Henry tells Jamie that Mary Shaw was a famous and popular ventriloquist who was publicly humiliated when a young boy named Michael rudely claimed that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. Some weeks later, Michael disappeared and his family blamed it on Mary Shaw and lynched her. Mary's last wish was to have her body turned into a dummy and buried with her 101 dolls. Henry, then the young son of the local mortician, saw Shaw (after she was turned into a dummy) rise up, but was spared thanks to keeping his mouth shut, because Mary takes her revenge by killing only those who scream. Jamie then finds out that Michael, who was indeed murdered by Mary Shaw, was his great-uncle. As part of their lynching of Mary, the Ashen family forced her to scream and permanently silenced her by cutting her tongue out; as such, she has since been seeking revenge against their entire bloodline by killing them using the same method.