Aktor Manor is a landmark building in East Hampton, and you could even say it's the oldest estate in the entire area. Even back when the beaches of Long Island hadn't yet been developed, this estate was already standing on the coastline. Almost every Hampton person's childhood memories include this strange house.
Aktor Manor sits on the northernmost tip of North Beach on Long Island. It's on a hillside, backed by a mountain and facing the sea, with an open, expansive view. To reach the estate, you have to spend about ten minutes driving up a winding mountain road. There are no residences along the way, the whole slope is empty and bare, with just this one estate.
But the east side of the estate is right next to a cliff, and below the cliff is the sea. Standing on the cliff's edge, you can faintly hear the echo of the tides, but inside the house it's very quiet; you can almost only see the blue sky and white clouds outside the windows.
The scale of Aktor Manor is no smaller than Viscount Manor. In fact, because it monopolizes this entire hill, the exterior grounds are very spacious. From the garden side gate on the east side, all the way out to the eastern edge of the cliff, there's a very beautiful lawn. Even though it's winter and it has been switched out for artificial turf, you can still vaguely imagine the lush, thriving scene of spring and summer.
The back garden is slightly smaller than Viscount Manor's, but behind it there is a patch of natural Forest. Long Island has a very high forest coverage rate; everywhere you look is a stretch of green, but most of it is deliberately planted landscaping. The back hill of this estate, however, is a rare undeveloped Forest, a Heaven for birds and insects.
Don't be fooled by the manor's age; although it was built very early, it has gone through modern renovations in the hands of several owners. On the west side there's a large swimming pool, and taking advantage of the elevation difference, they turned it into the currently most popular infinity pool. Because the terrain is high enough and it sits to the west, you can see the sunset.
The front yard is even larger than Viscount Manor's. It's obviously been paved flat later on into a big plaza, with shrub hedges and fountains. At the same time, beneath this plaza is a huge garage, prepared for hosting large-scale banquets.
Dracula took Greed for a walk around the estate. Greed had to admit that this house was really just too good; it perfectly met all his needs. It'd be even better if it weren't in East Hampton.
They stood in front of the infinity pool on the west side. From here you could look down over East Hampton, even see part of West Hampton, and you could also see the Stark Mansion. Although it's a bit of a drive from here to there, in a straight line it's very close, which makes it convenient for Stark to bring his Mecha over.
"The kids are going to love this pool," Stark said, gazing at the infinity pool. "We can throw pool parties at sunset, and my home video collection is going to get several more episodes."
Greed's frown gradually smoothed out as well. Dracula's initial asking price had been daylight robbery; for a moment, he'd even wanted to turn around and leave. But Stark stopped him and told him to properly look the estate over first.
The trouble was, the estate really was excellent, fully worth the price. You could even say Dracula was letting it go cheap; with New York's luxury properties so hot right now, he could hike it up another thirty percent without issue—someone would buy it sooner or later.
Even so, Greed still felt there might be a catch. He looked at Dracula and asked, "With a house this good, working with us isn't your only option, is it?"
He was of course referring to going to the nobles of the Shi'ar Empire. This estate could easily become their foothold: quiet, big enough, and overlooking the whole of Hampton. Even if Dracula jacked the price up a few more notches and demanded they help him emigrate, they'd probably agree.
"I don't want to hide it from you—this house does have a bit of a problem," Dracula said.
"What kind of problem?" Greed looked like he'd expected as much.
"The house is haunted."
"What?"
Everyone turned to look at Dracula, but he remained very calm. He said, "This house has been entangled by Ghosts all along, so ordinary people simply can't live here. Even for people who aren't ordinary, if they can't coexist peacefully with the Ghosts, they'll be driven out sooner or later."
Everyone looked puzzled, and at that moment Greed recalled the Ghosts theory Nick had proposed before. He briefly summarized it, but Dracula shook his head and said, "There are many different kinds of Ghosts. What you're talking about are Ghosts. What this house has are restless spirits."
Restless spirits are actually a Unique kind of mysticism phenomenon believed in over here in Europe and America, referring to the strange noises that often occur in a house. This is different from Ghosts: restless spirits are usually seen as "Mr. Mxyzptlk." Many people think they don't have independent consciousness, they're just disturbances in the house caused by magnetic fields.
The more scientific Explanation is that many houses in America are wooden structures. It's easy for small creatures to get into the walls of wooden houses, or if the place is just old and poorly maintained, it's easy for strange creaks and knocks to occur. And the wind is strong in many parts of America; once a gale howls through, when it blows past the pores in the wood, it can make wailing, Ghost-like sounds. In eras when science wasn't so advanced, people took this to be haunting.
However, because Magic actually exists in the Marvel world, and Ghosts are real, restless spirits may also genuinely exist. So Greed didn't rush to make any atheist remarks; he just asked, "Why can't we drive them out?"
"Because they don't exist," Dracula said. "They're not some sort of entity or Energy, but more like a mental phenomenon that appears within your senses."
At that, Greed perked right up. He said, "So you're saying it's a kind of collective Illusion?"
