The Thirteenth Bell American Horror Story

In the heart of New England, there was a small town named Ashwick Hollow. A place forgotten by maps, tucked between swaths of ancient forest and rocky hills. Travelers seldom wandered there, and those who did often remarked on the quiet, the weight of the air, and the shadow that seemed to settle over the crooked steeple of St. Adrian’s Church.

The church was old, older than the town itself, its foundations laid in the late 1600s by settlers who brought their faith — and their fears — across the Atlantic. Its bell tower rose high above the town square, leaning slightly from centuries of storms and neglect. The bell inside was black iron, forged with a strange alloy said to have come from the smelting of tools taken from a burned-out witch’s homestead. Stories like that were common in Ashwick Hollow, whispered with the same hush reserved for secrets better left buried.

But there was one story that no one laughed at. One truth that kept every soul in Ashwick Hollow awake at night.

The bell of St. Adrian’s was supposed to ring only twelve times at midnight, like every other in Christendom. But sometimes, when the air was wrong and the sky too still, a thirteenth toll would echo across the town. It was always slow, deliberate, almost mocking in its cadence. And each time it rang, someone would vanish.

Not die — vanish.

The unlucky soul would be gone from their bed, their hearth, their place at the table. Their clothes might be found in a heap, or the sheets of their bed tangled as if something pulled them away. But there was never blood, never struggle. Just absence.

A week later, without fail, they would reappear. Not inside the town but at its very edge, where the fields met the treeline of the black forest. They would stagger out of the fog, distorted and wrong, begging not to be let back in.

And that was perhaps the cruelest part: they still looked human, but not fully.

Their bodies were stretched in odd proportions, limbs too long or joints bending in unnatural ways. Their eyes glowed faintly in the dark, too large for their faces, and their voices trembled like cracked bells when they pleaded. “Don’t let me in,” they said. “I don’t belong here anymore.”

The townsfolk obeyed. They never let them return.

No one knew what happened if they did, because for as long as anyone could remember, the rule had been the same: bolt the doors, bar the windows, and when the bell rings thirteen, pray it is not your turn.

By autumn of 1987, most of the old families had either left or resigned themselves to fate. Ashwick Hollow was dying, like a body eaten from the inside by rot. Fewer than 600 souls lived there, their lives quiet and hollowed by dread.

On a crisp October night, the town gathered in the square for the Fall Vigil, a tradition born out of fear. Families brought lanterns and candles, standing together beneath the skeletal branches of the elms. They prayed, not for blessings but for survival.

The clock neared midnight, its hands like knives. The first toll echoed through the square. Deep, resonant, shaking the air.

One.

The crowd bowed their heads.

Two.

Children squeezed their parents’ hands.

Three.

The sound carried out over the fields like a death knell.

Four.

A dog howled, then fell silent, as though struck.

Five.

Shadows quivered across the cobblestones.

Six.

The cold deepened, crawling like fingers beneath coats and shawls.

Seven.

No one dared speak.

Eight.

Eyes darted to neighbors, wondering who would be taken.

Nine.

Some wept quietly.

Ten.

The candle flames sputtered.

Eleven.

The night grew still, suffocating.

Twelve.

The crowd exhaled in unison, relief washing over them like rain after drought. The last toll.

But then came the sound no one wished to hear.

Thirteen.

The bell groaned, deeper and heavier than the others, as if struck by something unseen. The note lingered, crawling across the ground, seeping into the bones of every listener.

People gasped, clutched at each other. A mother screamed her child’s name.

And then — silence.

The next morning, it was old Samuel Keats who was missing. A widower, nearly seventy, known for tending roses outside his crumbling cottage. His bed was empty, his windows ajar. Only a faint trail of dirt led from the sill to the garden, where petals lay scattered as though in mourning.

Seven days later, at dawn, he came back.

A figure emerged from the treeline, hunched and staggering. The early risers froze when they saw him. His frame was too tall, his arms elongated, the skin sagging from his bones as if melting. His eyes were wide, unblinking, glowing faintly with an unnatural light. His voice cracked when he spoke.

“Don’t let me in,” he rasped. “It’s not me anymore. Please. Don’t.”

His words broke into sobs that rattled like the tolling of the bell. And though neighbors wept to see him, they barred their doors and left him to wander the fog until he vanished again.

Rumors spread that fall. Some said the thirteenth bell was not a curse but a calling — a toll from another world, summoning its chosen. Others whispered of a pact made by the founders, a bargain sealed with iron and blood to keep something imprisoned beneath the church.

But one man was not content with whispers.

Elias Harper, a schoolteacher in his thirties, had moved to Ashwick Hollow only a year before. He had scoffed at the town’s superstitions, dismissing them as folklore born from isolation. But after watching the thirteenth toll with his own ears ringing in terror, he could not ignore it. He began digging through the church archives, reading brittle records and faded letters.

He found mention of the bell’s forging. The iron had been mixed with something called “witch’s ore,” said to carry the voice of the condemned. The founders had demanded the bell toll twelve times each midnight to sanctify the land. But there were notes of failure, lines scrawled in haste: “When the thirteenth sounds, the gate cracks. We cannot keep it closed.”

Elias began to wonder — what lay behind that gate? And why did it hunger for the people of Ashwick Hollow?

As Halloween neared, he grew obsessed. His colleagues avoided him, muttering that he had the look of a marked man. His neighbors barred their shutters when he passed.

On the final night of October, as the square filled again with trembling townsfolk, Elias did not join them. Instead, he climbed the steps of St. Adrian’s, lantern in hand, and entered the church alone.

The nave smelled of mildew and dust. The pews sagged with rot. He made his way up the spiral staircase into the bell tower, where the massive black bell loomed overhead, suspended by chains that creaked in the wind.

As midnight neared, he pressed his palm to the iron. It was cold, almost wet, as if it breathed. His lantern sputtered.

The first toll shook the air, reverberating through his chest. His ears rang.

By the twelfth, his vision blurred.

When the thirteenth came, it was not just a sound. It was a voice.

Elias staggered back, clutching his head. Whispers poured into him, thick and choking. Words in no language he knew, yet somehow he understood. We are waiting. We are owed. One by one, we return.

And beneath the whispers, the faint sound of screaming — dozens, hundreds of voices, all crying out from within the bell itself.

The metal split. Just a hairline crack, but from it seeped a light like burning fog. The air stank of sulfur and rot.

In the square below, the townsfolk gasped as the bell rang not thirteen, but fourteen times.

And Elias Harper was never seen again.

From that night onward, the thirteenth toll became more frequent. Sometimes twice a week, sometimes two nights in a row. More and more vanished, and when they returned, their forms grew worse. No longer recognizable as neighbors, but twisted shades, their faces slack masks stretched over wrong bones. They still begged not to be let in, but their voices carried hunger, a craving that belied their pleas.

By winter, the town was half-empty. Families fled, abandoning homes to the creeping fog. Those who remained whispered that the bell had broken something, that the gate it guarded was widening. Soon, it would not just take one at a time. Soon, it would open fully.

On the last night Ashwick Hollow was ever spoken of, the bell rang.

Not twelve. Not thirteen.

But endlessly, without pause, until the town itself was swallowed by mist.

No map marks the place anymore. No road leads there. But sometimes, travelers claim to hear a faint tolling carried on the wind.

Thirteen strikes, followed by one more.

And those who hear it too clearly never make it home.