Ravens Fair

Ravens Fair is a fictional suburban town and the primary setting of the 2007 James Wan film, Dead Silence. The town is home to the Ashen family and is known for generating the legend of an angry spirit known as Mary Shaw.

History
During the 1930s and 40s, Ravens Fair was a wealthy community, catering to society's elite. It was the home of a ventriloquist named Mary Shaw, who headlined her act at the Guignol Theater on Moss Lake. In 1941, Mary performed her act with a doll named Billy. Attending the performance were two young boys named Henry Walker and Michael Ashen. While Henry was suitably impressed with Mary's talent, Michael found her to be a fraud. He pointed out how he could see her lips moving during her act. This angered Mary at great length, but she restrained herself from lashing out too severely at the child in public. After the show however, Mary kidnapped Michael Ashen, took him back to a private room in the theater and murdered him. When Michael went missing, the townsfolk immediately suspected Mary Shaw. Though they had no proof that she had murdered the boy, they exacted their own brand of justice. Led by the Ashen family, the townsfolk captured Mary, slit her throat and let her bleed to death. Her remains were buried in a special corner of the Ravens Fair cemtery and, as per her will, all of her ventriloquist dummies (totalling more than a hundred), were buried in private caskets in the area surrounding her.

The story of Mary Shaw did not end with her death however. Her angry spirit wanted revenge against all of the families of Ravens Fair. Over the span of years, her ghost haunted the town, plaguing everyone who lived there, until most of the townsfolk were forced to leave. She concentrated most of her efforts towards terrorizing the surviving members of the Ashen family.

By the millennium, aging millionaire Edward Ashen, in an effort to protect his son Jamie from Mary's influences, drove him away, forever destroying their relationship. Edward could live his son hating him so long as he believed that he was safe. This did not halt Mary's wrath however. Her spirit tracked Jamie and his wife Lisa down and murdered her. What Jamie didn't know at the time was that Lisa was pregnant, so by killing her, Mary was in fact destroying the last member of the Ashen family line.

Jamie returned to Ravens Fair to bury his wife, but was doggedly pursued by a grim homicide detective named Jim Lipton, whom believed that Jamie may have been involved in his own wife's death.

In short order, both Jamie and Detective Lipton found Mary's secret room at the now-dilapidated Guignol Theater. Mary acted through her doll collection and succeeded in murdering Detective Lipton. Jamie set fire to the crumbling building, destroying Mary's dolls. He believed that by doing so, he could rid Ravens Fair of her evil once and for all.

This was not to be the case however. Returning to his father's estate, Jamie learned to his horror that his father's young wife, Ella Ashen, was secretly carrying out Mary Shaw's wishes. She had already killed her husband and turned him into the perfect doll. Jamie was horror-stricken at this revelation and began screaming. In moments, he became Mary Shaw's final victim.

Notes & Trivia

 * The exact location of Ravens Fair is not revealed in the film.