assumption
walter's background story
"Are you...Walter Sullivan?"
"That's what everybody calls me, but I don't really have a name"
Walter is first mentioned in the SH2 game, though we don't meet him properly until SH4. And actually, during most part of SH4 we get to know his whole story quite slowly, without knowing, until near the end of the game, that Walter isn't only that little boy we first find in the Forest world, near the Wish House - but also the long-haired man in the coat that we first meet at the Apartments world, wandering around Eileen's door (to read more about Walter's role and appearances in the game, please head to this page).
Reading the superintendent Sunderland's diary, the bit we can find in his room while exploring the Apartment's world, is the best way to know how Walter story started:
"It must have been around 30 years ago. That young couple was
living in the
apartment, but one day they just suddenly disappeared.
Ran off just like thieves in the night.
I don't know why. It must have been money troubles, or maybe they got themselves
into some kind of danger.
The problem came after that. They left their newborn baby when they took
off.
I even found the umbilical cord.
I called the ambulance right away and I heard the baby survived, but I don't
know what happened to him.
Although a few years later, I often saw a young kid hanging around the
apartment.
One day he just stopped coming by.
But now that I think of it, I'll bet he was that abandoned baby.
It's a horrible story.
Abandoning a newborn baby...
That all happened in Room 302...
And the umbilical cord I found there...
Well, I still can't get myself to throw it away."
Reading later the notes Joseph (Schreiber, the journalist who lived in Room 302 before Henry moved there) left while investigating the "Walter Sullivan's case" "for whoever that's living on the apartment now", we get to know that little Walter was sent to St. Jerome's hospital and later "adopted" by the Wish House, an orphanage near the Silent Hill woods who was run by the secret Silent Hill religious cult. When he was six years old, somebody in the cult showed him the place where he was born. And since that moment, Walter started to believe that Room 302 was actually his mother, feeling a strange connection with it. And every week during many years, he travelled from the orphanage to South Ashfield Heights just to take a look to the apartment... to meet what he believed was his mother.
Obviously, Walter was quite influenced by the cult's teachings (brainwashing, we should say), and things got worse as he grew up; not only because he became more obsessed with the idea of seeing his mother (entering the room, that is - something he couldn't do as there was somebody else living there back then), but also because the tenants started to complain and treat him badly when they saw him hanging around: Walter's obsession with his mother and his feelings of resentment towards people, specially to those who were trying, to his eyes, to prevent him from meeting his mother, became even deeper.
That's when Walter started to become preoccupied with one particular tract from the cult's unholy bible: The Descent of the Holy Mother - The 21 Sacraments. After leaving the orphanage and moving to a nearby town, Pleasant River, Walter went on normally with his life for a while, as an average student... but in the end, because he still felt strong resentfulness towards the world and maybe in a desperate attempt to bring his own mother to life, he plotted a plan to kill 21 people and do as the scriptures said: resurrect the Holy Mother.
As we already got to know in Silent Hill 2 (go here for further details), Walter was caught by the police some time later and locked up in prison after killing a kid and his sister while they where playing in the street, in Silent Hill (actually he had killed 10 people in total, including that kids couple). And once he was in his prison cell, he stabbed himself in the neck with a spoon and died... apparently. However, several years have passed since that incident and now the deaths Henry is witnessing in this nightmarish world are somehow similar to all those murders that took place years ago. Besides, thanks to Joseph's investigations we get to know as well that some more people were killed using similar methods some time after Walter had died in his prison cell. Is it a copycat case, a coincidece... or would that mean Walter didn't really die and that he's back to take care of his unfinished business...?
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