors wide open, every lock broken, though nothing was stolen. Inside the house, carved into the walls in nails and bone, were the words:
“One lock left.”

The Contractor vanished. The key surfaced again in 2003, then in 2017, each time leaving behind only warnings, disappearances, or madness.

What few records remain—clippings, journals, and a priest’s torn diary—suggest the key doesn’t just open locks.

It opens barriers. Between rooms. Between minds.
Between worlds. And it wants to be used.

****Warning****

If you or someone you know comes into possession of this Key, follow the instructions to care for it!