The Beginning

I was never much of a writer to begin with, even though I enjoyed the activity.  It was another creative outlet when I couldn't put everything I wanted to in a sketchbook.  I am firstly an artist in the visual sense, and the stories bloom from there.  With each piece created comes a background and a life and a whole epic that lives within my mind.  I'm usually content in keeping the stories to my self, and even if I would try to write the stories of my characters, I would never complete it.

For some reason it was different for the story of Helena Diederich.  The story of Purgatory began in the Starbucks section of a Barnes & Nobel in Atlanta, Georgia.  I had just finished my classes for the day at Savannah College of Art and Design, and I believe Halo 3 had come out the September before.  I had brought my sketchbook with the intent of drawing from the thing that inspired me most; concept art books from games.  The two books I took with me to the cafe section were the art books from The Force Unleashed and Halo 3.

In that time, I was more fantasy based with my work.  I drew a lot of dragons and medieval inspired costumes, but I was so in love with science fiction it frustrated me that I could not imagine it so well.

I sketched out a lot of various ideas and concepts that were typically armored themed.  It was the first time in a while I drew someone from a different universe I had not already created in my mind, and it was also the first time I had created someone without knowing what their face looked like.  I ran out of paper space, sadly, and could not complete the armor.  It was heavily influenced by what I had seen in Halo, even from what I had remembered seeing while playing the other two games.

After I drew her, I sad back and began to wonder what her story was.  I was unsure if I should go the Hero of the Galaxy route since my inspiration came from that very story.  I spent a good amount of the rest of my time there sipping my coffee and forming her story and imagining what she would do with all the things I had drawn on her.

I wanted to break out of the typical science fiction mold I was drawn to, which was either Steampunk related or space travel related.  The paranormal was still science fiction, but I wasn't sure how this concept would fit with a world like that.

That night I had a conversation with my roommate about ghosts and possible encounters.  She had far more interesting stories and accounts and even some visual evidence than I did.  The only things close to possible paranormal encounters for me happened in my childhood.

When I was very young, I had a room to myself.  I remember several times waking up in the middle of the night and seeing a black silhouette.  I would tell my mom that he would watch me sleep.  There was one time I woke up after a nightmare and was face to face with the figure as if it were crouched at my bedside, its fingers resting on my mattress.  My mom said it was likely just my cat, and for me at my age I toss it off as my overactive imagination at work.

There was one Halloween night my sister and I were playing a game called Horse.  It was essentially my sister was the horse, and I would be the rider and hold onto her shirt like reigns and we'd gallop through the house.  The first floor of my parents house was all either connected or open, which made for the perfect riding course.  My sister led me through the back rooms, only to stop in my parents' bedroom by the window.  Suddenly, she ran from the room screaming, and I followed after her in confusion.  She claimed she had seen the ghost of a man we'd never met; our great grandfather.  If I remember correctly, she said he talked to her as well.  I saw nothing, and I don't know if my sister will ever claim it was true or not.

My mother also says that numerous people who have been in the house when no one else was there could hear the sound of people talking.  She said there was a male and a female that were both adult sounding, but there was also the voice of a child.  It always came from the room I used to be in, but once my brothers were born it became theirs.  Sometimes my brothers would leave their radio on during the day after they went off to school, which could attest to the voice.  We wondered about the child, though.  Back when I was in first grade a kid in my class had died in a car accident on his way to school at the end of my road.

My father once told me some theory about echos in time when he had mentioned an encounter he had once. It was in the house of a family friend, and he said he could hear the door open and close and footsteps going into the kitchen, but when he looked there was no one there.

In my later years I always had difficulties getting into the paranormal or the fantastical in terms of believing it, but I loved the stories that came with it.  I wanted to present a different take on it all.  A "what if."  I love conspiracy theories as well, even though I do not believe in them.  I wanted to tell a story that would be relateable and also make others believe that maybe it could be something.  And that's where it all began.