Arthur Wilson
1880-1928
Arthur was born in 1880 to John and Martha Wilson. John was
originally a doctor, however he was shunned from his hometown of
Sacramento when he was discovered to be doing grave robbings for
dissection projects and moved to Dire, a mining town. While he
had no knack for mining, he used his life savings from
practicing medicine to establish a mining business in town that
struck huge. He decided to inject his new fortune back into the
town, building a saloon and gambling hall along with a clinic
for him to run his practice. Arthur, even from a young age, was
taught from his father the philosophy to set his sights high.
Arthur did initially have an interest in medicine, reports say
he wanted to be remembered for an achievement greater than his
fathers, so he believed that by pushing forward the
understanding of what caused death, and how to heal it, he could
make some fantastic discovery that would change the world.
However, his ideas were often cruel, torturous, and over time it
seems he became much more fascinated in causes of death, rather
than how to prevent it.
Combined with his fascination with medical experimentation on
both human and animal bodies, Arthur learned how to watch for a
moment of hopelessness in people and capitalize on it. In a
recovered journal entry from 1900 he wrote that he would wait
until his hotel patrons were completely penniless, then convince
them that he had found a vein of gold just outside of town. Once
in a mine, he would club them over the head and tie them up,
sometimes torturing them for days before killing them.
In 1902, when he was twenty two, Arthur pitched to his father
the idea of building a hotel the likes of which no one had seen
before. It would be a massive building that would become the
center of the town and become a draw in and of itself. While
John would retain ownership, he gave his son total control of
the project. Arthur got to work planning out a multi-story hotel
that not only had every modern convenience, but also built a
series of trapdoors and hidden rooms for him to torture and kill
people as his fixation on death and murder grew. To counter the
negative context of having a town called Dire, he decided to
name his establishment The Propitious, as a monument to hope. On
Novermber sixteenth, 1906, The Propitius Hotel opened its doors
to the public.
The hotel was an immediate success. It quickly expanded, opening
up an apothecary for tonics, and in the basement Arthur built a
larger medical center for his Father's medical practice. While
the gesture could have been one of kindness, it's much more
likely he used it as an opportunity to get easier access to dead
bodies to experiment on.
In 1918, John Wilson disappeared. There is no evidence on record
regarding this, but it is assumed that Arthur killed him. Upon
his death, Arthur inherited the Propitius, along with several
businesses in town including a barber shop, a mining provisions
store, and a gambling hall. He shut them all down and relocated
the businesses to the Propitius. Arthur was known to frequently
check in with guests during shaves, or when playing cards. At
the time people believed him to be a caring owner, making sure
his guests were well served. In hindsight it seems this was
likely how he found targets. By making his hotel the hub of the
town he could easily learn who was poor, alone, or getting ready
to leave town. It would have made for an excellent way to find
victims without arousing suspicion. Additionally, Arthur took on
his fathers duties as the town doctor, opening himself up to
even more potential victims.
Once prohibition hit in 1919, he realized he had a great
opportunity to bring a whole new generation of victims into the
community. Because Arthur had so many underground tunnels, he
set up a distillery in one of the basements of the hotel and
became a booze-runner. Again he had an influx of desperate
drifters who would show up and work for him. No matter how bad
things got in the outside world, he always opportunities for
murder.
In 1928, there was an explosion in one of his basement
distilleries, which led to the discovery of over a dozen bodies.
When authorities came to question Arthur, he was nowhere to be
found. There was an exhaustive search, but it was concluded that
he had somehow made a quick escape as soon as the explosion
happened. There is another theory that Wilson was able to hide
within the secret rooms and corridors of his hotel, waiting out
the search party until he could make his escape.
Reverend Arthur Sutter
1960-1965
After four decades away from sight, Arthur Wilson returns to the
public eye in 1960 in a surprising way. A priest by the name of
Arthur Sutter had started appearing in newspapers across the
country, having formed a new Christian congregation known as the
Church of the Eighth Sin. While he was based out of Chicago,
Sutter traveled all over spreading his new doctrine.
In contrast to the budding civil rights movement, Sutter
preached about the sin of Defiance. He said that those who are
disobedient to their father are sinners. According to Sutter,
engaging in defiance against authority was akin to spitting in
God's face.
His following started small, but it grew substantially in 1964.
Sutter called the ending of segregation an act of defiance
against the established rules in the government, and was
therefore a sin. He chastised flower children and
environmentalists, building a group of followers who were strict
and fervent believers in his extreme teachings.
Sutters movement was controversial, to say the least. After a
civil rights protestor died during one of his traveling sermons
in San Diego in January of 1965, Sutter revealed his grand plan
to his followers. He proposed that he, and 100 of his most loyal
followers would move to a remote location to start a new colony
of true believers.
The followers, hand picked by Sutter, were not told where they
would be moving. Only to pack a suitcase of their clothes. Most
of these people would never be heard from again. Sutter moved
his congregation into the Propitious Hotel. He claimed it was
the perfect place for his congregation, because it was a ghost
town where they would only need to follow the word of God, and
his mouthpiece.
It's largely unknown what actually took place inside the hotel
during this time. All recovered accounts come from a pair of
former members who claimed to have escaped the hotel. In their
story, Sutter had forced them into living like a cult-- he had
extreme control over their eating and sleeping habits, often
making them stay awake for upwards of 40 hours at a time. He
would separate them frequently from each other, and force them
to have one-on-one sessions with him. During these sessions,
there were reports that Sutter knew things that people had only
mentioned in private, which made him seem like he was more than
just a man.
Their Church services were extreme, parishioners were forced to
take LSD and other hallucinogens. While under the effects of
these drugs, Sutter would apparently claim he was Arthur Wilson,
and the devil gave him mind control powers that he would use to
force them to do bizarre and horrible things.
The anonymous survivors said they fled in the middle of the
night with a couple of bags filled with food and water, and
walked for nearly a week through the California desert before
they found a town. It was nearly another week before authorities
actually inspected The Propitius, finding 98 dead bodies. They
had all been gassed to death, and Arthur had shot himself in the
head
