Danger Zone One

The following is an excerpt from the book Beyond Strange: Timeless Tales and Urban Legends by Don Ward.

MELPO THALIA: THE TWO-FACED REAPER

According to the oldest version of the legend, Melpo Thalia’s origins can be traced to an unnamed student with a profound aversion to injustice. She was known throughout her boarding school for her academic excellence and deep conviction that education was meant not only to empower, but also to cultivate integrity and compassion. She vehemently defended classmates who were mistreated and challenged unfairness among students and teachers.

One day, the student discovered that a serious wrongdoing had occurred at her school—but it was ignored by the faculty and staff, while those responsible escaped punishment through influence, reputation, and fear. When the student attempted to expose the truth, she found herself silenced and abandoned.

Versions of the legend differ on what happened next. In some, the student died under mysterious circumstances the night before her graduation; in others, she vanished from the school grounds, her body later discovered floating in the nearby lake beneath the pale moonlight.

Regardless of how she met her demise, the legend claims that in the girl’s final moments, her spirit, desperate for vengeance, returned to the school.

Soon after, the sightings began. A shadowy figure roamed the halls of the boarding school, carrying a long, weathered scythe. One by one, the students who had been involved in the wrongdoing perished, each in equally horrific ways.

After that, the girl’s restless spirit was said to move from school to school, searching for others who committed heinous acts and went unpunished.

And so, the legend of Melpo Thalia was born: a specter with one half of her face forever frozen into a wide, unsettling grin—ever gleeful to dispatch the guilty—the other half bearing a deep, sorrowful frown, mourning the victims whose suffering had gone unanswered.

In some versions, Melpo Thalia is cloaked in a hooded robe; in others, she wears a traditional graduation gown—symbolic of the graduation she never had.

Her favorite haunting ground is boarding schools, specifically all-girls’ academies. Students who know the legend claim that if there’s a full moon out and the sound of a blade scraping against their dorm room door is heard, Melpo Thalia has come to claim her next victim.

Danger Zone One. Story by Midnight. Art by Kuraikabe5211.