The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses death by suicide and misogyny/gender discrimination. 

In 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz, also known as Mieczyś, arrives in a remote town in Lower Silesia. Wojnicz was born in 1889. He is a Polish Catholic, now studying engineering at Lwów Polytechnic. As he walks through the station, he feels that he is being watched. The high altitude, however, helps his “enfeebled body” (3). He is driven to Görbersdorf, a health sanatorium in the town founded by Dr. Hermann Brehmer and run by Dr. Semperweiss. The sanatorium is one of the first facilities to treat tuberculosis. As Wojnicz studies the town from his carriage, he suffers from a familiar coughing fit.

He is met by Wilhelm Opitz, also known as Willi. Opitz is the proprietor of the Guesthouse for Gentlemen in Görbersdorf. Wojnicz will stay in Opitz’s guesthouse until a vacancy opens up in the main Kurhaus facility. The next day, he is awoken by the sound of a bugle. His “various conditions” (7) have bothered him for many years. His father, January Wojnicz, a civil engineer and landowner, managed his son’s afflictions with gravity and tact. January Wojnicz was devoted to his son, but this love was “devoid of any sentimentality or any of the ‘female emotions’ that he so abhorred” (7).