Yuletide Asylum

Christmas is supposed to be a season of comfort, goodwill, and open doors. For Thomas Everett Jr., it becomes something else entirely. After accepting a holiday invitation meant to offer reassurance and peace of mind, Thomas finds himself drawn into a system that speaks the language of care while quietly redefining his reality. Inside a small-town psychiatric hospital decorated in seasonal cheer, concern becomes documentation, family loyalty becomes authority, and every attempt to assert the truth is carefully recorded as evidence against him. As the days move closer to Christmas, the hospital's routines grow more rigid and more theatrical. Bells mark time. Music fills the halls. Paperwork multiplies. Beneath the decorations and forced smiles, something is decaying. Memory becomes dangerous. Silence becomes safer than honesty. And the line between wellness and punishment disappears entirely. Yuletide Asylum is a slow-burn psychological horror novel that explores institutional gaslighting, the weaponization of family concern, and the quiet violence of being labeled. It is a story about identity under pressure, about how easily a life can be rewritten when authority controls the narrative, and about the fragile act of remembering who you are when every system insists you are wrong. Unsettling, atmospheric, and deeply human, this novel favors psychological tension over spectacle and realism over shock. It is horror rooted in paperwork, procedure, and the terrifying power of people who believe they are helping. Because some places do not need locked doors to trap you. They only need permission.