Dracula nodded and said, "Yes. And it's not just this house—the entire Hampton area has a bad aura. I don't know how you'd explain that with your so-called science, but as I see it, it's a regional Curse."
"It makes people mentally unstable?"
"You could say that." Dracula nodded and said, "There are a lot of places like this in the world. I've seen quite a few myself—some of them are really notorious. Those so‑called Mages of Kamar-Taj have gone there several times, but they were just as helpless."
"Even Kamar-Taj couldn't handle it?" Stark frowned. Although he and Strange were always bickering, he had to admit that those Mages were pretty capable—anything related to mysticism and energy, there was basically nothing they couldn't deal with.
"Because the problem doesn't just appear in the environment; it appears in people as well." Dracula seemed unsure how to describe it precisely. He said, "I don't know how you guys explain collective illusions, but in my eyes, you could call it a guilty conscience. If the people in a certain place are all under a lot of psychological pressure, they're very likely to develop this kind of problem."
"And does their psychological pressure have anything to do with you?" Natasha asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Oh, don't pin this on me." Dracula lifted his chin slightly. "Vampire activity does indeed put a lot of pressure on the Human race, but I never live together with my kind. If it's just me alone, how much can I really eat? And the area I'm talking about isn't just one or two streets—it's an entire neighborhood, even an entire city. You've heard plenty of rumors about that, haven't you?"
Greed exchanged a look with Stark. Greed thought for a moment, then said, "It might be the collective unconscious."
"What do you mean?" Stark asked.
"There's a certain theory," Greed paused for a second, then said, "It's not the mainstream view right now and is easily dismissed as a conspiracy theory. But some people believe that all humans come from the same ancestor, that we share the same genetic sequence. This doesn't just affect our bodies, giving us identical physical structures; it also gives us the same primitive instincts on the spiritual level."
"That's not wrong," Natasha said. "After all, most people nowadays are scared by more or less the same things, and after they feel fear, their reactions are pretty similar too. So we do share the same kind of instinct."
"Yes, but this theory emphasizes that these shared primitive instincts cause us, when we're afraid, to form a certain mental connection, called the collective unconscious, also known as the collective subconscious."
"That sounds like Jung's theory, doesn't it?" Coulson thought for a moment and said.
"Yes. However, what I'm talking about is a theory derived on the basis of that one—how, under certain specific circumstances, the collective unconscious can simultaneously affect the conscious minds of the same group of people. It usually manifests as collective illusion or collective hysteria—you've all heard of things like that."
Everyone nodded. As unscientific as it might sound, in reality, there were plenty of such cases, even just counting the ones reported by official media or personally experienced by people they knew. The most famous example, in fact, is the Mandela Effect.
The same group of people in this world, at the same time, suddenly think of the same thing that's completely inconsistent with reality; this is what's called a collective illusion.
The strange part is that collective illusions don't necessarily occur in geographically adjacent regions; they can even be separated by great distances. Especially in eras when the internet and communication weren't developed, two people who never met each other in their entire lives could suddenly think of the same thing at almost the same time, with very similar content, even describing an object that looks exactly the same. And there's more than one such case.
Many of them were indeed viral marketing campaigns carried out in the early days of the internet, but many experts also conducted experiments and found that similar phenomena really do occur. The currently more reliable explanation is precisely Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.
These kinds of legends are wildly popular in Europe and America. The settings like the DC Dream Realm and Marvel Dream Dimension even grew out of this legend, which posits that people share a common subconscious and common dreams. The comic "Sleep Demon" was also influenced by this theory to a certain extent.
"You mean the collective unconscious in this area went wrong, causing people to share the same illusion?" Greed asked.
"You've got it backwards." Dracula dropped a bombshell. "They first developed a shared illusion, which then caused the land itself to go wrong."
Greed looked at him, and Dracula continued, "People who grow up on this land all possess the same obsessive ambition. That affected the aura of the land, and then generation after generation came under the influence of this morbid aura, becoming more and more paranoid."
Stark's face showed an expression of understanding. He said, "That's not something we can't explain scientifically. And I don't mean in terms of Psychology, but from the perspective of sociology and common sense."
"Back when these houses were built, they were meant to be vacation villas, because the transportation here was inconvenient and only the scenery was nice. Poor civilians wouldn't come here to build houses; only the rich would choose this place. Everyone who had a house here was either rich or noble."
"The Upper-class already had a whole set of their own rules. During America's rise, class mobility was still relatively frequent, so upstarts like Aphus popped up easily. Even if they relied on swindling and cheating, as long as they scraped together enough seed money, it wasn't impossible to strike it rich. So back then, the rules weren't that strict—for example, Emily could still marry down to Aphus."
"But as the period of economic prosperity passed, the classes basically solidified completely. And in order to keep their positions, people in the Upper Class would desperately try to block off all upward mobility. Their method was to make the rules more and more complicated and twisted, so that guys like Aphus, who wanted to rise by scamming and scheming, would be left outside the door."
"Under those circumstances, everyone has to follow that absurd set of rules, starting from childhood. This does nothing good for mental or physical development. Over time, of course they're going to go crazy, and then all sorts of strange illusions will start to appear."