In the Langston family, each son married his sister… until one of them finally broke the curse.

In the remote hills of eastern Kentucky, an old, dilapidated house still dominates the valley. It’s called the Langston House. Its boarded-up windows, crumbling porch, and moss-covered walls are all that remain of a past the locals prefer to forget. For nearly a century, the house was the scene of a history the community tried to erase: the story of a family introverted, living by their own rules, isolated from the world.

A Dynasty Trapped in Its Own Shadow

It all began in 1863, when Jacob Langston, an ambitious farmer, settled with his wife, Anne, on over 100 acres of isolated land. Far from the cities and their governments, he built a prosperous estate. But gradually, this isolation became a prison. The family severed all ties with the outside world, enveloping themselves in a cycle of secrecy and silence.

With each generation, the Langstons became increasingly isolated from the rest of society. Children stopped attending school. Marriages, births, and deaths took place behind closed doors. The eldest of each generation imposed strict isolation on his descendants in the name of « family purity. »

The large house became the center of a closed world. No one entered without permission, and those who lived there almost never left. The patriarch’s authority shaped minds: for children, the family represented the entire universe. Traditions became laws, and fear of the outside world became an insurmountable wall.

Sons were raised in obedience, and daughters in service to the family and the ancestral lineage. Power, fear, and religion intertwined in a rigid ideology in which any dissent was viewed as sin.

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