Sarah Ellis sent her sister of text, telling her how safe she felt at her new job at a remote mountain lodge in North Carolina.

Later that same week, Sarah's body was found in the nearby forest. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.

This is Monsters.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sarah Ellis had dreams of becoming a chef. Her favorite hobbies all centered around food, whether it was watching cooking shows in her spare time, or trying to perfect her baking techniques in the apartment she lived in with her older sister.

She knew that, in the culinary industry, you had to start from the bottom and work your way up. So in 2018, she decided to apply for a job as a cook at the Piska Inn, an isolated lodge in the mountains of North Carolina.

The inn had been previously voted as the country's best national park lodge, and was a popular workplace for young people all over the United States due to its breathtaking location on the famous Blue Ridge Parkway.

Sarah's job application was accepted and she started preparing to move out on her own. For her, the most important thing was that the job would give her the opportunity to further her career.

The beautiful surrounding scenery and the staff accommodation at the lodge was just an added bonus.

Sarah made the move to the Piska Inn, joining around 40 other employees who lived in the lodges, staffed dorms, located a few hundred yards away from the inn itself.

The dorm rooms were simple but comfortable, with twin-sized beds and shared dressers. For seasonal employees, it felt similar to being away at summer camp.

For the first few months of Sarah's employment, everything went according to plan. Throughout Sarah's life, her hearing impairment had made almost everything more difficult.

Although she still had a small amount of hearing, she was almost completely deaf. Despite her impairment and the isolated nature of her new job, she felt at home at the Piska Inn, safely tucked away in a small community of friendly staff.

Despite now living on-site at the inn, Sarah kept in touch with her family, especially her older sister Tiffany Coleman.

The two sisters had a significant age gap of 12 years and throughout Sarah's childhood, Tiffany had helped to raise her.

Even in adulthood, Tiffany still felt the urge to look after her younger sister, who had always been sensitive, kind, and generous to a fault.

After their mother died of cancer, the sisters came to rely on each other even more for supported guidance.

When Tiffany checked in on Sarah via text, Sarah gushed about her new job, telling her sister that she'd quickly made several friends at the inn, which she called, quote, a safe place.

Then Sarah suddenly stopped replying to Tiffany's messages.

The next day, Tiffany got a call from staff at the Piska Inn that made her heart sink.

She received news that something terrible had happened to her younger sister.

The tragic turn of events at the Piska Inn began slowly and quickly snowballed into something that the quiet lodge had never seen before.

On July 25th, somebody knocked on the door of the inn manager's office.

...